Blog 16: Advisory Meeting #2

Answer #2: 

By analyzing and replacing a damaged hardware component within a Radio Base Station.

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1. Damages within the "radios" of an RBS due to the internal components of that radio being burned out, damaged, or the cables are torn or ruined. In response we replace the Radio with one that is working.

2. Antennae for the RBS is not working, due to the cables being damaged, the connectors are loose or water damage caused the antennae to burn out. In response an RF Field Engineer, must contact a general contractor to come and replace the damaged components in the antennae, since they have the equipment to go to the top of the antenna.

3. Within the RBS their is always a Climate System (AC UNIT) that keeps the RBS cool, if damaged all of the hardware components become extremely hot in a short amount of time. An RF Field Engineer must contact an AC contractor to replace the AC unit.

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1. Evolution of Mobile Base Station Architectures

2.  A rare look inside an LTE cell site, operated by Sprint in San Francisco

3. Advanced baseband technology in third-generation radio base stations

4. Base Station Hardware Manual

Blog 15: Independent Component 2 Approval

1. Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.

For independent component 2, I plan on doing more mentorship. I will assist my mentor in Troubleshooting RBS and will try to explore more in depth about Radio Frequency, not just the basics.

2. Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.

To show the evidence of my 30 hours, I will take pictures everytime I am doing mentorship.

3. And explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.

I will gain a more comfortable and reliable feel since I will be constantly going to mentorship and doing most of the same work. I will also be with my mentor more and he will be explaining what to do in a situation I can't seem to troubleshoot.

Independent Component 1

Literal

(A) I, Facundo Holzmeister, affirm that I have completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.

(B) My source that helped me complete the independent component was my mentor, Oscar Holzmeister. I assisted him with troubleshooting the cellular coverage in different cities. 

(C) Independent Digital Spreadsheet link is under the Mentorship Log link.

(D) During my 31 hours of mentorship dedicated to the independent component 1, I assisted my mentor with operating and maintaining a variety of Radio Base Stations (RBS) around different cities. Overtime, I have learned that most of these Stations fail to transmit and receive communications due to damaged equipment within the RBS. The most common issues being, a power source issue, and a hardware or software issue, and I have been exposed to each of this problems as well as some unique problems. 

Interpretive

All of the work that I have been doing so far, has assisted me with my component. Like I said before, in my Literal D answer, I assisted my mentor by troubleshooting Radio Base Stations that had damaged equipment and caused issues in the cellular network. Being exposed and demonstrated how to fix these issues with the right tools, I had a confident and accurate answer towards my Essential Question (EQ) and 3 possible answers for my final presentation. For example, my EQ was, "How can an RF Field Engineer best troubleshoot cellular coverage in a city?" and my answer one was "Identify whether a power outage is an external or internal issue in a Radio Base Station." I came up with this answer through my mentorship experience. On November 18, I was first exposed to a power issue, more specifically an external power source issue, and the power wasn't working within the RBS due to the station being vandalized, meaning that the power cables from the main power source had been completely stolen. 

My mentor determining which equipment
 within the power panel and RBS weren't receiving power. 

Vandalized Equipment, or stolen cables
within the power source

My next exposure was on December 27, where the main power source to an RBS had been completely ran over by a vehicle. In this situation, I discovered that we needed to contact a General Contractor to also help us replace this source of equipment just because it was so out of hand. I also learned how to check for the power source and how a power generator works. 

Main Power Source that got ran over by a car.

Testing whether the Power Source Cables
were hot, and they were at 250 volts.

Experts had to remove the hot cables
from the sidewalk for safety reasons.

Those are just two examples that helped me best with my components. There were many more power issues that I had to deal with throughout my mentorship such as on December 28, and December 31. There were also hardware issues where I had to replace sets of equipment and transmitters within a Radio Base Station which will assist me in my upcoming presentation and my research as well.

Removing a Damaged equipment within an RBS

The damaged radio we replaced

Me logging the site details

If you need more proof of my 30 hours of work, took pictures every single time I did mentorship. I uploaded the on dropbox which you can check them out Pixtures: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rrfgvh06kajbjx3/Nauhx8lvGu

Applied

Well I pretty much answered this question above, but like I said before being exposed to different types of issues within a RBS had most definitely helped me figure out different answers to my EQ. In my 30 minute presentation I mostly focused on a power issue within an RBS, because I had found through my mentorship experience that most of the common issues within an RBS was a power issue. This also helped stabilize my foundation for my senior topic, because I now know all of the issues within a RBS, I know how to troubleshoot each one and know the very basics of how everything works within an RBS. For example, one of the experiences that really allowed me to learn all about my foundation towards RF Field Engineer, was on September 10 when I assisted my mentor in installing a software that allowed the RBS to run and function. This 4 hour experience showed me what how the equipment's functioned, the software and what happens when their is an issue within the cellular network in a city. 

The RBS with the Radios, Transmitters, and Receivers. 

The RBS was located behind the LA Fair Plex.

Installing the software to the RBS.