Cel-Fi WAVE Portal Release 1.5 – Cel-Fi Support

Release date: April 21, 2022

Nextivity is excited to release WAVE Portal version 1.5, which includes numerous improvements to the Cel-Fi Public Safety user experience, including:

Full support for Cel-Fi SOLO RED half-watt ERCES public safety BDA.
The addition of a Public Safety Commissioning Wizard that enables commissioning in minutes by bringing together all steps into a simple flow, including Automatic Path Loss Calculation and other efficiencies only available with Cel-Fi RED.
Introduction of DAQ Equivalent calculations and Uplink TX Power measurements to reduce deployment time and support AHJ acceptance.
Critical Area designation on floorplans to notate Areas of Refuge.

Please read on to learn more about these and many more improvements now available in the WAVE Portal.

Public Safety Commissioning Wizard

Cel-Fi RED offers the easiest ERCES commissioning process in the industry. We just made it even better.

WAVE Portal now includes a Public Safety Commissioning Wizard, which collects all the steps in a single flow. The video below demonstrates how this works:

Select or Create the Site
Select or Create the Configuration File which contains the frequencies
Enter the High Site location to perform the automated Path Loss calculation
Verify the Link Budget
Confirm and Create the System

Previously, a user would navigate to different sections of the WAVE Portal to complete each of these steps. While the separate sections are still available, the Public Safety Commissioning Wizard makes the process that much easier.

To use this new tool, select “Create Offline PS System” at the top of the “New Systems” page. Alternatively, if the Cel-Fi RED system has already been connected to the Internet and is listed in the “New Systems” list, you may click the system to commission it, even while it is currently offline.

Once the WAVE Portal process is complete, the installer uses the WAVE PRO app to load the Site Installation Package on the Cel-Fi RED system and initiate automated calibration.

New Metric Added: DAQ Equivalent

Delivered Audio Quality (DAQ) Equivalent values have been added to the WAVE Portal.

DAQ is a required component of ERCES Acceptance Testing by AHJs in many jurisdictions. Collecting this data can be a time-consuming, subjective process. With the addition of DAQ Equivalent calculations, installers will further reduce installation time and improve AHJ acceptance, streamlining receipt of Certificate of Occupancy.

DAQ Equivalents are automatically calculated based on the applicable TIA standard (Telecommunications Systems Bulletin 88.1-E, Annex A Table A1, November 2018) and made available where requisite source data is available.

QUATRA RED NU and SOLO RED BDA will now report Downlink SNR and DAQ Equivalent on all Control Channels. This information can be found under the relevant 700 and/or 800 MHz tabs on the Asset Detail page, as shown to the right.

Additionally, Site Surveys and Survey Reports generated using the COMPASS RED will now include DAQ Equivalent. An example of this can also be seen to the right. For more information, please review the WAVE PRO version 1.5 Release Notes.

Critical Areas on Floorplans

The Site Survey Editor is now able to designate Critical Areas on floorplans. This notation may be used to mark Areas of Refuge as required by the jurisdiction.

Critical Areas are set under Options > Survey Editor on the Site page of the WAVE Portal, and are also displayed on the WAVE PRO app when conducting tasks that use floorplans, such as Grid Test and Talk Out Test.

Survey Reports also display and report separate results for the Critical Areas on each floor. When generating a Survey Report, the user is prompted to confirm the Pass/Fail Threshold for each technology. The survey will now report a failure if any Critical Area is below the threshold.

New Measurement Added: Peaked Total Uplink Transmit Power

Peaked Total UL TX Power is a new measurement and history chart added for 700 & 800 MHz which will be useful when demonstrating the unique intelligence of Cel-Fi RED to transmit at the correctly configured uplink power level whenever an uplink signal is present.

The measurement provides the highest momentary Total UL TX Power that occurred during the reporting period. It combines all configured channels. A value of -128 dBm indicates that no channels were active during the most recent period.

How is it used?

With the Cel-Fi RED system connected to the internet, navigate in the WAVE Portal to its System page and select the BDA or NU. Peaked Total UL TX Power is located at the top of the page; click the History icon. The RED system will report data more rapidly while in this view.

Use a handset to talk out on one of the configured frequencies, testing normal relay operation. After a minute, refresh the chart on the WAVE Portal and observe the change in UL TX Power, demonstrating the situational intelligence of the boosting capability of Cel-Fi RED.

This measurement can be used to further demonstrate the system’s elimination of the near-far effect by evaluating the UL TX Power during a test period while keying up near a server antenna, and again minutes later while far from all server antennas. Refresh the history chart and observe the difference in UL TX Power between the two tests, demonstrating the dynamic uplink capability of Cel-Fi RED.

Other Improvements

Channel and Band Settings are now retained when a new network configuration is loaded for a revision update under the same SKU. (Settings will still return to factory default if a device SKU is changed.)
WAVE Alarms for CU Link Lost and Active Server Antenna Lost now specify the specific CU and Antenna number that was lost. For instance, “CU Link Lost (port 1)” or “Server Antenna Lost (CU Port 2, Ant 1).”
Offline systems now display a grey Connectivity status icon on the Systems page, instead of red.
When creating a System Configuration for public safety, a warning will be displayed if the number of frequencies specified exceeds the capacity of QUATRA RED. For instance, SOLO RED supports up to 64 channels in Class A configuration, and QUATRA RED supports 56; therefore, an Installation Package containing 60 channels can only be installed on SOLO RED.
FirstNet can now only be enabled in the Installation Package if the Site address is in an approved country; currently limited to the United States.
Images larger than three megapixels will automatically be scaled down to 3MP when uploaded. This change prevents potential display issues when viewed in the WAVE PRO app on some devices. (Note: The image pixel dimensions are constrained to a total of 3MP; the file size is not limited to 3 megabytes.)
Site menu option “Installation Package” has been renamed to “Public Safety Config” to avoid confusion on sites that may not include a public safety system.
Site Overview Report now includes a timestamp indicating when it was generated.
The Product Breakdown widget on the Dashboard now lists product models. When the model name or corresponding pie slice is clicked, all Systems of that model are listed.
The version number in the WAVE Portal footer now links to the latest release notes.

Issues Resolved

The Operator Switching feature once again appears in System Settings on appropriate Cel-Fi SOLO devices.
Performing a software update on the QUATRA 4000e no longer causes the active port assignments to be reset.
Resolved an issue that prevented the Survey Last Modified Date from updating in some scenarios.
Resolved an issue that caused floorplan images with a ‘portrait’ aspect ratio to be distorted on the Survey Report.
Select special characters (#,&,?,+,=) are no longer permitted in FileManager file names.
Password reset will now work for user accounts that had been created with upper case letters in the user’s email address.
Attempting to add a user that already exists will now return an error message.
Handling of improperly formatted Bulk Access Requests has been improved to provide a summary of entry successes and failures.

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