Transportation

Eclipse Connects Belgian Airports

Introduction
The Challenge
The international airports of
Antwerp and Charleroi in
Belgium needed a highly
reliable, future-proof link
between the weather stations
and the tower, to transmit up to
10M/bits. These link locations
crossed runways, making
wireless technology the best
solution, but the airports wanted
to ensure that a wireless
solution could also be reliable.

The Solution
Harris Stratex Networks,
together with their Belgian
distributor Multicap, deployed
high-reliability Eclipse Connect
systems for data links at the two
airports. Eclipse Connect
delivered fiber-grade carrierclass reliability, along with the
flexibility of manageable and
upgradeable bandwidth. This
allowed cost-effective
installation without runway
disruptions.

The Result
These two major airports have
their weather stations and air
traffic leaders linked via
Eclipse Connect links to the
crucial weather stations.
Technical staff at the airports
was trained at the HSX
training center in Scotland to
provide first line support.
With Eclipse Connects
reliability, the air traffic leaders
always have vital weather
information.
In the future, these links can
be used to transport other data
at up to 200Mbit/s per link
without hardware changes.

www.multicap.biz
www.harrisstratex.com

In 2006, the Belgian international

airports of Antwerp and Charleroi
needed to install new, advanced
weather stations to upgrade their
existing weather stations and to extend
weather surveillance to newly built
runways. Antwerp and Charleroi
annually handle over 50,000 and
67,000 flights respectively.
Belgocontrol is the management
authority for these airports.

Critical Systems

reliability and data availability. It would

be quick to install, and simple to
manage. A loss of weather station data
would mean that air traffic controllers
could not direct and release planes for
takeoff, leading to substantial financial
losses for both airlines and the airports.
In addition, the solution had to be
future-proof capable of supporting
VLAN capabilities, seamless
throughput increases, and a variety of
interfaces. The solution would also be
used for alarms, Ethernet traffic, and
perhaps E1-based voice traffic.

The weather systems collect real-time

weather data that air traffic controllers
at the two Airports depend on to
determine whether flights should be
allowed to take off, which runways are
best to use, and what coordinates
flights will follow. It is vital that air traffic
control towers have uninterrupted
access to weather station data.

Communication Challenge
The link between air traffic control
towers and weather stations has long
been a communication challenge for
airports.

Weather stations at Belgian airports

In the past, to connect these two

sensitive locations meant installing
cables underground, even beneath the
runways. Digging up runways is
tremendously costly, both as a process
and in the loss of runway use time.
Wireless technology provides a
disruption-free solution, but must be
carefully implemented so as not
interfere with existing airport wireless
systems. Good frequency planning is
crucial.

Customer Requirements
The airport authorities needed a
solution that would provide maximum

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Eclipse Connect: A Reliable

Solution
After exploring all the options, the
airport authorities approached Multicap,
Harris Stratex Networks' local
distributor, for a solution. Multicap
recommended Eclipse Connect as the

7/4/2007

technology that met the airports

multiple requirements.

Eclipse Connect
Eclipse Connect provides a
simple and efficient solution for
high speed Ethernet wireless
connections.
Eclipse Connect supports Fast
Ethernet to 200 Mbps with up to
8xE1 wayside circuits to provide
an uncomplicated and cost
effective alternative to fiber.

Operating in licensed frequency bands,

Eclipse Connect combines very high
equipment reliability and system
availability that meets or exceeds the
availability of a fiber link. Radio links
can be easily engineered to provide at
least 99.999% availability, equating to
less than 5 minutes of weather-induced
outage over an entire year.
Designed for high reliability, an Eclipse
Connect link supports a failure rate of
just one failure every 15 years.

Integrated 4-port
switch
The Eclipse Connect Indoor Unit
includes a Layer 2 switch to
support four customer
10/100base-T ports, two over-air
transport channels and
comprehensive VLAN and QoS
options.

Compatibility
Eclipse Connect is compatible
with the Eclipse Nodal wireless
system.

The Eclipse Connect unique liquid

bandwidth software capacity scalability
provides a high degree of futureproofing against changing
requirements.

Charleroi International Airport

Assured Performance
Belgocontrol was anxious that the
proposed solution would provide the
secure, constant transmission they
required, so Multicap and Harris
Stratex combined to provide technical
training and demonstrations to prove
the claimed performance.
Belgocontrol technical staff was
amazed to see how simple it was to
configure Eclipse Connect across
multiple links. They were even more
impressed to learn how easy it was to
operate and maintain the equipment.

Management

Flexible Bandwidth, Simple

System Management

Eclipse Connect is fully

manageable both through the
Portal craft tool as well as
through the ProVision Element
Management System.

Since licensed spectrum is expensive

in Belgium, the high modulation
efficiency of Eclipse Connect enabled
airport technical staff to minimize their
licensed spectrum fees.

www.harrisstratex.com

Eclipse Connect provides native

Ethernet transport for high efficiency,
full-duplex transmission, with extreme
low delay and in the near-absence of
jitter. This makes it an ideal solution for
real-time data and voice traffic.

Future Proof

Scalable Bandwidth
The basic configuration supports
data throughputs up to 50Mbps,
but can be simply upgraded by
software control to 100, 150, or
200Mbit/s in a single RF channel.

Unlicensed systems could not provide

the same reliability available using a
licensed system. Eclipse Connects
licensed frequency band options, from
5GHz up to 38GHz, guarantee many
choices for interference-free and
crosstalk-free operation, even though
the airports already use many
frequencies.

While the current application requires

only 10Mbit/s of data throughput, other
applications may be added in the future
without additional hardware changes.
Belgocontrols technical staff found
Portal, the Eclipse PC-based craft tool,
easy to use for the initial configuration
and management of the links, and an
excellent tool that helped them define
and investigate any problem in detail.

The Results
Belgocontrol chose Eclipse Connect
because of its technical flexibility, ease
of use, and strong support and training
from Multicap and Harris Stratex
Networks.
First installed in July 2006, Charleroi
now has two Eclipse Connect links
from the weather station to the control
tower, and Antwerp has one link.
Belgocontrol found Eclipse Connect to be a
reliable, convenient and successful solution
to their communication need.

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Copyright 2007 Harris Stratex Networks, all rights reserved.

7/4/2007