While the Paris metro took four years to get 4G, the new Grand Paris Express lines should offer full 5G coverage as soon as they come online in 2024.
The first deadline relates to the opening in mid-2024 of the Saint-Denis Pleyel station, a connection hub between the four new automatic metro lines, on the occasion of the Olympic Games.
Selected in September 2021 by the Société du Grand Paris to ensure optimal mobile coverage in all stations and tunnels between this station, Saint-Denis Pleyel, and Noisy-Champs (line 16), but also between Charles-de- Gaulle and Le Mesnil-Amelot (line 17), Cellnex carried out the first conclusive tests.
A compromise between technical performance and signal range
In mid-November, the independent telecom infrastructure provider carried out radio propagation tests in the Grand Paris Express tunnel, in addition to coverage simulations for future stations. The first was to validate the 5G propagation models on the 2100 MHz or 3500 MHz frequencies. These “heart of 5G” frequencies offer a good compromise between technical performance and signal range.
Cellnex then wanted to refine its signal propagation models in the tunnel, in particular taking into account the angles of reflection in bends, but also to “benchmark” the performance of the various 5G antennas and validate the choice of equipment already pre-selected.
The architecture of the technical solution for this “full MIMO” (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) network is based, explains Cellnex, on active antennas, positioned in stations or on platforms, low-power repeaters connected to one or two antennas panel type or omnidirectional.
The device also includes high-power repeaters, installed in ancillary works or in sub-quays (connected by optical fiber) and connected to periodic log antennas. That is to say broadband radio antennas used in particular for DTT.
Voice and data connectivity regardless of the operator
A company listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange, Cellnex is responsible for deploying an indoor DAS (Distributed Antenna System) radio network on lines 16 and 17, offering passengers continuous voice and data connectivity in 5G, while ensuring compatibility with the frequencies in 2G, 3G or 4G.
As TowerCo, the group must offer neutral access to its infrastructures to operators who will use them to market their 5G services. Travelers, whether they are subscribers to Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom or Free, will be able to make telephone or “video” calls, and more generally to access the internet.
The tests were therefore also intended for Cellnex to ensure the optimal management of antennas and shared equipment. For Vincent Cuvillier, Managing Director of Cellnex France, they made it possible to validate “the relevance of a model aimed at optimizing deployment costs, while guaranteeing each operator a technological solution that is both perfectly sized, reliable , sustainable and eco-responsible”.
A first in Europe
The operator recalls that it has conducted similar projects in the United Kingdom for Network Rail, or in the Netherlands for ProRail. Cellnex is not, however, the only TowerCo to operate on the Grand Paris Express site.
Subsidiary TowerCo of the Orange group, Totem is in charge of deploying an indoor DAS mobile network on all of line 15 South, which will connect Pont de Sèvres, in Boulogne-Billancourt (92), to the future Noisy-Champs station, in Noisy -le-Grand (93) and ensure its operation until 2035.
According to The echoes, “the new Parisian lines should be the first fully covered in 5G in Europe”. While competing projects most often have to pull cables and install equipment in “cramped underground spaces, sometimes dug more than a century ago”, the Grand Paris Express has the great advantage of starting from a single sheet white, integrating this need for connectivity from its design.