Digital Indoor System Network at the Largest Airport in the World

Background

Astride Europe and Asia, Istanbul has always been one of the world’s most-important transportation hubs. When completed, the Istanbul New Airport will cover an area of 1,500,000 square meters. Its annual passenger traffic is expected to reach 150 million, making it the world’s largest airport and an icon of national pride for Turkey. The airport features high traffic and user experience requirements, along with a large number of high-value international roaming subscribers.

Challenges

In the early stage of the airport’s construction, Turkcell required an indoor network that would meet the current users’ high-speed requirements. Turkcell also needed an indoor network that would be available for 5G evolution in the future. In the meantime, the construction period of the mobile network in the airport was short. Thus, fast delivery became an important requirement of the project.

Solution

Based on such requirements, Turkcell chose Huawei’s LampSite Sharing Solution to deploy a 4.5G network at the airport. Turkcell served as the host operator and shared the network with two other local operators. Easy to deploy, the LampSite Sharing Solution provides huge capacity with 4T4R and supports multi-mode, multi-band applications. The solution also supports E2E visualized O&M, and co-construction and sharing among operators. These features give it unique strength to tangibly improve coverage and eliminate coverage holes in airports. This helps provide ubiquitous MBB experience to end-users. Once 5G spectrum is provisioned, the 5G network can be deployed without changing the positions of pRRUs or redeploying cables.

During the 2018 Mobile Broadband Forum, Turkcell and Huawei jointly announced the commercial launch of the 5G-oriented Digital Indoor System (DIS) in the Istanbul New Airport. The LampSite Sharing Solution had been deployed, which will provide indoor high-speed and deep coverage for users. The airport is now the world’s largest airport with DIS deployment and is ready for 5G.

Benefits

Mr. Gediz Sezgin, CTO of Turkcell, commented, “Digitalization is a company strategy of Turkcell. Based on this, we provide users with the best experience and a great variety of services. The airport is a window into a city. It represents the image of Istanbul and that of Turkcell. I am very glad to see the commercial launch of full-digital indoor coverage at the airport. We offer up to 1 Gbit/s speed. Meanwhile, we also provide 100 percent indoor 4T4R coverage in densely populated areas such as check-in counters, departure lounges, and tax-free shops, bringing world’s leading indoor coverage experience to our subscribers.”

Mr. Ritchie Peng, President of Huawei Small Cell Product Line, said: “Representing the image of cities, airports need to accommodate high traffic volume and high user experience. The LampSite Sharing Solution is the perfect answer in this regard. Huawei’s LampSite Solution has been successfully deployed in many airports around the world. We are glad to support Turkcell in building the Istanbul New Airport and complete network commercial launch as scheduled. We will continue to cooperate with Turkcell in communications technology innovation, helping Turkcell accelerate the digitalization process across Turkey.”