Telecom Infrastructure Maintenance with Dynamic Wireless Communication

Telecom Infrastructure Maintenance with Dynamic Wireless Communication

Shinichi Sugiura
Executive Manager, NTT infrastructure network corportation
31-1 Nihonbashi Hama-cho 2-Chome Chuo-ku Tokyo 103-0007 Japan
E-Mail: sugiura@hqt.nttinf.co.jp

Kazuhiro Ootsuki
System Manager NTT infrastructure network corporation
31-1 Nihonbashi Hama-cho 2-Chome Chuo-ku Tokyo 103-0007 Japan
E-Mail: ootsuki@hqt.nttinf.co.jp

Abstract
NTT infrastructure network corporation, a provider of network management services for information technology and telecommunications infrastructure in Japan, has successfully established a new business model for facility information management by utilizing mobile devices. The new application employs wireless Web GIS technology that allows field crews to access and update facility information immediately in the field. As a result, NTT InfraNet has experienced a drastic improvement in workflow management.

Introduction
NTT InfraNet provides network management services for information technology and telecommunications infrastructure throughout Japan. Based in Tokyo, NTT InfraNet has offices nationwide and fields more than 1,700 technicians who use 55 information technology including telecommunication management platform (Triple IP) to provide management services of planning, engineering and maintenance of extensive underground telecommunications facilities, optical cables including manholes, conduits, and tunnels now exceeding 400,000 mails across the country. NTT InfraNet seeks to provide greater efficiency and higher quality service to a growing client base that includes government ministries, municipalities and major Japanese telecommunications firms.

Minimizing downtime in client networks is a priority and requires close communications between NTT InfraNet’s technicians and operations center to be maintained at all times. To accomplish this, NTT InfraNet worked with a Japanese GIS software developer to create a wireless Web GIS solution that can serve facilities information in real time to remote field crews.

This wireless Web GIS solution has extended spatial facility information to NTT InfraNet field crews via handheld devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones. Field technicians can now receive work orders, view network facility information in real time and instantly determine how to proceed with their work. Once the work is completed, the technicians can make changes to the facility information onscreen and transmit the information back to the operations center where the appropriate database is automatically updated.

In the past, work orders and related facility information such as maps and charts were either printed out or downloaded from an operations center server to a mobile PC and carried into the field. After work completion, technicians returned revised hardcopy drawings or digital schematics to the operations center where they were updated on the center server. This required at least two daily trips to the operations center and meant that shared network facility information was never completely up to date. In many instances because of work efficiency considerations, a technician other than the one who actually performed the field work would input the updated information, so there was no guarantee that the updated facility information completely reflected on-site conditions.

In addition, an increase in the number of businesses entering the information and telecommunications sectors has intensified competition for services, so service providers do not always have adequate specialists to perform specific facility and field operations. Conventional facility management based on diagrams and charts generated by field operations specialists had led to obstacles for information and communications service providers to communications with NTT InfraNet, a management service provider. Therefore, NTT InfraNet must be able to access each client’s facilities databases to understand the network design and properly service their infrastructure in the field.

True Mobile GIS
The keywords of field operation innovation are “wireless” and “visual.” With the expanding coverage of wireless communications and advances in digital image processing technologies, services have been freed from the limitations of prior perspectives, and it is possible to obtain a wide range of digital images without restriction.

NTT InfraNet’s wireless Web GIS service uses handheld devices to allow on-site technicians to instantaneously visually confirm and update facility information from the field in real time and in a manner that is easy to understand even for technicians who are not field operations specialists, thereby dramatically improving field operations. As a result, center and field technicians can work in tandem based on the latest data.

Figure 1. This overview of the Wireless Web GIS service shows how client facilities information is accessed and shared by handheld devices in the field as well as by PCs in the operations center.
There are two main features of this application that fully leverage the power of handheld devices. The first is downloading and viewing support for vector maps that operate 5 to 10 times faster than bit maps. The second is the wireless Web GIS service that enables server data to be updated from handheld devices in real time. An important aspect of these features is that digital images are not limited like diagrams and charts that include only pre-determined information. Rather they contain dynamic information relating to the site where the technician using the device is located. This allows the technician to specify and view details visually, which dramatically enhances decision making in the field.

Until now, facility management has been done by special technicians mainly using hardcopy diagrams and charts. By displaying spatial information visually, however, it becomes possible to perform visual facility management, which is easy for everyone to understand. This application can be provided to new telecommunications segment entrants that are facing a shortage of field operations technicians.

Figure.2 The graphic on left illustrates how NTT InfraNet previously stored facility information, while the graphic at right shows how the same information is now managed.
NTT InfraNet’s wireless Web GIS service makes it possible for dynamic collaboration to occur between fixed terminals (PCs) and mobile devices. Technicians can, when necessary, use handheld devices to simultaneously confirm and update in real time network facility information that is accessed at an operations center on fixed terminals. In the field, the mobile device acquires its current position from an attached GPS unit and then retrieves a small data set containing only the vicinity map and facility overlay data for the area where the unit is located. This data set is delivered to the device by wireless transmission from the center server. If the technician must move to a different location, the system automatically monitors his movement and retrieves incremental data as needed. This is the secret to keeping file sizes small and manageable for wireless transmission, uploading and viewing.

The network facility information map, with spatial details and supporting database information, is overlaid freely on the vicinity map onscreen. The technician can query the map to zoom in on network facility and view detailed data relating to infrastructure facility, such as individual system components. This wireless service also features the ability to update information from the mobile device for transmission back to the central server.

Visual, or graphical, facility information is transmitted from the operations center using optical fibers at a rate of 2 Mbps and from the field using FOMA, a third-generation mobile service, at a rate of 384 kbps. Text databases are managed independently under the wireless Web GIS and linked with mutual associations. Some PCs and PDAs are equipped with IP cameras to allow live images from the site to be shared and recorded at the operations center.

Figure.3 These graphics illustrate how NTT InfraNet manages electronic maps and facility information using Wireless Web GIS with PDA and FOMA phones.
In some areas, of course, there are outdoor radio wave dead zones where the mobile units cannot directly receive and transmit data. The application has been designed to allow hard drive downloads of electronic maps and facility information for a specific area before the technician leaves for the field. Technicians perform their work while confirming the timeliness of the information being used based on a display of the elapsed time since the most recent download to the locally-cached database. It is also possible to integrate the application with hardware technologies for designated optical cables or optical fiber core wires via PDA serial terminals, linking facility operations information from the field directly to the database.

Wireless Web GIS at work
When optical cables are installed or updated, the wireless Web GIS application is linked to a cable location system that specifies where the cable has been placed. By transmitting a signal unique to certain cables from relay buildings and access holes, the location system enables underground cables to be located from above ground. It records and updates the cable location information in three dimensions in real time. Simultaneously, the visual facility information is imaged using NTT InfraNet’s exclusive automatic imaging devices and transmitted online via a storage medium, such as a memory card, for recording and updating.

Figure.4 Wireless Web GIS enables collaboration between the operations center and field technicians by updating information in real-time from the field when the technicians complete the installation and/or modification of optical cables.
When optical fiber core wires are connected or replaced, the wireless Web GIS service can be used in collaboration with a two-dimensional code core wire identification system. The two-dimensional code core wire identification system uses core wire replacement designations from the operations center to confirm which wires are to be replaced according to two-dimensional codes assigned to the wires. The replaced core wire information can be automatically recorded in the database. Cable core wire information at the time of connection or replacement can be recorded and updated in real time. Visual facility information can also be recorded and updated simultaneously as described above.

In other words, information concerning new optical cable installation and updates as well as optical fiber connections and replacements performed in the field is conveyed immediately to the technician in real time. Moreover, it is possible to link with optical cable monitoring and other systems at operation centers for direct transmission of operations center information to the field.

When an optical cable fails, the on-site technician receives an alarm on a PDA from the optical cable monitoring system simultaneously with the operation center. A GPS system and visual facility information specify the location of the failure and the infrastructure involved. Furthermore, the operations center and the on-site technician can access the same visual facility information to determine the restoration method. The optical cable information, core wire information, and visual facility information are updated on the spot using the hardware devices referred to above.

Thanks to this dynamic collaboration between the on-site technicians and the operation center, when an optical cable failure occurs the operations center and the on-site technician have instant access to identical location and graphical facility information.

Figure.5 Wireless Web GIS can trigger an alarm on a PDA or cell phone to alert field technicians to possible equipment failures. Facility information is simultaneously shared between the field and operations center.
Therefore, the time required to determine the location of the failure and the infrastructure involved was reduced from approximately four to six hours to about one hour. In times of earthquake or flooding, the Web GIS application obtains climate and other relevant information from the Internet and uses it to automatically identify which areas face the highest risks and which facilities should be inspected first. The system displays the information at the operations center and on-site technicians’ PDAs. On-site technicians can transmit images showing the status of high-risk areas to the operations center and thereby prevent damage before it occurs.

Optical cable route risk information is transmitted from the field to the operations center in real time. The operations center can plan new routes based on the status of communications traffic on the optical cables being monitored.

Figure. 6 Personnel in the operations center plan optical cable routes by sharing updated risk information supplied by field technicians.
During both emergency situations and routine operations, the ability to obtain field information at the operations center in real time enables personnel to determine the current status and requirements of optical cable routes as well as future requirements. Operations center personnel can also make the necessary assessments for the planning, engineering, and maintenance of overall field optical cable management.

Conclusion
This new wireless Web GIS service has contributed to a 75 percent reduction in the time required during field operations to identify target sites and facilities and to communicate with the operations center. Field technicians can make determinations concerning most field operations in a fraction of the time previously required. And operations centers, which until now have been responsible for all optical cable routing, can spend more of their time providing proposals and responses to customers based on accurate and up-to-date field facility information. This makes field technicians and operations center personnel more efficient, allowing NTT InfraNet to offer new value-added services. NTT InfraNet will deploy some of these value-added services on NTT DoCoMo Kyushu’s approximately 1,000 km of optical routes in April 2003.

NTT InfraNet has experienced a positive effect on its field operation management as a result of the wireless Web GIS because up-to-date visual operations information can be shared instantly by all technicians. Greater field technician efficiency has translated directly into improvement of network reliability and minimization of downtime in client networks.