Ranplan Wireless has announced a new partnership with Marubun [Tokyo, Japan], to distribute the recently launched Ranplan Professional 5.2, a combined in-building and outdoor network planning tool for dense urban environments. The partnership will enable Japanese industry to plan and deploy 5G New Radio (NR) networks that can cope with the expected demand for data consumption and capacity.
Japan is poised to become one of the first countries to leverage the next generation of wireless networks and roll out 5G. With the 2020 summer Olympics not far away, operators and equipment manufacturers need a tool to plan for increased data consumption and capacity requirements in dense urban environments such as Tokyo.
“We are excited at partnering with Marubun who will be distributing our software into the Japanese marketplace. The partnership will enable us to support Japanese industry in planning and designing 5G networks to meet the expected rise in data consumption and capacity,” said Alastair Williamson, CEO at Ranplan. “In dense urban cities like Tokyo, significant capacity will be required to cope with predicted growth, especially at peak times which may affect user experience.”
“As Japan prepares to upgrade its networks from 4G to 5G in good time for the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, now is the time to deploy Ranplan Professional to ensure that the next generation of networks deliver on the promise of quality of experience for the end user in highly dense areas,” continued Williamson.
Designing and planning 5G networks presents a variety of technical challenges; in particular, how to design for short range, high frequencies that can still cope with demanding indoor and outdoor coverage and high capacity levels. The Ranplan solution is an all-in-one, heterogeneous network planning, optimisation and simulation tool for Small Cells, DAS and Wi-Fi, supporting 3G, 4G/LTE, CBRS, 5G and IoT technologies. The software offers users a true 3D ray-tracing model covering frequency bands from 100MHz up to 100GHz, supporting 5G, Massive MIMO, 3D beamforming and mmWave technologies.
As 5G network trials ramp up, and with more deployments scheduled for 2019, Ranplan Professional meets the growing and urgent demand for a new generation of design tools capable of planning 5G networks using the latest simulation and predictive modelling techniques.
“Marubun is delighted to add Ranplan Professional 5G network planning tools to its portfolio of bespoke solutions. The transformation to 5G will bring many benefits to Japan’s economy over the following years and by deploying a tool such as Ranplan Professional to plan and design indoor and outdoor networks in coordination in highly dense areas will ensure users get better connectivity and quality of service,” said Masafumi Watanabe, Information & Communication Team at Marubun.