Towards a common telecommunication antenna structure farm network through GIS technology

Abstract

When establishing towers for telecommunication sector on a location, the most of service providers violate rules and regulations regulated by the government, even though there is a possibility to share towers among 3 facility providers. Therefore it is a common scenery in Sri Lanka that the most of tops of mountains are consisted with two or more telecommunication towers with closer locations. This would influence severely the people living in the close proximity and their properties and also to the natural environment. The study was designed to select suitable locations for antenna structures that satisfy the national policies for the study area (Balangoda DS Division, Ratnapura District). The model for the selecting the suitable locations using different criteria was developed using the Model Builder tool in the ArcGIS Software. Using ArcGIS software and different criteria, it was able to prepare the coverage maps for both existing and newly designed tower networks. The study reveals that it needs only two towers to cover up the full study area, even though there are five towers which are maintained by TSPs separately. Further, it discovered that the present network is not so enough for the future demands. And also it is suggesting that the concept of sharing antenna structures is very important to overcome environmental and social issues.