Facundo's Senior Blog: 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.

(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.