Installing a Distributed Antenna System for Mercy Medical Center

By forging a strong partnership with Vision Technologies, Mercy Medical Center leveraged Vision’s technology integration expertise to solve various communications and security business requirements. Vision’s security, wireless, PMO, audio-visual and structured cabling capabilities enabled the implementation of our Integrated Technology Design methodology to efficiently deploy IP camera surveillance, access control, teleconferencing and complete coverage wireless communications. 

Vision Technologies installed a distributed antenna system (DAS) for Mercy Medical Center’s 20-story, 688,000-square-foot Mary Catherine Bunting Center in Baltimore, Maryland. The solution, which provided two-way radio and paging services throughout the facility, was based on CommScope/Andrew Solutions ION-B radio-over-fiber architecture. The ION-B solution utilizes antennas connected to coaxial horizontal cabling to distribute radio and paging signals to end users, and then combines the traffic onto optical fiber backbones that are connected to DAS head-end equipment. The DAS head-end equipment then sends signaling, as appropriate, to other users or to wireless service providers.

The main operational goals for the installation of a DAS at the Bunting Center were:

To provide two-way Radio & Paging – The two-way radio and paging was necessary for critical communications of Mercy Medical, Security, and Facilities personnel.

To save the cost of installing a new RF source in the new project – Vision Technologies extended coverage from the existing campus two-way radio system to the Bunting Tower. The extension was provided from the campus repeater located in the existing tower to the Bunting Center Basement MDF, via coaxial cable. A new donor antenna was installed on the rooftop to collect RF for the Paging system.