TYPICAL SHELTERED AND/OR OUTDOOR BTS WITH SECURITY

AND REMOTE MONITORING SYSTEM

Source: ServersCheck 360 BTS Monitoring

There are over 4,000 outdoor BTS sites to be installed nationwide and all of these sites will be unmanned, therefore remote control and remote monitoring would be an essential part of the whole BTS system. BellTel is seeking an automated cost-effective solution to receive relevant and specific data and also transmit remote control to/from these BTS sites to the centralized data management center. The concept that is being investigated would include the following properties:

Provide near-real time remote maintenance monitoring of security assets. The RMM will support an improved maintenance strategy and concept.

Provide near-real time monitoring of both telecom and power facilities; Provide security equipment inventory management and movement tracking; Provide a total power solution that adheres to industry standards including open systems architecture;

Provide a solution that can be easily retrofitted into any shelter or building where monitoring is needed; Provide a solution that is vendor agnostic and integrates with any BTS equipment vendor like Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Ericsson, ZTE and more.

Off the shelve it integrates with any SNMP enabled NOC system. Provide automated maintenance alerts and notification.

We categorize the different monitoring systems to handle various requirements for monitoring and controlling a remote BTS site:

ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING monitoring temperature, humidity, presence of water, etc. FUEL LEVEL, POWER METERING & MONITORING genset/fuel cell fuel levels, status of backup power facilities, grid metering, etc. PHYSICAL SECURITY MONITORING video, intrusions, smoke/fire detections, etc.

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ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING

Monitoring environmental conditions in equipment rooms is critical when looking at safeguarding not only the availability of the equipment but also safeguarding the investment made in the equipment. Temperature monitoring is recommended for early detection of failing air conditioning units. Such failures can cause rapid deterioration and prompt action is a must. With the remote reboot devices users can immediately shut down equipment or even remotely start a secondary AC unit.

Humidity monitoring is a must. Too high humidity results moisture setting-in. When humidity is too low, then static electricity may be build up with the risk of a static electrical discharge damaging the equipment. Flooding sensors can detect water or moisture present on floors, carpets and other surfaces. It will report a WET/DRY indication. All these sensors can generate alerts via email and SNMP Traps.

REMOTE SITE MONITORING & CONTROLLER

FUEL LEVEL, POWER METERING & MONITORING

Electricity is what keeps a cell tower running. Almost every cell tower has a redundant power system in place. If the primary power source fails, then automatically a backup system kicks in.

Often BTS sites rely on power coming from diesel generators. Generators will last as long as fuel is in the tanks. By monitoring proactively fuel levels, operators can get alerts before tanks are empty and cause a cell site to go down. Often BTS sites rely on power coming from generators. Generators will last as long as fuel is in the tanks. By monitoring proactively fuel levels, operators can get alerts before tanks are empty and cause a cell site to go down. This goes the same for sites with Fuel Cell systems using liquid fuel such as methanol.

PDUs or power distribution units can provide an operator remote power control and at the same time meter power usage for billing purposes. PDUs can also come with dry contacts and also outgoing contacts. The incoming contacts can be used to monitor power equipment such as batteries, rectifiers and UPS systems. The outgoing contacts can control such equipment (for example kick start a genset).

REMOTE SITE MONITORING & CONTROLLER

FUEL LEVEL SENSOR

PDU (DRY CONTACTS & POWER METER)

PHYSICAL SECURITY MONITORING

A lot of mobile operators outsource their O&M BTS activities to subcontractors. On quite a few occasions, BTS sites have gone down due to bad maintenance. Everyone knows that but how to prove who did what when you have multiple contractors. How to verify if a contractor did indeed visit the site and did what he had to do? What you need is a pair of eyes on site that allow you to keep track of any activity inside the BTS.

Camera is the automated pair of eyes. Many operators don't implement it as centralized monitoring of camera's and events from the BTS in the NOC isn't always possible. What if you don't have a network connection with the NOC? And if you have one, using bandwidth to monitor all those cameras is resource intensive: not just processing power (integrating hundreds of camera's) but also requires substantial bandwidth.

Operators can implement camera monitoring as the whole monitoring is performed locally inside the BTS. The camera detects an event such as motion and then sends a notification to the monitoring equipment/appliance. The appliance starts recording the event and sends an alert using its unique alerting capabilities. As all recordings are stored locally, there is no impact on bandwidth and all processing is distributed using the same hardware used for end-user simulation. Ceiling mounted cameras provides a 24x7x365 monitoring of the BTS site. When an event is detected, the NOC is immediately notified. Engineers can then connect remotely to the appliance to retrieve the relevant recording and verify what is going on inside the shelter or on the BTS site.

REMOTE SITE MONITORING & CONTROLLER

PDU WITH DRY CONTACTS