Success Case

Milan Underground Metropolitana L5: A new metro line granting full mobile coverage for travelers

Transport and logistics

Metropolitana Milano is the most extensive metropolitan network in Italy with a shocking 484,050,000 journeys/year.

Line M5 of the Milan Metro crosses the city from the north east (Bignami terminus) to the west (San Siro Stadio terminus). Built as a light metro with tunnels and trains smaller than the three preexisting Milan metro lines, it is also known as the “purple line. Line 5 is equipped with an innovative automatic driving system: it is in fact a driverless metro: the platform’s vehicles have no driver’s cab and offer high levels of performance, comfort and safety. The entire 12.9 km metro line requires a very high level of connectivity to face the growing demand in data usage of the 10,720 passengers per hour at full capacity.

A multi-operator DAS solution was required to guarantee all passengers travelling on Line 5 a simultaneous connection to share content to watch videos or to browse the web. Travelers can now rest easy while enjoying the full benefits of being seamlessly connected during all points of their journey.

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Challenges

Underground stations and entire metro lines have always been areas difficult to reach with continuous, seamless connectivity. This could be due to capacity (busier times can saturate the network at peak hours due to the density of users with high data volumes) or due to coverage (the sheer length of these underground lines can also be afecting performance by resulting in costly solutions).

Solution

In total we have deployed a SISO solution with 508 antennas and 53 RUs all throughout the area. The DAS solution includes an extender, or remote access facility, a system designed to extend mobile telephone services within specific places. To this end, the system not only extends coverage but also performs network functions, providing radio coverage inside the metro as agreed with the operators.