Telecommunications of the Yekaterinburg Arena Stadium: 20 kilometers of thick cable

In order to show football live, you need professional equipment. Alas, in the television sphere it is mostly analog. This means that the signalists in each stadium are waiting for a real paradise. Provided, of course, that you like to carry a heavy cable and bend a thick coax.

In the case of the Central Stadium in Yekaterinburg, there was a lot of coaxial. Lots of.
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There are TV boxes throughout the property. The TV people come, open the box, and there the optical connections and the triax are stuck in and transfer their content to the mobile station. A mobile station is a duplex satellite communication machine somewhere outside the stadium bowl. Arrives, opens on the perimeter, guys go from there, for example, from “Match TV”, connect to the TV box, and football flies through the air to all TVs in the country. There is a hardware room that can redirect it to the conference room, press center. Lived throughout the stadium, there is just a mad amount of cable mass.

Wi-Fi infrastructure

According to the FIFA requirements, fans at the stadium need to provide access to the Internet - well, for example, to post a selfie. And quite fat selfies: 15% of the visitors of “Ekaterinburg Arena” should have at least 2 Mb / s for each range accessible to the user. That is, with a stadium capacity of 45 thousand people, the network should be designed for 6,750 simultaneous connections.



Bringing in optics is relatively simple, this is done by local providers. But to distribute all this on the air is already a task. We need special antennas, radio frequency surveys and many other works. In Krasnodar, we already did this in Tsisk, and here we implemented it on Extreme Networks (not so long ago, the vendor bought the Avaya network part). 35 thousand spectators in the stands (including temporary) - a total of 90 access points in the bowl, and the total stadium - 270.

Outer antenna antennas cover the stands with fans. There was no need to heat communications in concrete at the project stage, and the aesthetic requirements did not imply masking of the emitters, so to some extent the project turned out to be simple as agreed with the subcontractors. But, as is usually the case, not without tales: in some places other brackets mounted our brackets, in some places local contractors painted everything they saw, including our radiators along with moving elements.

The points were also hung up, despite the height of 30 meters. There was access, above the fenced engineering platform. Promalp not needed, the stadium is very thought out in terms of maintenance.





Integrated all this with the Rostelecom portal, which provides authorization via SMS and Fan ID (fan ID), this is a single portal for all stadiums.




Radio survey results after the launch of a WLAN in the Ekahau Site Survey software. Shows the signal level generated by one of the points with a narrow antenna that covers the stands

Screens

On the outer perimeter there are 2 double-sided screens 6.7 x 3.8 meters. This size is selected by the requirements of FIFA.



In the bowl 2 of the screen 18 x 10 meters, this is a LED video wall from the offices. The quality is high, the contrast is good, the benefit of the new generation of LEDs - here you can see goals with magnification, repetitions, and live streaming. During the championship, another 300 monitors are being installed on the media platform, so that journalists can watch the picture almost without delay - special equipment is used, which reduces this delay.



There are 250 monitors installed inside the stadium around its entire perimeter (under the stands), as well as in the bar, VIP lounges, interview areas, team locker rooms, coaching, etc., according to FIFA requirements, even if you leave for the rusk, you cannot skip goals. Usually IP-TV is playing there from a match, but there is a centralized content management system, that is, any content can be installed from the local carrier for the stadium channel. Though advertising, even repeats.

For part of the screens, we mounted special anti-vandal thermoprotective covers, they maintain the required temperature: in the winter they protect from cold, in the summer - from overheating.

For the media

From all points, of which there are about 30 throughout the stadium, there are visits to this separate rack. From here, the broadcasters take the signal by connecting to it.

Head station - television chassis where capture cards are inserted. These cards process the signal with a minimum delay (they pass through themselves for 70 ms), there is a coaxial line with a thick core so that there are no losses.

The second source of delays is the television. The manufacturer issued a specialized firmware to reduce the delay specifically for the sport. All stadiums vendor did this thing.

We also equipped the telecom equipment with a press center. There is a multimedia complex that allows you to hold events before and after the match. Information display, congress system, sound reinforcement, Wi-Fi, lighting and so on.

Sound reinforcement system

This is where the sound amplification system is controlled, which is designed to provide 116.9 dB of sound pressure in accordance with FIFA requirements (such pressure can allow a “shout over” the cry of the crowd of fans).

Acoustics architects decided late, so with it went lining. First, by the time it was laid, the gaskets had already been buried, it was necessary to mount it separately. By the way, while we were assembling, the security service was watching us from all the surrounding bushes: a special communication point cable was passing nearby, the guards had an order to report even in trifles about any atypical situation. I personally heard the negotiations: “First, two dogs wrote on the ballot box, as I understood, reception!”

LAN was interesting to put, because the subcontractors did not understand within one of the premises that the project was new, and they laid the cable according to the old version. There were moments where you have the equipment in the project, and the electrician is not laid. On one of the structures there was no access and exit - I had to think it through, because the walled construction was, of course, interesting, but not very funny.



A very long and painstaking approach to the choice of equipment, there was a difficult process of coordinating all the loads on the ring and all structures. When extinguishing a warning system automatically silences, and the fire suppression has its own alert.



First, Wi-Fi was installed (external points for the stands). In the summer they hung them up, and when acoustic clusters were installed in the winter, they blocked access to Wi-Fi points by directionality, I had to move them a little later.


PA system and Wi-Fi hotspots


Sound system on the outer perimeter

miscellanea

At the first serious match on April 15 of this year between “Spartak” and “Ural”, subcontractors made a small diversion several hours before the match without agreement. Put a closed segment of the LAN network. They tried to expand the video surveillance channel on the day of the events and began to insanely poke the cables. We have held major events more than once and we know that nothing can be touched on an event at all. Even pre-tuning - for the day. Two hours before the match, everything stopped working for them, so they began to mock the system. My colleague Vyacheslav saved them.

Once, when checking the fault tolerance and backup systems, during the event in the conference room, power was lost everywhere except this conference room. I do not know, lucky or unlucky.

We completely did technical support for the first match. And LAN, and dubbing, and monitoring - everything was done by our engineers. Worked well.

Here is the post of my colleague about the engineering subsystems of this stadium . But about the sound at the stadium "Spartacus . " My email: ACherednik@croc.ru.