Customer Spotlight! Meet RAN WIRELESS and Their Amazing 3D Models

Warning: This blog contains 3D models that may cause you to whoop and holler.

There are a few capabilities that iBwave is well known for in the market, but certainly, one of the most stand-out capabilities is the 3D modeling that comes with the iBwave wireless network design software. And while we can all agree that the 3D models are awesome to look at, the real value behind why our customers use this feature for their network designs is because of the level of prediction accuracy it allows them to pass onto their customers and the network end users – and as a result, the time and cost savings that comes along with it. Plus yes, the 3D models certainly are a marketing feature for any of our customers in the bidding process, enabling them with a powerful and visual way display exactly how the network they’ve designed will perform in customer’s venue.

One of these customers is RAN Wireless Pvt – an iBwave customer for many years now, RAN Wireless relies on their 3D modeling expertise and the accurate prediction results it brings to win new customers and build strong relationships with their existing ones.

In the words of RAN Wireless CEO, Faisal Khan, “realistic modeling leads to realistic designs”.

It’s a sentiment we’ve heard many times from our customers, and one of the driving forces behind the implementation of our 3D modeling capabilities many years ago.

Here’s a short demo reel of some impressive models they have done ?

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I sat down and talked with the founder of RAN Wireless, Faisal Khan, a bit ago to learn more about them as a company and to understand more what goes into their modeling, and what the most significant benefits are that they see are as a result of their efforts.

Here’s what he had to say.

What iBwave products do you currently use?

iBwave Design and iBwave Wi-Fi.

What types of projects does RAN Wireless use iBwave for?

We’ve done over 300 designs using iBwave including DAS, Small Cells and Wi-Fi network design projects. We specialize in stadiums, tunnels and metro stations but have done all types of designs including hospitals, hotels, apartments, campuses, convention centers – and many more.

What is your process for modeling? How long does a model typically take you?

We use elevation plans, Sketchup and Google Earth to understand the layers, and visualize the venue, and then proceed with modeling the venue in iBwave itself. We spend the time on this part of the project because an accurate model will lead to accurate results – and for us, the more accurate the prediction results, the less time we spend tweaking or troubleshooting the design post-installation.

How long would one of your stadium designs take to model?

This takes us about two weeks to model – but time spent here saves any time we have to spend post-installation. In fact, it is one of the main reasons our customers choose us – the accuracy with which we can design their networks. If a venue is modelled incorrectly, predictions will be incorrect – we’ve seen it.

Do you model all venues with such detail? Or is it just the larger projects like stadiums?

All of our projects are done to the same level of detail and accuracy.

What is the value of modeling to such detail for you?

As a smaller business, we need to differentiate ourselves and the #1 one we do that is with quality. I always say that for us it is all about quality – it’s something we are never willing to compromise on, and it’s something we are very well known for and the reason our customers stay with us. By modeling the venues we are designing in the most realistic way we can deliver the highest quality of network to our customers. What makes us different to others is iBwave and how we use it.

We often hear that modeling takes so long to do, can you talk about why it’s so important to you and your team to take the time to do it in such a detailed and realistic way?

Every design, in particular for more complex venues like stadiums, tunnels, subways, racetracks, goes through a cycle of approvals and many test walks to check the feasibility of the design. Accurate modeling of the venue and the design itself reduces the time to do these validation walks significantly when it comes to checking the feasibility of component locations.

What about when it comes to prediction accuracy? How much accuracy are you able to achieve with such detailed modeling?

Our prediction accuracy is very high because of the level of effort we put into modeling – this gets reflected in the KPI’s post-installation as we are on average about 95% accurate if we get all the modeling information we need – that 5% margin of error is simply because with 2D drawings it’s very hard to understand some of the more complex structures. For us, this level of prediction accuracy means there is very little troubleshooting to be done once the network is installed, and we don’t have to worry about major issues like moving components, re-routing cables, etc after installation. And in the carrier world, it’s also very difficult to go back to them o get design changes approved once it’s already approved – it can lead to large and costly time delays. So while we do spend more time up front modeling, all in all, it has led to faster overall project cycle timelines.

What is the most valuable thing about iBwave to you?

The whole software is valuable to us, we love the software – and we also love the support that comes with it.

And we appreciate you RAN Wireless! Thanks for taking the time to chat with us!

Wirelessly yours,

Kelly

Interested in being featured in our Customer Spotlight blog series? Send me an email at kelly.burroughs@ibwave.com and let’s chat!

The Largest Database in the Wireless Industry Today

iBwave’s Components Database is the Largest Database in the Wireless Industry Today

With over 28,000 components and materials and growing daily.

Those who design wireless networks with iBwave know that it’s pure gold to be able to easily find the parts and materials you need from the online database of components, where the majority of wireless network components that exist, available there. But the value of the database is not only about the number of components and the simplicity of using them within the network designs – there is more to its glory!

The iBwave Components Database also allows you to create your own parts and materials, customize existing ones, limit parts availability to approved ones only, and since it exists separate from the design software – is updated regularly as new parts are available, or as our customers add new parts are added via our support team.

Sounds good, eh? Let’s go through all the above mentioned in a bit more detail.

How do we keep the database up-to-date?

The database of components is updated on a regular basis when either one of two things happens:

an OEM issues a new part and lets us know to add it to the database
a customer calls our customer support team and asks us to add a particular part they need

Because the updating of the database is not dependent on the update of the software itself, we can update the database on an on-going and on-demand basis – resulting in one of the most extensive and fastest growing databases of components out there.

Who are the OEMs in our database?

Given the large number of parts we have – Access Points, Routers, Switches, DAS Antennas, Small Cells, Cabling, etc. – it would be too long of a list to name them all here! For the sake of giving a general picture, among the OEMs with the majority of parts, you find Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia, Aruba, Ruckus, Extreme Networks, Huawei Technologies, Xirrus, AccelTex, Tessco Technologies, among many others large and small.

How are the parts added?

To update our database with the component specifications we use VEX files. The manufacturer either produces them or our customer support designs those upon a manufacturers’ request. The VEX file is uploaded to our system and shared with all iBwave Components Database users through the cloud.

Note! VEX is not an abbreviation or acronym; it does not stand for anything. It is a proprietary, iBwave specific file format we use to import or export parts into/from the iBwave Database Editor in iBwave software.

The scale of our database is vast. In this graphic, you can see an approximate split onto some of the most common types of components, like antennas, amplifiers, cables, controllers, routers, switches, adapters, attenuators & access points. ↓

The choice is big and, yes, you can find almost anything you need directly in the database search. But what if you need something that is not there? As the network reliability depends significantly on the accuracy of the environment and components prediction, there will probably be moments when you need to adjust things. At iBwave we understand that very well, so we made it easy for you to modify parts and materials or even add your own.

Adding your own parts and materials or modify the existing ones

It only takes you a few steps to add, modify or duplicate custom parts you need for your design.

[ Read: Step-by-Step Guide to Editing iBwave Components for Your Network Design » ]

The cherry on top is that once you have that exact network part that you need, you can make it a default for your feature designs and not have to worry about searching for it each time.

The tweaked parts and materials we’ll be seen in your designs instantly, but won’t be shared on our online Components Database automatically. If you want to share the parts you have created with the rest of the database, you would need to reach out to us and we’ll gladly pre-approve and upload the VEX file online for you.

Getting in touch with our support is super easy! Here is how you can do it:

Call our support in Americas | Europe | Middle East | Asia & Pacific

Chat right from your software if you are using iBwave Design

Use customer support chat on the My .iBwave portal

Drop a line to support@ibwave.com

Limiting Available Parts to Approved Parts Only

While the database itself is over 29,000 parts, for companies who only design with specific vendor components, companies can limit what parts their design teams use for their projects by marking that part as an ‘Approved’ one. This way, the view of available parts to design with can be filtered to only those pre-approved parts. For many of our customers, this decreases the risk of using the incorrect parts of a project and simplifies the overall design phase.

What type of information can be set for parts and materials?

Let’s take a look at a specific material, like concrete and a part, like an antenna to see what kind of information is kept about each part and what can be edited to fit your project purposes.

Material – Concrete

An easy way to see all types of concrete (or any other type of part) we have in the database is to filter out by using the Category field. In this case, we filter Category: Material > Subcategory: Concrete in the iBwave Database Editor.

Then, you can go into the specific material you can change various details of the material in > Properties. Among many properties, you can tweak the electrical and mechanical assets, choose the color and the style of the material trace on the floor plan.

You can as well choose the texture and view your material in 3D.

Also, view the attenuation value for each band.

[ Read: Exploring Attenuation Across Different Materials & Frequency Bands » ]

Component – Access Point

Applying a different filter, you can narrow down the list of parts to just Access Points. Let’s take, for instance, Aerohive access point. Go to Category: Signal Source> Subcategory: Access Point > Manufacturer: Aerohive.

In the properties of the Access Point, you can edit the cost, construction cost, part ID and inventory number which eventually will help you to generate an accurate bill of materials and cost details report for the project.

For antennas, you can also view the 3D antenna pattern from within the details of the component.

What does the value of database come down to?

Accurate prediction results
An accurate bill of materials and an accurate cost details report

Accurate Prediction Results

Even the smallest of modeling errors can lead to a large RF cost and performance issues, and that includes using an incorrect material. With iBwave’s extensive database of materials, the risk of inaccurate prediction results are significantly minimized. We’ve even got snow!

[ Read: the Blog on How Poor Modeling Can Impact RF Performance and Cost » ]

Accurate Bill of Materials and Cost Details Reports

With your venue modeled and network designed from the database of components, you are now set to produce a bill of materials to hand over to your customer. As scary as it sounds, this part is going to be a breeze when using iBwave, and you have two options: an Equipment List with no costs, or Costing Report that includes the total estimated cost of your equipment. Moreover, perhaps the best part for those you, who are used to taking that information and placing it into another format? With iBwave you can choose to export your reports in many different formats including PDF, XPS, PowerPoint, HTML, Excel, Docx, JPEG, SVG, XML and more.

There we go, now you know about all the useful things the iBwave Components Database can bring you, including limiting available parts for your team, accurate prediction results ensured by a vast choice of materials and accurate bill of materials and costing report system.

Let us know if there are any other topics you’d like to be cover in this blog!

Exploring Attenuation Across Materials & the 2.4GHZ / 5GHZ Bands

A Twitter post popped up in my news feed last week showing a graph of the attenuation values for different types of glass – mainly the distinction between a regular glass window and a low emissions (Low E) window. It was showing that Low E windows have a much higher attenuation value than regular windows—a fact that could impact prediction of a network significantly if the incorrect type of window is selected during modeling.

Turns out, it’s not so uncommon when looking across the different types of materials in ‘material families’ like glass, concrete, plaster, and wood – especially the heavier varieties. While looking into these different materials, I also started to see a trend amongst the ‘heavier’ types of materials like concrete—that attenuation values can even be different within the same material when comparing signal loss for 2.4GHz vs. 5GHz bands.

2.4GHz Transmission Loss Value for 40 Yr Old Concrete ?

5GHz Transmission Loss Value for 40 Yr Old Concrete ?

For many WLAN designs, this may not be such an issue because attenuation is often measured on-site using an AP on a stick – but what about for Greenfield buildings? Or when just providing a quote? Or doing a strictly predictive design? In these cases, there may be no walls to get the on-site readings or going on-site may just not be a possibility at that point in the project.

In this blog I look at two things:

The difference in attenuation across the 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ bands for the same material, and the potential impact on prediction accuracy
The difference in attenuation values for materials in the same family, and the effect of selecting the wrong material when modeling.

Attenuation: Differences Between 2.4GHz & 5GHz Bands

As mentioned above, as I was looking at attenuation values through different types of materials I realized that there are quite a few ‘heavy’ materials that have significantly different attenuation values for the 2.4GHZ and 5GHz bands.

Some examples of significant and not so significant differences:

	2.4GHz (dBm)	5GHz (dBm)
Concrete – Heavy	22.792	44.769
Lime Brick	4.295	7.799
Dry Wall Partition	5.388	10.114
Chip Board	0.463	0.838

As it’s well known from theory and practice of radio propagation, as frequency increases, path loss increases. With materials, very similar thing happens – as frequency increases from 2.4GHz band to 5 GHz band, transmission loss will also increase. For example, using the concrete heavy example in the table above and imagine there is a concrete heavy wall between the AP and the client. At 2.4 GHz, the transmission loss is ~23 dB- meaning that as the signal goes through the wall it is decreasing by that amount of attenuation. Now if the operating frequency is changed to 5 GHz, the transmission loss is going to be higher because the frequency is higher – so in this case it goes to ~45 dB. This is most often the case with heavier materials, and although a difference can be seen in lighter materials, it would not have as much potential impact on prediction.

To illustrate this, I ran a prediction just showing the Free Space Path Loss for a single AP on 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. In it the results show:

2.4GHz: -33.46
5GHz: -28.9

So with no obstruction, there is about a 4.57 dB difference in attenuation between the two bands.

What’s the Potential Impact?

Next I wanted to look at what happens when there is an obstruction (in this case a concrete wall) and the potential impact on prediction results in this case.

Adding a ‘Concrete-Heavy’ wall with the following attenuation values, I re-ran the signal strength heatmaps.

2.4GHz : ~23 dBm
5GHz : ~44 dBm

And got these results:

2.4GHz: -55.42 dBm
5GHz: – -81.86 dBm

To compare what would happen if I just used one attenuation value, I created a custom material by duplicating the ‘Concrete-Heavy” and assigning it just one attenuation value of ~33 dBM (the average of the values for 2.4GHz & 5GHz above).

The results for that were:

2.4GHz: –65.53 dBm
5GHz: –70.09 dBm

From results (summarized in the table belowe), it is seen that when we apply two values – one for 2.4Ghz and one for 5GHz bands (23 dB and 44 dB), the difference in prediction between the two bands is significant. This difference is as expected because the heavy materials would have more attenuations in high frequency bands. However, when we apply only one value (33 dB) for the material that represents both bands, it’s noticed that the difference between the two bands is not significant (which it should be).

Different Attenuation Values Across the Same Family of Materials

Next let’s look at the different attenuation values found within familes of the same materials.

Staying focused on materials commonly used when modeling a venue, a couple of ‘material families’ started to stand out to me when looking at the range of attenuation values across the different types: Glass, Concrete, and Wood.

Glass

In the iBwave database of components, there are several different types of glass listed for used during modeling:

Electronic Equipment Glass
German Mirror Glass
Glass from Jena
Glass Window
Low E Glass
White Ceramic

Plotting their attenuation values from lowest to high, for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, you get something that looks like this ?

Concrete

Perhaps one of the most common modeling materials is concrete – but when you start to look across the different types of concrete, including the age of the concrete, the attenuation values do not always look the same.

In our database, we list several types of concrete, here are a few that I looked at:

Cement
Concrete – 40 Years Old
Concrete – Double Heavy
Concrete – Dry without Steel
Concrete – Dry Wall
Concrete – Heavy
Concrete – Medium
Concrete – Light
Concrete – White Wall
Foam Concrete

That’s a lot of concretes to choose from when modeling – and when you look the range of attenuation values across them all, you can start to see why it would be important to model with the right concrete. ?

Plaster

In the database of materials, here are the different types of plaster you can choose when modeling the venue.

Drywall
Sheetrock (Heavy)
Sheetrock (Light)
Plaster Board / Ceiling Tile

And here’s what the different attenuation values look like compared to one another.

The Impact on Prediction

With that information, I started to wonder what the impact on prediction accuracy could be if a designer selected, say regular glass for a window when really it should be a low emissions glass often used now for newer buildings. Or what would happen if the venue was modeled with regular Concrete vs. older concrete for an older building – same with wood, what happens if the chipboard is used instead of particle board?

Let’s look at each of those scenarios and see what the potential impact on prediction accuracy could be.

Glass vs. Low E Glass

Using the floor of a regular, small, office space, I first ran prediction using the regular Glass for the windows and then replaced it with Low E glass to see what impact it would have on prediction were the wrong type of glass selected during modeling.

Results

	Glass Window (dBm)	Low E Glass (dBm)	Delta (dB)
2.4GHz	-38.50	-67.91	29.41
5GHz	-43.49	-72.85	29.36

Visual of the Different Signal Strength Heatmap Results

You can see that in this case, using regular windows to model and design with when the windows are Low E windows, could be a very costly mistake – in both network performance, and the cost to troubleshoot it post-installation.

Heavy Concrete vs. Light Concrete

Next, I ran the same test, this time using two types of concretes, this time less extreme in attenuation differences: heavy concrete vs. light concrete.

	Light Concrete (dBm)	Heavy Concrete (dBm)	Delta (dB)
2.4GHz	-40.32	-55.26	14.94
5GHz	-53.41	-81.97	28.56

Visual of the Different Signal Strength Heatmap Results

Plaster

And last but not least, I tested the same scenario selecting Dry Wall vs. Sheetrock (Light) to see what the potential impact on prediction might be – and while not as drastic a difference in this example, a difference can still be noticed, more so on the 5GHz band.

	Dry Wall (dBm)	Sheetrock (Light) (dBm)	Delta (dB)
2.4GHz	-41.45	-36.95	4.5
5GHz	-51.18	-42.24	8.94

Visual of the Different Signal Strength Heatmap Results

In Conclusion…

It was fun to dive into the attenuation values a bit more and how they can potentially impact the network prediction results of a network design. And in fact, it is part of the conversation many of our customers talk to us about when it comes to modeling accuracy – the more accurate the modeling is, including materials and attenuation values, the more accurate the design and prediction results will be. One of our customer CTS, discussed this point among a few others in a previous blog post about how modeling errors can lead to RF performance and cost issues.

Read: How Poor Modeling Can Impact RF Performance and Costs

If you made it this far, I hope you found it interesting – let me know if you have any comments or questions!

Wirelessly yours,

Kelly