Sonoma Raceway Deploys TEKO DAS from JMA Wireless

JMA Wireless, a global provider of wireless communications solutions, is enabling robust cellular coverage and capacity at Sonoma Raceway, located in Northern California’s Sonoma wine country.

The company’s TEKO DAS (distributed antenna system), digital electricity, and a variety of antennas were deployed across the expansive complex, which includes a 2.52-mile road course, a quarter-mile dragstrip, widespread seating areas, and more than 70 motor-sports shops.

“Large outdoor venues, like Sonoma Raceway, bring with them a myriad of mobile communications challenges,” said Todd Landry, Corporate Vice President of Product and Market Strategy at JMA Wireless. “However, our solutions readily overcame PIM (passive intermodulation) and other issues, which degrade the signal and negatively impact wireless performance. During major races our wireless network has supported easily the spectators in attendance.”

The 15-sector system at Sonoma Raceway is comprised of several innovative solutions from JMA Wireless. Its multi-band, multi-carrier TEKO DAS provides cellular coverage and capacity for the 700, 1900 and 2100 bands currently and will readily support AWS-3 in the near future.

The wireless network also includes 76 low-power, five-band remote units and four high-power, five-band remote units.

Furthermore, 88 ODAS (outdoor DAS) antennas were installed. They include a combination of directional and omni-directional antennas providing either 1X2 or 2X2 MIMO (multiple input, multiple output). In the main grandstand XGU-FRO-230 antennas were deployed.

These antennas with FRO (Fast Roll-Off) technology enhance data throughput without compromising coverage. Its horizontal beam increases the Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) by eliminating overlap between sectors.

The increased SINR results in higher throughput while the horizontal beam produced by FRO technology reduces harmful interference between adjacent cells, making them especially useful in densely populated environments.

The JMA Wireless FUZE™ platform was deployed to provide digital electricity in the far reaches of the motor-sports complex. This feature can provide power up to a mile away from its origination. If AC power had to be available at each pole the local electric company would have become involved in this project. The process of providing AC power to each pole would have added many more months to the timeline. In addition, digital electricity enabled the team to utilize composite cable (fiber and copper in one sheath), which consolidated everything onto a single “pull” cable.

It meets IEC and UL safety requirements; therefore, the deployment team did not have to run metal conduits, which is not only tedious, but expensive too. The combination of innovative offerings from JMA Wireless resulted in cost savings of at least 50 percent as compared to competitive solutions.