FlexWave™ Prism Infrastructure Connects Visitors and

Employees on Singapore’s Sentosa Island

The newest resort property in Singapore is the 120-acre Resorts World at

Sentosa. Opened on February 14, 2010, the island property includes six
theme hotels, a Universal Studios theme park, the Marine Life Park, the
Maritime Experiential Museum, and the Equarius Water Park.
With an expected 35,000 visitors per day, one key technology challenge
on Sentosa Island was to provide clear and ubiquitous mobile coverage.
Sentosa is located a mile offshore from Singapore, and cell towers in
Singapore could deliver signals to the outdoor areas of the island, but
CASE STUDY

there was inadequate indoor wireless coverage and, more importantly,

insufficient capacity to serve the crowds of visitors and employees.
NCS, a leading IT and communications engineering service provider in
the Asia-Pacific region, was engaged by Singapore mobile operators M1,
SingTel Mobile, StarHub Mobile and GRID Communications to oversee
the project on enabling seamless wireless connectivity. NCS has a proven
track record of providing total turnkey solutions for mobile operators/
building owners to facilitate in-building and tunnel coverage for GSM,
2G and 3G wireless services.
“We needed to provide strong signals and high network capacity inside
the resort’s buildings for both 2G and 3G wireless frequencies,” said
Ng Ah Seng, project manager for NCS. “We also needed to provide
adequate capacity for outdoor crowds so that anyone could make a call,
send a text, or use 3G Internet or e-mail services.”
To meet this challenge, NCS selected a distributed antenna system
(DAS). The project involved having the local mobile operators install
base stations on the island, and then using a distributed antenna system
(DAS) to distribute the signals from those base stations to the properties
throughout the resort.
 “There are several types of DAS products for
applications such as this, but only one met all of
the project’s goals,” says Seng. “The DAS had to
be relatively unobtrusive and not interfere with
the interior or exterior décor of the properties, and
it had to support four different service providers
within a single set of antennas.”
NCS selected the FlexWave™ Prism from ADC.
The Prism system can handle up to four different
wireless frequencies in a single remote antenna, so
this approach minimized the number of antennas
that were needed. In addition, the antennas
covered relatively large areas (multiple floors of
a hotel, for example), so this also reduced the
number of antennas needed. (Other systems
would have used small, ceiling-mounted antennas
and might have needed individual sets of antennas
for each frequency, so these would have required
hundreds of units.)
Another reason for the choice of FlexWave Prism
is that the antennas could be mounted on walls,
poles, or sides of buildings to meet the specific
coverage and capacity needs of each outdoor area
in the resort. Inside the hotels, the Prism systems
were mounted inside wiring closets so as to be
invisible to visitors and employees.
“Wireless service is something that people expect,
and the only reaction one gets to it is if it doesn’t
work,” says Seng. “At Resort World at Sentosa,
the DAS system created a strong, high-quality,
high-capacity wireless service infrastructure
throughout the massive integrated resort so the
service worked seamlessly as expected.”
Challenges
• Insufficient wireless capacity and in-building
coverage on resort island
• Resort visitors using multiple mobile
operators devices
• Deployment of a solution had to be fast
and unobtrusive
Solutions
• FlexWave Prism covered 120 acres and inside
hotels and other buildings
• Multi-operator system supports all four major
mobile operators in Singapore
• Small remote antennas blend in with
resort décor

The system involved deploying 46 remote

antenna units inside buildings, and placing
additional roof-mounted antennas to
deliver outdoor coverage and capacity. The
antenna units were connected via fiber
optic cabling to host units located in the
Case Study

basement levels of the resort’s parking

structures, which is also where the base
stations were located.
With this system in place, guests and
employees were able to use their mobile
voice, text, and data services normally on
opening day, and have had continuous
service ever since then.
Wall-mounted Prism Host Units
Prism Remote rack-mounted in cabinets.

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