Meet iBwave Public Safety

While we have always been in the business of providing software to design Public Safety networks, it’s always been within the context of using our iBwave Design software – you know, the one that designs every wireless network under the sun.

But over the last couple of years, we started to notice an increase in interest in the design of public safety networks, and all you have to do is think about large emergency situations, think about the amount of data traffic – videos, voice, audio, and otherwise – flowing through the public safety networks between all first responder teams, and see why they are so important.

Simply put, without a well-designed public safety network, it can be extremely difficult for first responders to communicate vital information to and from each other. And when the ability to communicate in an emergency situation is compromised, so are people’s lives.

So Why Use this Software to Design your Public Safety Networks?

Some of you already familiar with iBwave might be wondering what’s different about this particular software – and the answer is pretty simple: it is targeted at those who are only designing public safety networks. And while you can still design public safety networks using iBwave Design, and all features in this software will be in that one – for those who only design public safety networks, this would be the best software for them to use.

Let’s talk about the specific public safety features we’ve added into this software, as well as iBwave Design.

Critical/General Zone Identification

In public safety certain guidelines need to be adhered to – in particular, you need to have -95dBM in 90% of ‘General’ area, and ‘Critical’ areas need to be -95 dBM as well, but 99%. With the new iBwave Public Safety software, you can identify both the ‘General and ‘Critical’ zones within your design and set the different compliance requirements for each area.

So for example, in the below – the ‘General’ area has been defined as well as select ‘Critical’ areas (equipment room, lobby, emergency exit, etc). Once that is done, you can right click on the area and select ‘Compliance Area Properties’ and then set your requirements for each area : General -95 dBm, 95% and Critical -95dBm, 99%. Then when you run your prediction, your compliance in each of the areas will show.

Here’s a short video of setting the different areas with different requirements. To do it you just select either one area, or all the same areas, right click and set up the compliance criteria. Then when you run your prediction, you will see the compliance labels telling you how they will perform.

Donor Isolation

A common challenge is feedback because you don’t have enough isolation between your donor and serving antennas – the donor antenna often picks up the signal of its own DAS network almost as clearly as the macro signal, which causes a feedback loop and renders the network unusable. A big problem when designing public safety networks.

To know things will work as they need to, guidelines are in place that stipulate you need -20 dB of isolation between donor and server antennas. To help with this, we’ve added this new ‘Donor Isolation’ feature which will calculate and show you the isolation dB and whether it meets the criteria of -20.

Here’s a short video showing you this. In it, I just go over to the predictions area and select ‘Donor Isolation’ – from there I can validate my design, and it will give me a result. As you can see the result shows -17.41 dB, which does not meet the -20 dB guideline and therefore it’s a fail. In this case, you would know you would need to adjust your design, and re-validate until you get a pass. Unfortunately, the feature to print a smiley face sticker out when successful didn’t make it into this version.

What’s Next for iBwave Public Safety?

The new iBwave Public Safety software is a great start, but it’s just that – only the start of what we intend to be a long roadtrip along the public safety highway. We’ve got a roadmap, we’ve got a development team, and we’ve got great customers to give us the right input to keep improving.

Interested in Learning More?

You can read all about iBwave Public Safety by heading over to the product page, found here. From there you can take a look at the datasheet, watch a demo video of it in action, and reach out to our team with any specific questions you may have.

Wirelessly yours,

Kelly

New Feature! Quick Connection Tool

In the newest release of iBwave Wi-Fi a new feature was introduced called the ‘Quick Connection Tool’. And if you often do the cabling in your designs, this is a feature you’re going to appreciate.

What does it do?

It completely automates the cabling of your sources to your APs, enabling you to cable your designs in just seconds whereas before it could take up to an hour or more, depending on the size and complexity of the venue you are working with. For many of our customers, this is a new feature that offers big time savings.

Here’s how it works.

Using the example floor plan of an office space, we can see the placement of the source (switch), the access points, and cable trays (purple lines) on the floor plan.

Note: quick connection tool can be used with or without the cable route defined already, in this case I have placed cable trays which the tool will use to automatically route the cables.

From here, it’s quite simple – simply click on the ‘Quick Connect Tool’ icon from the menu, which presents you with this screen:

Next, you need to do a few things to tell the tool how to connect.

Select your source (in this case the switch)
Select the APs to connect to
Select the cable trays through which the cables should connect (optional)
Select the cable from the smart list of acceptable cables (i.e the software will suggest cables based on your source/APs)

Here is what it looks like…

And voila, you now have your sources/destinations connected – from here you can simply run a Bill of Materials or Cost Details to get a report/estimate of your network design parts.

R9 Is Here! Read What’s New in iBwave Wi-Fi and iBwave Design

Over the last many months, we’ve been hard at work here at iBwave getting the next release of our various in-building wireless network design solutions ready to go. And we are delirious with excitement to let our customers, and the rest of the world, know that the newest release of our solutions are here.

World, meet iBwave R9!

Packed with many new features across all our product lines, this release truly is one by our users, for our users.

Let’s go through some of the key new features, and why we’ve implemented them.

New User Interface for iBwave Design, User Interface Tweaks for iBwave Wi-Fi

iBwave Design now has an all-new user interface aimed at helping to make the day-to-day use of the software faster and more intuitive for our users, and to ultimately accelerate the design phase of the many wireless network projects our software is used for. With a new ‘ribbon’ styled menu that is structured into the phases of a network design project, larger and more intuitive icons, as well as the ability to build a personalized ribbon with all your favourite features. iBwave Wi-Fi has had a new user interface for awhile now but with this release we’ve taken some feedback from our users and made some additional tweaks to it, including moving the in-software ‘Chat Support’ to a more accessible place from the main ‘Help’ menu, and adding the capability to define your own personalized ‘ribbon’ that allows you to create your own toolbar with your most-used icons.

iBwave R9 is a HIGH step forward! From being a part of the Beta program, I can definitely say that this release is ALL about the end user! Every step of the way, user feedback has been received and incorporated into the software. The updated/improved GUI is easy to work with and well thought out! The ability to build a “Custom Ribbon” is a GREAT feature as well!
— Russ Edmondson, Goodman Networks

Automatic Cable Routing

While it’s always been possible to route cabling in both iBwave Design and iBwave Wi-Fi and get automatic cable length estimates, we’ve now taken our cabling automation to the next level with the ability to model cable trays and risers, and then have the software automatically ‘snap’ the cabling to the route. This is a feature widely requested by our users and is estimated to save hours of time off of the design time for a project – plus with this new feature, you can even be more sure that the automatically generated Bill of Materials and Costing Report is extremely accurate.

Smart Antenna Contouring

This is one of my personal favourite new features! New in both iBwave Wi-Fi and iBwave Design is ‘smart antenna contouring’ which essentially means that you can now view live signal strength prediction results as you are placing access points in your design. And beyond just looking really cool, this can be a big time saver when working on a project as it can significantly reduce the number of times you have to run your prediction engine in order to view how the network will perform.

How does it work?

The smart antenna contouring feature works with our ‘Fast Ray Tracing’ prediction algorithm, which is one of three prediction algorithm choices available in iBwave Wi-Fi (the other two are COST231 and VPLE). Why fast ray tracing? This particular algorithm, unlike the other two, takes into account all signal paths from a radio: direct path, reflected path, and diffracted paths – which essentially means that it gives you more accurate prediction of how your network will perform. In combination with the smart antenna contouring you can be sure that you are getting a very accurate idea of how the signal strength of each AP that you place will perform while you are actually doing the design. I think that’s pretty great.

Here is a quick look at what this looks like (also featuring our new multi-radio AP feature!)

iBwave’s 3D predictive modeling and new smart antenna contouring with fast ray tracing takes Wi-Fi design tools to a whole new level.– Alan Blake, CWNE

Prediction Zone Exclusion

Ever wish you could exclude a particular area of a venue from prediction calculations because you know that no coverage is needed in that particular area? This new feature helps network designers using iBwave Wi-Fi or iBwave Design to designate areas not to be included in prediction calculations. What does that help achieve? By excluding these zones not intended to receive coverage, the KPI Compliancy report will now be more accurate and your output maps more meaningful.

Multi-Radio Antennas

With capacity planning critical to successfully designing high-performing Wi-Fi networks in high-density venues, it’s key for our users to be able to optimize capacity planning during the design phase of implementing a network so both equipment and troubleshooting costs are minimized. With this in mind, we’re always looking at what features can help our users to do this – last year we came out with advanced capacity planning capabilities, and now starting with this release we support design using multi-radio access points – or software selectable radios as some put it.

Why this feature?

Because today in order to design using multi-radio AP (for example with a Dual 5GHz radio), designers usually resort to overlaying multiple single radio APs on top of each other to ensure that the capacity planning requirements are met. Using this approach leads to an inaccurate bill of materials and cost estimates, and can lead to potential prediction issues. With the ability to now use these multi-radio APs in the design, prediction will be more accurate to reality and the Bill of Materials and Cost Details report will be much more accurate which benefits both the designer and their customer.

“The ability to design and visualize Wi-Fi networks in 3-D is a unique iBwave feature that I have come to rely on for access point placement and troubleshooting. The granularity iBwave provides is exceptional, especially with the new capability to design with multi-radio APs that are unique to Riverbed Xirrus for supporting high density Wi-Fi networks. Add to that the mobile tools and the variety of reports you can generate makes iBwave an invaluable tool for Wi-Fi deployment.” — Ty Parker, Director Solutions Engineering for Riverbed, CWNE #173

In today’s high density Wi-Fi environments, airtime is a precious commodity that is best served by the abundance of available channels in 5 GHz. Access points with dual 5 GHz radios are best suited to meet airtime and capacity needs. A software selectable radio also offers the benefit of 2.4 GHz connectivity when needed. iBwave’s multi-radio feature assists any WLAN professional with dual 5 GHz WLAN designs in addition to legacy 2.4/5GHz WLANs designs.” — Dave Coleman, Aerohive, CWNE #4

And last but not least, I will just leave this quote here from Ronald Van Kleunen, CWNE and Owner of Globeron (wireless training):

From a vendor neutral perspective, iBwave Wi-Fi (PC Version) is probably the most advanced solution in the market. With full support to integrate Wi-Fi APs with detailed backhaul cabling , network infrastructures and budgeting, 3D venue modeling and network visualizations, the most advanced RF calculations for prediction accuracy, and cloud integration to simplify the interaction between Wi-Fi architects, project managers and site surveyors.

How do you see all these great new features in action?

Good question, and you have a few options. We’re holding a few demo webinars of the new features the week of October 11th and 18th.

Already have iBwave Wi-Fi or iBwave Design? Take advantage of the new features by upgrading today on your My iBwave!

What do you think of the new features? Comment below to let us know.

Wirelessly yours,

Kelly