The city of Jerusalem is deploying Siklu’s millimeter wave (mmWave) core and access network equipment for an ongoing project which will become one of the largest municipal networks in the world.
The city’s Gigabit wireless access (GWA) network will provide high-speed internet service in public spaces and municipal buildings and to educational institutions. The network will also connect thousands of security, traffic control and parking management cameras at speeds ranging from hundreds of megabits to 10 Gigabits (10Gbps).
As in other cities around the world, GWA is needed to bring smart city services throughout Jerusalem, as fibre optic deployment throughout the city is very limited. A GWA network is a more expedient solution as the addition of new fibre optic lines would involve lengthy and expensive trenching work.
"Jerusalem is an ancient city filled with historic sites and careful planning is required to avoid harm to antiquities,” said Eitan Barzilai, the Municipality Head of Technological Development. “Therefore, we looked at a wireless network to speed up the process. In addition, our proof of concept studies showed that a private mmWave based system would offer us more available bandwidth at a lower overall cost, as compared to leasing high-speed lines from a public network operator, for example.”
Accordingly, the city decided to build a unified wireless network that would leverage its building and “street furniture” assets to serve as inter-connection points above the ground. The GWA network operates in mmWave bands at 60GHz (V-Band) and 70/80GHZ (E-Band). These frequencies enable what is known in the industry as wireless fibre, as they are uncongested, more readily accessible (compared to 5GHz) and the available spectrum offers predictable net capacities as high as 10Gbps.
The GWA current network consists of hundreds of connections in two layers: a core redundant ring offering speeds of 5-10 Gbps with inter-hop ranges of up to 10km, and a street-level access layer ranging from hundreds of Mbps to 2Gbps. The network currently operates via point-to-point connections and will expand soon with a point-to-multipoint configuration after the 60GHz band is opened for use by the Israel Ministry of Communications.
