RSI has completed a radio coverage study as part of the planning for Hong Kong Airport’s proposed new third runway. The purpose was to identify areas where the planned new buildings might block the existing UHF airport communications system and then to propose locations for new base sites to fill in these areas.
At this early stage in the project, construction has not started therefore it was necessary to create a 3D building model of the new terminal building, control tower and large hangars from the 2D plans that were available. This was then added to detailed terrain and surface model data of the existing airport area to create an overall model that could be used for coverage prediction.
RSI used ICS Telecom planning software to predict the radio coverage across the airport in both existing and new areas to produce detailed images of the signal levels.
Results showed that, as expected, there would be some significant areas of bad coverage from the existing radio base sites however with just a small number of additional base sites it would be possible to achieve full coverage.
RSI’s study has provided a firm basis for making decisions on the airport radio communications infrastructure and will allow engineers to plan with much greater confidence.
