E-Plus, Germany
The protection concepts guarantees the availability of the network

E-Plus has established itself as an innovative company in the German mobile telephone market and is also a trailblazer for the entire sector in many business fields.

There is a great responsibility associated with this standing of which E-Plus is always aware. This also means not resting on past laurels, but having the courage to tread new paths.

The application

The E-Plus network is based on the GSM 1800 standard and is known for its exceptional voice quality.

Numerous base transceiver stations (BTS) need to be located in an exposed position in order to achieve a network coverage of over 98% of the German population. Base stations must be protected from the high risk of lightning strikes.

Cost-intensive technology and the desire for permanent availability of the network make a protection concept absolutely essential.

Solution

Surge protection components for maintaining the power supply of base stations.

Mobile phone base stations are normally located on host buildings. For such installations, surge protection devices are used not only directly upstream of a base station but also in the metering area in order to ensure the supply here, too.

A base station, which is called node B in a UMTS network (3G), includes a transmission and receiver system, an antenna system and the electric power supply.

When selecting surge protection components, special importance is given to maintaining the power supply of base stations.

From the very start, the E-Plus network has been reliably protected against surge voltages using a combination of lightning arresters of type FLASHTRAB and surge arresters of type VALVETRAB. State-of-the-art technology is the use of FLASHTRAB Compact.

FLASHTRAB Compact works as per the AEC principle. AEC stands for Active Energy Control between the lightning current arresters and surge arresters. This arrester combination fulfills the requirements of all lightning protection levels for a maximum design width of 140 mm (3+1 circuits in TN/TT systems).

In order to ensure as compact an electrical subdistribution as possible, E-Plus has decided to use space-saving three level terminal blocks of the PIK series to distribute power.

Summary

Properly selected surge protection devices increase the availability of the entire radio/transmitter-receiver system and uphold the quality of services available.

Using arresters based on the AEC principle allows a compact electrical subdistribution that protects the power supply unit of a mobile phone base station against lightning surge voltages efficiently and cost-effectively.