Technical Design

Bell Aliant, the vendor selected through the County’s competitive procurement process, has proposed the installation of WiMAX wireless broadband equipment on existing cellular towers across Simcoe County.  Service is expected to be available to over 95% of Simcoe County residents and will significantly address the gaps in broadband availability in many of our rural areas.  This technology has been deployed to over 900 sites across Canada and is based on advanced wireless technology.  In particular, the solution uses licensed spectrum at 2.5 GHz which is less prone to interference and is effective in many non line-of-sight situations. 

There are 2 “flavours” of CPE (customer premise equipment), an indoor unit and an outdoor unit which is mounted at roof height (6m).  What is important to note is that both types have substantial antenna gains—nominally 13 db - unlike a typical cellular phone which has a 0db antenna gain. This improves the link margin. The network incorporates Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) technology which means that the CPE does not require direct line of sight to the base station. Heavy forest cover or large landforms can impede coverage, but the overall coverage ability of WiMAX is significantly better than earlier technologies.

Bell and Inukshuk calculates its site capacity utilizing the ‘peak-busy-hour’ methodology. This methodology provides for estimating the peak capacity requirements that will occur during the busiest period of the day.  Through proprietary analysis and validation with actual data, Inukshuk estimates that on a per sector basis, each sector on a single base station is capable of supporting 220 to 250 subscribers in the peak-busy-hour. Additional base stations will be added on a sector when required once subscriber uptake initiates the demand as part of our ongoing service arrangement to ensure the best quality of service.