Civil Aviation Authority, UAE

Highlights

• RAy, 11 GHz
• Air traffic control
• Desert environment, +50 ^oC
• Long haul link, 18 km
• 90 cm antennas
• -65dB RSSI recorded
• No downtime from 2015

The GCAA, an Emirate ‘blue chip’ company, maintains control and regulation of civil aviation in the UAE including provision of en-route air navigation services and all aspects of flight safety throughout the region. In 2009, the GCAA opened its new Air Navigation Centre, considered one of the busiest and the most technically advanced air traffic management facility in the region, if not the world.

One major problem that has since been identified and needed to be overcome was poor communication between Fujairah airport air traffic control centre and the communications tower. Since there are base stations for voice communication with aircrafts and other important services on this tower, the quality and stability of the link between tower and centre is very critical.

When looking for a solution to this problem GCAA quickly identified a major factor that would make finding an optimal solution more complex. The distance between Fujairah airport and the media mast is over 18 km with hilly terrain lying between the two sites.

After experimenting with a number of solutions, none of which could provide satisfactory levels of reliability over this critical link, RACOM were invited to perform a full transmission analysis and proposed that its RAy microwave link would provide the optimal solution. The final proposal was to use 11GHz band and 90 cm antennas.

RACOM RAy microwave units offer high radio receiver robustness against unwanted interference and exceptional guaranteed sensitivity that allows data speed gain in very challenging conditions and on links over extreme distances. With each unit individually climate chamber tested and certified to operate in extreme temperatures, GCAA accepted our recommendation and installed the link. Since GCAA wanted to eliminate any problem, during installation and commissioning a RACOM engineer was ready to travel to site, but was eventually not required.

Since becoming operational in 2015 to time of writing (Dec 2017), there has been no downtime over the link. The regulator and carriers are now very happy with the levels of communication provided from this communication tower and GCAA are delighted that RACOM has been able to support them in providing the high quality link for voice and data transmissions they consider to be one of their core operational functions.