A Bridge That Truly Connects

In recent years, we have witnessed the creation of projects that have surpassed all previous construction projects in terms of size and scope. Whether the result is a new football stadium or the world’s longest bridge, these projects have something in common – the need for an integrated wireless telecommunications system allowing users to stay in touch with the rest of the world is a must.

Case in point is the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. It connects the Hong Kong SAR, Macao SAR and Zhuhai City of Guangdong Province and is the world’s longest across-sea bridge at 55 kilometers. In addition to the challenges of its length, it also must be able to survive the rigors of a salt corrosion and humidity of a marine environment as well as the winds and rain associated with the typhoons that regularly strike the region. The antennas that provide mobile wireless communications for the bridge needed to have the highest level of reliability, since their placement on elevated gantries would make future access extremely difficult. They also needed high performance since siting requirements forced China’s three operators to share equipment.

CLICK TO TWEET: An integrated wireless telecommunications system is important, even on the world’s longest across-sea bridge. Martin Zimmerman explains in this blog.

CommScope’s RVV-33B-R3 6-port sector antennas met the requirements. Because of the narrow azimuth half power beamwidth and broad bandwidth, this solution has become a popular choice for bridge coverage in many parts of the world. More than 110 units were deployed to provide coverage for the above-ground portions of the bridge. Our industry-leading PIM performance and long-term reliability meant that multiple carriers could be combined onto each antenna port without leading to capacity-draining noise generation.

CommScope’s contribution to the success of the project did not end here. The antennas were part of a package that included combiners and jumpers with our SureGuard boots to ensure the reliability of all the RF connections. Our DAS team provided 25 kilometers of leaky cable to provide coverage to parts of the road system that are underwater. CommScope also provided the comprehensive cabling system used in Zhuhai as the backbone of the local network.

To learn more about CommScope’s contribution to this project, please download our latest case study. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is a project that sufficiently proves CommScope is a trusted choice of the client and its collaborators.

Additional resources

• Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Case Study