Malaysian Marine and Heavy Engineering Sdn. Bhd. (MMHE), is a globally trusted marine and heavy engineering solutions provider for a wide range of offshore & onshore facilities and vessels with over 40 years of track record of delivering integrated and complex solutions, including deepwater support services to international oil & gas clients.
Situated in Pasir Gudang, Johor, Malaysia with a staff strength of more than 2100 workers, MMHE has embarked on a digitalisation plan that demands a dynamic, high flexibility of technology and solution to optimise its operations in line with the Industrial 4.0 revolution.
To implement this, MMHE requires a strong and robust outdoor wireless and Wi-Fi network infrastructure that provides high reliability broadband wireless connectivity for the entire facility. This outdoor Wi-Fi infrastructure will serve as digital highway enabler for a wide range of digital applications for current and future needs ranging from facilities maintenance, remote operations, IOT sensors, VoIP and real-time bar code scanners asset tracking.
OBJECTIVES:
Fulfilling their Digital Initiatives, MMHE wireless network solution design are based on the following objectives:
To enable wireless broadband connectivity for various applications at MMHE West Yard
Allowing employees mobile broadband Internet access for multiple, system-owned or personal portable devices
To improve existing communications infrastructure by providing wider and faster Wi-Fi network coverage for various MMHE mobile applications
Use of smartphones, tablets and other portable devices at any location within MMHE fabrication area.
THE CHALLENGES:
Few challenges were presented during the initial discussion with customer in relation to the deployment of the wireless and Wi-Fi network:
Distance - Large area of Wi-Fi signal coverage is needed ~ Total area of MMHE West Yard covers an estimated of 372 acres with 1.8Km seafront
Obstructions - Heavy steel structures preventing Wi-Fi signal to reach the distance required
Limitations - Limited space and permitted locations to install Wi-Fi access points as well as to lay fibre and cabling points
Dynamic - Ever-changing physical environment at fabrication area affecting Wi-Fi signal coverage stability
THE SOLUTION:
With such a large area of Wi-Fi signal coverage requirements yet having limited locations to lay cables, the fast and practical approach to solve this is using total wireless network infrastructure. A combination of two wireless technologies were proposed:
Mimosa high-capacity wireless backhaul solution eliminating the need to lay physical fibre optic cables. The Mimosa high-capacity wireless backhaul provide up to 600Mbps Point to Multipoint wireless network on the 5GHz unlicensed band spectrum.
The Altai Super Wi-Fi solution enables long distance coverage with lesser number of access points required. The first phase of this project sees a total of 560,000m2 areas with full Wi-Fi coverage needless to say seamless roaming and redundant signal coverage between access points. With the Altai Super Wi-Fi Smart Antenna technology, only 4 units of Access Points are needed to give full Wi-Fi signal for the entire facility with 100% seamless network roaming to support the required applications.
THE RESULT
With the high capacity Mimosa wireless backhaul and the Altai Super Wi-Fi solution deployed at outdoor yard, MMHE digital initiatives and objectives are achieved with much lesser investment cost. Besides cost, the entire project deployment time took only less than two weeks to complete.
This project has exceeded customer's expectation with the Altai Super Wi-Fi networks as the enabler for various mobile applications fulfilling both its current and future digitalisation initiatives
