BeeCamp: About Mobile Base Station, Power, and Infrastructure
Here is a map covering the Bugaz Spit, where the kiteboarding festival was held.
Kiteboarding is, roughly speaking, a surfing board, to which a large kite clings and drags an athlete.
')
My unit had the task of providing communication. So, there is no constant food there: in winter the place is submerged (on the one hand there is the Black Sea, and on the other - the estuary). It turns out such a narrow strip of constantly moving sand, where it is quite difficult to build something major. It is not allowed to leave equipment all year round. And the nearest base station is far enough: on the one side of the spit - in Blagoveshchenskaya, on the other - another one in the village of Vesyolovka.
In August, the festival began on this spit. It was planned that nine days in a row during it will be held kiteboarding tournaments, and on August 23, musicians will perform on the stage set right in the middle of the spit.
Start from the shore
7 years ago, when our festival was held there for the first time, we thought that the small community didn’t really need anything, the main thing was to have where the athletes turn around (and this place for kiteboarding is one of the best in the world), and there was minimal infrastructure for example, hot food. A little later, it turned out that the get-together of the kiters intersects with the crowd of musicians playing electronic music. And there was a tradition to hold concerts. And, as you know, a concert on the stage in the open air automatically means rather complex requirements for infrastructure, in particular, for sound and electricity. To satisfy them, we began to bring diesel generators and trucks of various auxiliary equipment to the site. Gradually, the community grew, and as a result, the last couple of years, a lot of people are gathering on the Bugaz Spit.
And everyone wants to instagram photos with kites, listen to their favorite music from the contact, watch YouTube (we have a kiting school, students often look at past performances of athletes from tablets) and sometimes even work remotely from the festival. Also, there were a lot of demands from the organizers. So the Internet channels were needed by everyone.
Such frames were laid out just by the hundreds per minute. Fortunately, Instagram and mobile Facebook use traffic efficiently.
Of course, since the event is already traditional, our first thought was to put permanent equipment there. However, we considered and understood that this is quite expensive. It is impossible to put on the whole year round: firstly, there is no one, and secondly, it will be necessarily damaged. Therefore, we decided to carry the equipment.
We have special resources: backup generators, a mobile base station and other solutions for cities suddenly left out of communication after an emergency. Accordingly, the experts in the organization of infrastructure in the open field were, and the task seemed very familiar.
For communication, we used our own base station. In Moscow, there is a complex mounted at KamAZ, and the BS systems are deeply integrated with the aircraft’s vehicle systems. We also have a truck "Valdai" and an autonomous unit in the body (in fact, it is a mast with communication antennas, a dustproof server rack with BS units, auxiliary equipment, UPS, a generator). And the base of the tower, rigidly mounted on the body. We carry it to almost all major events where coverage needs strengthening, as well as for the sake of emergency situations.
August 2014 for our “magic wand” turned out to be saturated: first, the mobile base station helped to ensure communication in the area of ​​the Kubana festival and was located in Vesyolovka. On August 20, she was transported to the Bugaz Spit near the village of Blagoveshchenskaya
Ivan Mishchenko, a senior engineer, began working with installing a mobile base station the day before: on August 19, together with the engineer of the transport network operation department, Yevgeny Kolodny, they met with the organizers of the festival, determined where the site would be. We decided that it should be installed approximately 60 meters from the main zone. The problem was that with the optimal position of the BS, the truck could simply not go there because of the sand. Sand was really everywhere and drowned equipment is not worse than a swamp. Everything heavy was delivered to the tractor, so the next morning “lent” it just in case.
This is what I illustrate the sand, not what you thought.
The next day it turned out that the truck was really stuck long before arriving at the checkpoint. As a result, the mobile station to the installation site was thereby pulled by the tractor. At 14 o'clock the installation work began. First, they assembled a mast on the ground, installing cellular communication antennas on it and giving them the right directions to cover the necessary terrain with a network. Then they proceeded to the most difficult and time-consuming process, which requires great accuracy and composure - installing the mast with antennas in a vertical position and joining it with the lower section of the permanently mounted mast on the car body.
The rise was performed using hand winches. Difficulties were added by the gusty sea wind, for which the installed antennas worked like a sail — it was not for nothing that kiters were going to this place, for good reason. Fortunately, almost all engineers had experience in regions with at least a third class upwind, so they managed to cope with the task without incident.
After that it was necessary to organize a communication channel from the station to the network. In this case, it was a radio relay line to the nearest existing facility in Vesyolovka. Yes, it should be noted that our colleagues have strengthened the base stations at the edges of the coverage area and have slightly reconfigured them to provide a large band for the subscribers of the event.
Since the antennas were already mounted, they were adjusted, the correct radiation directions were set. To this end, the antenna was rotated simultaneously at both stations, focusing on the maximum signal level. On the accuracy of the adjustment depends on the security of communication from interference and other indicators of quality of service. If any of you set up Wi-Fi spans a kilometer using directional antennas, or positioned a satellite dish on the desired satellite, then you can roughly imagine the work progress.
The last stage - connecting the base station to electricity. All cables, wires and even own generator are initially in the mobile BS machine. On the other hand, a more powerful generator was installed in our BeeCamp camp, and we decided to connect in advance to it. Actually, it was less than 100 meters away. They brought a cable to the generator, buried it in the sand, and two hours after the start of the installation, the mobile base station was ready for operation. Around 4 pm on August 20, the first subscribers already received 2G and 3G services.
At night, the stage was mounted using heavy equipment. Power was lost somewhere around four o'clock in the morning, the UPS got the grip. We walked along the cable, just digging it out of the sand, and found a cliff. Something heavy tracked decided to turn right on the spot where our cable lay. Since there was a lot of caterpillar around, we decided not to risk it again and raised our generator on the MBS. The only time was to bring diesel fuel to it a couple of times.
The serpent's control device is clearly visible in the hands of the athlete.
The volume of mobile Internet traffic in the area of ​​the Bugaz Spit was up to 150 gigabytes per day. Mobile BS accounted for up to 60 GB of daily traffic. So, by the way, we deployed it there. In general, everything was possible. Communication has always been. Even at the time of maximum crowds, when the festival headliners performed, the 3G cell did not “squeeze”, since the relief is very flat there.
Here you have a little summer on this autumn day.
The dismantling took much less time than the installation: the mast was lowered from the roof, antennas were removed, some equipment was placed inside the machine, some was fixed directly on the roof.
Kiteboarding is, roughly speaking, a surfing board, to which a large kite clings and drags an athlete.
')
My unit had the task of providing communication. So, there is no constant food there: in winter the place is submerged (on the one hand there is the Black Sea, and on the other - the estuary). It turns out such a narrow strip of constantly moving sand, where it is quite difficult to build something major. It is not allowed to leave equipment all year round. And the nearest base station is far enough: on the one side of the spit - in Blagoveshchenskaya, on the other - another one in the village of Vesyolovka.
Disposition
In August, the festival began on this spit. It was planned that nine days in a row during it will be held kiteboarding tournaments, and on August 23, musicians will perform on the stage set right in the middle of the spit.
Start from the shore
7 years ago, when our festival was held there for the first time, we thought that the small community didn’t really need anything, the main thing was to have where the athletes turn around (and this place for kiteboarding is one of the best in the world), and there was minimal infrastructure for example, hot food. A little later, it turned out that the get-together of the kiters intersects with the crowd of musicians playing electronic music. And there was a tradition to hold concerts. And, as you know, a concert on the stage in the open air automatically means rather complex requirements for infrastructure, in particular, for sound and electricity. To satisfy them, we began to bring diesel generators and trucks of various auxiliary equipment to the site. Gradually, the community grew, and as a result, the last couple of years, a lot of people are gathering on the Bugaz Spit.
And everyone wants to instagram photos with kites, listen to their favorite music from the contact, watch YouTube (we have a kiting school, students often look at past performances of athletes from tablets) and sometimes even work remotely from the festival. Also, there were a lot of demands from the organizers. So the Internet channels were needed by everyone.
Such frames were laid out just by the hundreds per minute. Fortunately, Instagram and mobile Facebook use traffic efficiently.
The solution of the problem
Of course, since the event is already traditional, our first thought was to put permanent equipment there. However, we considered and understood that this is quite expensive. It is impossible to put on the whole year round: firstly, there is no one, and secondly, it will be necessarily damaged. Therefore, we decided to carry the equipment.
We have special resources: backup generators, a mobile base station and other solutions for cities suddenly left out of communication after an emergency. Accordingly, the experts in the organization of infrastructure in the open field were, and the task seemed very familiar.
For communication, we used our own base station. In Moscow, there is a complex mounted at KamAZ, and the BS systems are deeply integrated with the aircraft’s vehicle systems. We also have a truck "Valdai" and an autonomous unit in the body (in fact, it is a mast with communication antennas, a dustproof server rack with BS units, auxiliary equipment, UPS, a generator). And the base of the tower, rigidly mounted on the body. We carry it to almost all major events where coverage needs strengthening, as well as for the sake of emergency situations.
August 2014 for our “magic wand” turned out to be saturated: first, the mobile base station helped to ensure communication in the area of ​​the Kubana festival and was located in Vesyolovka. On August 20, she was transported to the Bugaz Spit near the village of Blagoveshchenskaya
Ivan Mishchenko, a senior engineer, began working with installing a mobile base station the day before: on August 19, together with the engineer of the transport network operation department, Yevgeny Kolodny, they met with the organizers of the festival, determined where the site would be. We decided that it should be installed approximately 60 meters from the main zone. The problem was that with the optimal position of the BS, the truck could simply not go there because of the sand. Sand was really everywhere and drowned equipment is not worse than a swamp. Everything heavy was delivered to the tractor, so the next morning “lent” it just in case.
This is what I illustrate the sand, not what you thought.
The next day it turned out that the truck was really stuck long before arriving at the checkpoint. As a result, the mobile station to the installation site was thereby pulled by the tractor. At 14 o'clock the installation work began. First, they assembled a mast on the ground, installing cellular communication antennas on it and giving them the right directions to cover the necessary terrain with a network. Then they proceeded to the most difficult and time-consuming process, which requires great accuracy and composure - installing the mast with antennas in a vertical position and joining it with the lower section of the permanently mounted mast on the car body.
The rise was performed using hand winches. Difficulties were added by the gusty sea wind, for which the installed antennas worked like a sail — it was not for nothing that kiters were going to this place, for good reason. Fortunately, almost all engineers had experience in regions with at least a third class upwind, so they managed to cope with the task without incident.
At the festival
After that it was necessary to organize a communication channel from the station to the network. In this case, it was a radio relay line to the nearest existing facility in Vesyolovka. Yes, it should be noted that our colleagues have strengthened the base stations at the edges of the coverage area and have slightly reconfigured them to provide a large band for the subscribers of the event.
Since the antennas were already mounted, they were adjusted, the correct radiation directions were set. To this end, the antenna was rotated simultaneously at both stations, focusing on the maximum signal level. On the accuracy of the adjustment depends on the security of communication from interference and other indicators of quality of service. If any of you set up Wi-Fi spans a kilometer using directional antennas, or positioned a satellite dish on the desired satellite, then you can roughly imagine the work progress.
The last stage - connecting the base station to electricity. All cables, wires and even own generator are initially in the mobile BS machine. On the other hand, a more powerful generator was installed in our BeeCamp camp, and we decided to connect in advance to it. Actually, it was less than 100 meters away. They brought a cable to the generator, buried it in the sand, and two hours after the start of the installation, the mobile base station was ready for operation. Around 4 pm on August 20, the first subscribers already received 2G and 3G services.
At night, the stage was mounted using heavy equipment. Power was lost somewhere around four o'clock in the morning, the UPS got the grip. We walked along the cable, just digging it out of the sand, and found a cliff. Something heavy tracked decided to turn right on the spot where our cable lay. Since there was a lot of caterpillar around, we decided not to risk it again and raised our generator on the MBS. The only time was to bring diesel fuel to it a couple of times.
The serpent's control device is clearly visible in the hands of the athlete.
Results
The volume of mobile Internet traffic in the area of ​​the Bugaz Spit was up to 150 gigabytes per day. Mobile BS accounted for up to 60 GB of daily traffic. So, by the way, we deployed it there. In general, everything was possible. Communication has always been. Even at the time of maximum crowds, when the festival headliners performed, the 3G cell did not “squeeze”, since the relief is very flat there.
Here you have a little summer on this autumn day.
The dismantling took much less time than the installation: the mast was lowered from the roof, antennas were removed, some equipment was placed inside the machine, some was fixed directly on the roof.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/240685/
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