Smart spaces: enhanced, connected urban environments of tomorrow

Smart buildings use digital infrastructure and data to make them more intelligent. They can help organizations increase efficiency, reduce costs, and streamline building operations. But what powers connectivity in a smart building today? An integrated communications infrastructure that supports wired and wireless networks and applications.

A typical smart building includes:

Internet of Things (IoT)
Essential to powering smart spaces, IoT-connected objects and services drive efficiency, convenience, and new business models.

Converged infrastructure
Low-cost, easily installed cable solutions can help smart buildings make deployments simpler.

Universal connectivity grid
A plan for total connectivity across the organization—no matter where users might be connecting from—and to support new edge devices being added to the network.

Automated infrastructure management (AIM)
The ability to automatically track all connectivity and connected devices and document the entire network.

Power over Ethernet (PoE)
More connected devices require more power. PoE can enable smart buildings to support them all.

A/V and HDBaseT
Standardized audio and video connectivity make it easy to transfer multiple media formats across the network. HDBaseT is connectivity that enables transmission of ultra-high-definition video, digital audio, dc power, Ethernet, USB 2.0, and other control communications over a single category cable.

In-building wireless (IBW)
Wi-Fi is only part of the picture; in-building wireless brings reliable cellular coverage to every part of the building.

Low-voltage lighting
Flexible and efficient lighting contributes to sustainability targets.

Energy savings
A central part of building management—lower energy usage and cost reductions.

Security
Essential in the IoT era—more connected devices means more potential threat vectors. Protect your network from threats wherever they come from.

Safety
Smart buildings can help reduce risk to people or property should unforeseen events occur.

A smart campus connects devices, applications, and people to enable new or enhanced experiences and improve operational efficiency. It is built on ubiquitous, reliable wired and wireless connectivity—both indoors and out. It connects and enables all the people, devices and applications on campus and lets them interact with each other digitally. A converged network can scale to include all campus buildings and the links between them.

A typical smart campus includes:

State-of-the-art infrastructure
A network design based on experience, skill, and quality to provide total campus network solutions of any scale; flexible fiber, copper, and wireless infrastructure—built to work together

Future-proof network
Powered fiber network that both connects and powers edge devices and takes the advantages of PoE past industry-standard length limits of 100 meters

Intelligent automation
Intelligent, automated management for increased end-to-end efficiency and security

Ubiquitous coverage
Seamless five-bar cellular coverage—both indoors and outdoors across the campus

Strong Wi-Fi
Reliable, high-performance Wi-Fi inside and outside buildings, with simple, secure access, which can be leveraged to deliver traffic for multiple IoT networks

Sustainable systems
Connected indoor and outdoor lighting, smart environmental controls, smart water and power management to drive sustainability on campus

Personalized experience
Location-based services and data analytics across campus to provide users with tailored services and experiences

Safe and secure
Integrated safety and security systems

Smart cities exist because ubiquitous broadband connectivity² exists. This connectivity fosters innovative solutions, drives the creation of new services for citizens and visitors, and makes smart cities vibrant socio-economic hubs that benefit both businesses and residents. International Telecommunication Union (ITU) research demonstrates that communities with access to ultrafast, all-fiber broadband achieve higher GDP per capita, create more jobs and foster more start-up businesses³. So much so that broadband infrastructure could now be viewed as an essential utility like gas, electricity, and water.

A typical smart city includes:

State-of-the-art infrastructure
City-wide broadband networks built using fiber, the primary connectivity technology that can support current and new applications and enable digital transformation initiatives in cities.

Future-proof networks
High-bandwidth, low-latency networks also support real-time data analysis and an unprecedented degree of interconnectivity and convergence. Broadband networks (wireline and wireless) also support edge device applications such as Internet of Things (IoT), cell towers, and CCTV cameras.

Enhanced mobility
Smart cities provide citizens and visitors with next-generation mobility services. This can include smart transportation, traffic and vehicle parking management, tolling, and smart meters that are all connected to the transport infrastructure in a smart city. Drivers, riders, and pedestrians are all connected too via their mobile devices. Smart cities are hubs of services like ride-hailing and bike-sharing in the sharing economy.

Safety
In a smart city, where millions of devices and objects are connected, public safety can be enhanced. For example, streetlight poles can be used to gather data for traffic management, and connected CCTV can be used to improve public safety. Fiber cabling connecting smart light poles to metro cells, Wi-Fi, HD cameras, 5G fixed wireless and IoT enables unprecedented data-gathering.

Digital everything everywhere
Digital transformation is essential for cities that want to evolve, compete, and thrive. As user demand for ubiquitous, low-latency access to applications and services increases, the level of IT resources being migrated to “smart” edge locations also increases. In these locations—such as commercial buildings, hospitals, factories, transportation hubs or other smart city spaces—fiber helps deliver exceptional user experience (UX) to high concentrations of people and devices. It’s crucial to boosting business competitiveness, scalability, and operational flexibility.

A convergent network is a unified infrastructure capable of supporting many diverse applications and devices—with future-ready flexibility to support emerging wired and wireless applications.

What does that mean for different smart spaces?

In smart cities, network convergence allows multiple communication modes on a single network—enabling convenience and flexibility that separate infrastructures can’t. New IoT applications use wireless connectivity and the fiber backbone underpinning them to transport large volumes of data from sensors, cameras, smartphones, and other edge devices around the city.

The demand for bandwidth in today’s data-powered world—particularly as 4G/LTE densification and 5G deployments continue—has driven the convergence of three types of networks to support different applications: multi-service organization, telephony networks and traditional cellular networks.

• A multi-service organization or legacy television network may use a high-bandwidth hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) network with a headend connected via router to data centers, and Wi-Fi connectivity in the home or office
• The legacy telephony network consists of a legacy copper network, fiber to the node or fiber to the home
• A traditional cellular network comprises macrocells—each independently powered and interconnected by a backhaul network of fiber, HFC, copper and microwave

Three things are needed to converge these networks:

Power
Power at every wireless access point is essential, and wireless access points can be activated via power over Ethernet (PoE). Further, each legacy telecommunications network has different powering considerations.

Backhaul
Data needs to travel from the edge access points to central data storage or processing centers. Traditionally, backhaul from cell sites is supported using either high-speed twisted pair, microwave or fiber links from radio locations to centralized equipment locations. Meanwhile, for small cells, concerns around tight timing and latency requirements are being addressed by standards organizations.

Site acquisition
Moving forward, wireless mobility for LTE densification and 5G will generally be deployed in high-capacity urban and suburban areas. Acquiring real estate for densifying wireless mobility networks in urban and suburban areas, to increase network capacity, remains a challenge. Small cells are typically deployed at heights between 20 feet and 40 feet in the air—making existing street furniture such as utility and lighting infrastructure ideal places to locate sites. However, mobile operators must deal with multiple stakeholders to gain access to this real estate so they may enhance capacity on their networks.

Just building more isn’t enough: We need to build smarter and conceal technology better. Using street furniture for concealment solutions should be factored into your city plan. Creative forms include:

• Streetlights
• Bus shelters
• Digital signage boards
• Charging stations
• Phone booths

vs.

 

Smart campuses are digitally connected areas that deliver an enhanced experience to campus users, drive operational efficiency, and provide services that all site users can access. A smart campus is enabled by taking various (formerly siloed) technological infrastructures and platforms and integrating them to create a converged network that is designed, deployed, and managed as a single entity.

Every campus is different, but all share a common challenge: how to power and connect a wide range of remote devices and ensure network dependability and physical safety across the campus. So, the convergent network must extend to all outdoor areas.

Digital solutions enable smart campus systems like HVAC, lighting, security cameras, fire alarms, electrical, building access control on top of voice and data communications, wired or wireless, and can integrate and control them intelligently and seamlessly from a single network.

According to IDC, there will be 55.7 billion IoT-connected devices worldwide by 2025, generating 73 zettabytes of data. All edge devices need power, and battery-operated IoT, while fast to deploy, is unsustainable. With even a 5- to 10-year lifespan, where would we put those billions of batteries when they run out and need to be replaced? PoE can connect and power all these devices via a single cable/connection.

Expected adoption growth of IoT devices

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Expected-adoption-growth-of-IoT-devices_fig1_332614728

With so many IoT-connected devices in smart spaces, the network must do more work. More connected devices means more data points than ever from which you can drive new digital services. That is good, but all these devices operating far from the data center need a powerful converged network to support them.

An IoT network, but particularly one in a smart campus or smart city, is designed to deliver high bandwidth and low latency to support vast swathes of data. But with more and more high-bandwidth applications emerging—such as autonomous vehicles or smart factories—network connectivity can sometimes not be up to the task.

Edge computing provides a solution. Traditional IoT networks collect and analyze data before sending it to a central location in the cloud for processing. Edge computing, however, enables on-device computing and analytics at the device’s location in your smart space. At the “edge” of the network. Edge computing in an IoT network delivers improved device and app performance, increased reliability and security, and reduced operating costs.

As technology continues to evolve, we are starting to see more focus on ubiquitous, interoperable networks. The type of technology used matters less; getting the right connectivity for the application is more important. And that can be converged to benefit from economies of scale.

Next generation networks converging 10G/6E/5G

Fiber-optic cabling is ideal for supporting smart city applications. Fiber has sufficient capacity to support all current networks, including internet, cable TV, telephone (including mobile), private business and data centers. Fiber is particularly suited to the fast-growing demand for IP streaming video, which will comprise 82 percent of all internet traffic by 2021⁴. As IoT devices increase, we may see fiber connectivity extended not only to homes but also to the curb or cabinet, the building or basement, and to neighborhood nodes. IDATE/DigiWorld forecasts that there will be 900 million fiber-to-the-X subscribers by the end of 2021⁵. Fiber now powers many everyday applications: online banking, working from home, online shopping, streaming audio and video, mobile phone and tablet usage, and eHealth applications all rely on fiber.

CommScope wireline connectivity solutions

• Data center solutions/mobile edge computing for low-latency applications
• Comprehensive fiber connectivity portfolio with single- and multimode solutions for backbone and intra-building connectivity
• Powered fiber solutions powering PoE edge devices at a distance and those requiring backup power capabilities
• Industry-leading copper solutions, connecting and powering edge nodes inside and outside of buildings (e.g., PoE intelligent lighting)
• Networking switching solutions
• Automated infrastructure management (AIM) for real-time monitoring of end-to-end connectivity, monitoring physical security, POE capacity and reducing downtime

The world now expects ubiquitous, always-on cellular coverage, both indoors and out, for both data and voice. Generation Z users have grown up with high-speed internet access and view connectivity almost as a basic human right. And business continuity and emergency service first responders rely on robust cellular connectivity to support them. However, most cellular calls originate indoors—somewhere the macro network can’t always reach effectively.

Wi-Fi plays a key role, but users also need cellular service for voice calling and for data access when they aren’t logged into a building’s Wi-Fi network. To augment a building’s Wi-Fi, enterprise spaces need to bring the cellular network indoors.

Wi-Fi cabling infrastructure has established guidelines (TIA TSB 162-A and ISO/IEC TR 24704) defining a grid network to place outlets for potential Wi-Fi access points, as shown in Chapter 3. Wi-Fi continues to evolve, with speeds reaching 10 Gbps, along with the advanced cabling and switches needed to support that speed.

These new standards for structured cabling—such as Category 6A copper, OM5 multimode and singlemode fiber-optic cable—also provide a point of convergence for the enterprise’s Wi-Fi and IBW (i.e., cellular) solutions.

CommScope wireless connectivity solutions

• Licensed spectrum—4G, LTE, 5G indoor and outdoor distributed antenna systems (DAS) and small cell solutions for cellular coverage
• Unlicensed spectrum—best-in-class in/outdoor private and public Wi-Fi solutions, including network monitoring and control and Cloudpath® security and policy management platform
• Private networks—CBRS solutions suitable for operational use cases
• Managed IoT solutions suite with converged infrastructure capabilities
• Smart pole and concealment solutions
• Mobile emergency response, rapid deployment solutions

Many in-building wireless (IBW) solutions, such as DAS, used to be considered viable only in huge venues. Today, however, new DAS solutions share the same IT infrastructure as Wi-Fi, which is already present in most enterprise sites. This evolution has driven down cost and complexity to the point where true “IT-convergent” IBW solutions are a viable option for enterprises.

IBW options: DAS and small cells

IBW solutions like DAS and small cells differ from Wi-Fi in that they operate on licensed frequency bands used by wireless operators in macro networks.

DAS is a technology- and operator-agnostic solution, meaning it can support different cellular signals like 2G, 3G and 4G LTE, and connect indoor callers to any wireless operator networks.

Small cells are generally specific to a particular operator. In terms of coverage, both provide an indoor-generated signal that offers the same user experience you would get standing outside near a cell tower.

DAS deployments can be managed by the enterprise, the building owner, the mobile network operator, or by a third-party “neutral host” company that specializes in deploying and operating DAS systems.

IBW has become increasingly attractive for enterprises. As the newest IT-convergent solutions help reduce costs, the benefits become even more apparent.

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The proliferation of IP-connected network devices in enterprises today has driven demand for faster data speeds and also the need for increased power.

Power over Ethernet (PoE) allows devices to share data and power connectivity over a single copper Ethernet cable—helping streamline infrastructure and simplify operations.

PoE has been around in the enterprise since 1999, but today we see a race taking place: between new, higher-wattage PoE devices and PoE standards capable of supporting them. These devices include common enterprise fixtures like desktop telephones, security cameras, video monitors and wireless access points.

The evolution of PoE technology mirrors the evolution of the devices it can support. From its precursor standard powering devices like telephones, to the first PoE standard in 2003, to the latest IEEE 802.3bt standard that supplies at least 71 watts over structured cabling. As the IT and OT worlds continue to merge for data sharing, so will the networks and the support behind them. For example, consider the evolution of LED lighting: from humble energy-saving beginnings to modern-day intelligent nodes performing occupancy sensing, temperature monitoring and conference room scheduling. Lighting platforms now carry rich sensor networks throughout buildings to support new use cases.

Deploying high-definition cameras, Wi-Fi hotspots or small cells for cellular networks can present major challenges.

 

A common problem is often to feed PoE devices at distances greater than 100 meters in a structured cabling network. To overcome this, you can deploy a system comprising hybrid cables containing copper wires and fiber-optic cores that feed power and data to PoE extender devices—thereby extending network coverage indoors or outdoors up to 3 kilometers. This is called “powered fiber” and it has become a key technology in enterprise and campus network deployments around the world.

Source: Massey Electric – deployment of powered fiber at the University of Tennessee

To learn more:

Automating for efficiency

More smart spaces means more devices and applications integrated into the same enterprise networks.

Automated infrastructure management (AIM) is a combined hardware/software solution that manages and enhances operational efficiency for each system it touches, either indoors or outdoors.

Remote monitoring and management (multiple sites)

Keeping track of every move, change and alert

AIM systems are especially good at keeping track of what is going on across the network environment. AIM monitors and records changes to device connections and automatically generates alarms to alert staff to any unauthorized or problematic events—typically by sending an email or text message to the appropriate personnel.

Answering the help desk call

AIM is vital in “help desk” applications that handle user incidents:

• AIM tracks the request process cycle from the opening of a trouble ticket to its resolution
• It also provides critical physical connectivity information to assist in troubleshooting

Controlling capital expenses

In addition to reducing operational expenses, deferring capital expenditures for as long as possible is a priority for enterprises. Because AIM identifies and tracks the physical location of each networked device, it can also reveal underutilized resources that might otherwise have been missed—preventing unnecessary expenditure on additional resources.

AIM and power over Ethernet (remote powering)

AIM can help with assignment of circuits to reduce heat generation and improve heat dissipation

• Cables should be linked to bundles to facilitate accurate record-keeping of remote powering installation configurations
• The intent is to keep track of the heat generation within a cable bundle and avoid overheating of any cables in the bundle
• AIM systems can track cable bundle sizes and total power carried by each bundle to optimize assignment of circuits for remote power delivery
• Automatically tracks cable bundles and issues alerts when numbers of cables exceed threshold
• Automatically detects and tracks maximum power source connected to each cable

Learn more: Automated infrastructure management: the Fact File

As a rule, people do not like to see public landscapes and views spoiled by cellular antennas. They are often considered eyesores and intrusive.

Metro Cell solutions provide a different approach that is out of sight and out of mind. They come in a wide variety of configurations, styles, and specifications, and offer exceptional performance, thermal compliance and zoning aesthetics. Metro Cells are integrated, customized solutions borne of decades of network design and engineering expertise—and take the form of a compact, powerful, flexible solution that delivers coverage and capacity in all kinds of urban environments.

CommScope understands that every deployment is unique to the operator’s needs, zoning regulations, physical space limitations and overall appearance. With that in mind, we offer a complete ecosystem of Metro Cell solutions that can be deployed virtually anywhere, no matter how small the space or how tight the zoning regulations.

However, connected smart poles can offer much more than just enhanced cellular coverage

Smart Pole

CommScope provides a full suite of outdoor small cell solutions and accessories, including base station antennas, RF transmission systems and fiber to poles, concealment solutions and more.

We also offer a wide range of concealment options that integrate advanced technology into aesthetic packages to perfectly complement urban streetscapes and street furniture.