A private wireless network (PWN) from Communication Technology Services (CTS) has been trialled at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport (MSP).
The Private Wireless Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) was commissioned by the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), which provides aviation services to the Twin Cities metropolitan area. CTS deployed a turnkey managed Private LTE (long-term evolution) NaaS to demonstrate the benefits for six MSP applications. For each application, the CTS PWN trial met or exceeded the performance of current networking technologies while also identifying opportunities to increase operational flexibility, reduce time to deploy/relocate services and applications, and decrease operational costs.
The PWN PoC study was performed in both laboratory and production environments at MSP. The use cases tested included general-purpose mobile device data connectivity, high definition moving maps for workforce automation and industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors for infrastructure monitoring and maintenance. Connectivity requirements varied from low bit rate (eg sensors), to high throughput (video surveillance, HD mapping), to ultra-reliable performance for mission-critical applications (eg infrastructure IoT), to highly secure operations (eg gate agent passenger processing).
Specific applications that were tested during the trial were: airside maintenance tracking; common use system equipment (CUSE) carts; digital signage; video surveillance; critical infrastructure monitoring; and mobile enterprise applications.
Robert Cerbone, CTS VP of product management and marketing, said, "MAC's history of innovation made MSP the perfect place to demonstrate the functionality of an LTE network for the delivery of mission-critical airport applications. The network designed and delivered by CTS performed well under pressure and illustrated some real-world use cases that could benefit from the adoption of private cellular technology in the enterprise."
Image: Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport
