RAD Solutions Selected for Olympic-Sized Infrastructure Project

The Sea to Sky Highway (STSH) from Vancouver, B.C. to the world famous Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort is one of the grandest passages on the planet. And up until recently, it ranked as one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in Canada.

As part of Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics bid, British Columbia authorized a $500 million upgrade to the highway to facilitate the transport of millions of Olympic enthusiasts and enhance its safety.

The challenge was how to provide quick, cost-effective connectivity for a variety of voice and data requirements – including PBX voice trunks, two-way radios, Ethernet, high-speed Internet access, fax, and modem stations. This variety of services had to serve more than 800 employees working in the field, the main office, and the five satellite offices located along this 62-mile (100 km) mountainous highway. There was very little existing communications infrastructure.

“Even in the few places along the STSH where there was fiber, we ran into the 'Last Mile' problem, making it inordinately expensive to connect our five satellite offices,” says Troy Van Bostelen, a manager for Peter Kiewit Sons (PKS), the general contractor for the STSH project. “At some point, we clicked on the idea of a single high-speed, wireless pipe that could transport all of our data, radio, phone, and high-speed Internet traffic among the offices and in the field.”

Working with its systems integrator, Sea to Sky Wireless Inc., PKS selected Vmux voice trunking pseudowire gateways and the Airmux-200 wireless broadband multiplexer from RAD Data Communications. The Vmux provides 16:1 voice compression and integrates voice, data, and LAN traffic for delivery over packet networks. The Airmux-200 provides a single wireless “pipe” for the high-speed transmission of these services.

A Vmux-2100 central office gateway sits in the main office connected to the PBX on the network side and the Airmux-200 (via a hub) on the user side. This provides central voice trunking for the digital T1s running wirelessly out to the satellite offices. Used as a bookend solution, the Vmux simplifies network costs and complexity by converging all services over a single network. Moreover, RAD's innovative TDMoIP® pseudowire technology emulates voice circuits transparently so all signaling, protocols, and feature sets remain intact. The main office also hosts a pair of Vmux-110 remote office gateways sitting behind the Airmux to provide E&M radio connectivity for field workers.

PKS satellite offices are equipped with Vmux-110s working opposite the Vmux-2100 to integrate local voice, data, and LAN traffic for delivery over the Airmux-200 broadband radio link. Owing to some intervening mountainous peaks, several repeater sites are necessary to provide LOS for the Airmux connections. Fortunately, in most cases, there were existing towers at these locations making it mostly a matter of co-locating antennas. Each repeater site is also equipped with a Vmux-104 for the E&M radio traffic.

The Airmux-200 - the thread that ties it all together - is an optimal combination of form, function and affordability. Capable of transmitting over distances of up to 50 miles, the Airmux easily delivers user traffic at speeds of up to 18 Mbps full-duplex over the 20 miles that separate PKS's most distant field offices. “With configuration options that include Ethernet-only or Ethernet plus one, two or four T1s, we were able to match the Airmux configuration with the specific traffic requirements of the individual sites,” notes Nizam Bourjeily, Sea to Sky Wireless Inc.'s Technical Project Manager. And since it operates over unlicensed frequencies, we could select the band that would provide the best throughput with the least amount of competing traffic,” he added. Operation over unlicensed frequencies also means that there were no bureaucratic processes to endure.

The combination of cost-effective wireless links, high link utilization with 16:1 voice compression, network convergence, and the best price-performance ratio for any broadband radio on the market, makes the business case for the RAD solution a no-brainer.