Zinwave provides in-building coverage for Westfield shopping centre

As part of a $1.2 billion investment in Westfield Sydney, a radio system that can carry all major mobile carriers in the 850, 1800 and 2100 MHz bands has been installed by Zinwave.

Westfield Sydney is a retail and office complex in the heart of the city beneath the Sydney Tower. In 2007, Westfield received approval to redevelop its existing Centrepoint mall and integrate it with the adjoining Imperial Arcade, Skygarden and Sydney Central Plaza.

The development represents a $1.2 billion investment for Westfield with the aim of creating a facility that will showcase the best retailers from Australia and around the world.

As part of the redevelopment, a Zinwave 3000 system provides in-building coverage as it can carry all major mobile carriers, Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, covering the services of WCDMA at 850 MHz, UMTS at 2100 MHz, DCS at 1800 MHz as well as the PMR systems for the mall staff.

Stage 1 of the Westfield Sydney redevelopment opened on 28 October 2010 with approximately 130 specialty stores. Stage 2 was opened in April 2011 and the retail component completed in December 2011. The completed facility has more than 330 stores with over 88,000 m² of retail space.

The Zinwave distributed antenna system (DAS) is designed to futureproof in-building wireless coverage. It provides a cellular and wireless platform for adding new services within a wideband spectrum at present between 150 MHz and 2.7 GHz without upgrades, extra hardware or any new MMF or SMF rollouts.

The three-stage system consists of a primary hub, secondary hubs and remote units. It uses multimode or singlemode fibre cable for connectivity that gives true wideband capabilities, allowing simultaneous support of any wireless standard including 2G, 3G, LTE, PMR/LMR, DVB-H, TETRA, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, RFID etc.

Full management control over this spectrum allows new services to be added on demand without deploying additional system components.

The technology can be configured in a single, dual-star or mixed architecture to meet exact service needs. In addition, it offers a service distribution feature with dynamic routing of the input signals to the output ports, allowing sectorisation.

Westfield Sydney is one of a growing list of buildings, which include airports, hospitals and corporate facilities, to take advantage of Zinwave’s support for multiple services over a single common infrastructure and wideband hardware platform. The system easily accommodates the specific services offered by all operators and required by visitors from around the world. Cellular sectorisation is supported by a built-in switch matrix that, by simple software configuration, selectively routes services to specific areas of the building as required.

The Westfield implementation was carried out by RFI, a Zinwave partner in this region.

“RFI has been involved in many high-profile rollouts, and we are particularly proud of the results achieved in this Westfield project using the Zinwave 3000 system in-building coverage solution. This is a fantastic opportunity to showcase the Zinwave product in a high-profile, multiservice environment,” commented Steve Jacques, managing director of RFI.

“This was an exciting, high-profile project for us and a suitable setting to showcase Zinwave’s unique 3000 system,” said Colin Abrey, president of Zinwave International. “Our 3000 DAS provided a unique solution that had the ability to carry all major operators and also provide PMR services all on one hardware layer. The system offers ease of installation and scalability with the ability to add in services in the future with no additional hardware cost.”