Deira City Centre, a shopping mall in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, features over 370 stores and services. Opened in 1995, it was Dubai’s first large-scale, mixed-use shopping mall,with retail outlets, restaurants, entertainment and hotels. Attracting over 19 million visitors annually, the mall has become one of the region’s most visited destinations. 

The centre uses TETRA coverage provided by the Dubai network operator Nedaa, which supplies service to government and approved private entities. Deira City Centre has over 200 TETRA users, including maintenance, security and operational staff – but after changing from their old analogue radio system to the digital network, they had found that coverage was lacking in several critical locations. Security plays an important role at the mall, and so its management contacted radio company Waves Middle East to look into enhancing the TETRA network coverage on the site. 

Nedaa’s TETRA infrastructure served most of the site, but it was confirmed that coverage was inadequate in certain important areas, including fire exits, maintenance, security corridors and car parks. In the event of an emergency, these coverage gaps might lead to life-threatening situations and so it was considered extremely important to improve TETRA coverage to the required level. TETRA repeaters from Waves Middle East’s partner Creowave were chosen as the answer. 

Turnkey solution

Creowave and Waves Middle East supplied a turnkey package including a site survey, RF planning and hardware – from the TETRA repeater to antennas and cabling – plus installation and final approval.

The Deira City Centre consists of three floors and an adjacent parking hall. On the ground floor are a large parking space as well as maintenance and security premises. The first and second floors house the shopping, dining and entertainment services.

To amplify the required TETRA carriers, a Creowave channel-selective TETRA repeater was installed on the ground floor near the security and maintenance area. Through over three kilometres of cabling and an extensive antenna network, the amplified signal is distributed to the whole shopping centre.

One special requirement set by the Deira City Centre Management was that the cabling and antennas should not be visible to the public and should blend in with the surroundings. In addition, all the work had to be carried out when the mall was closed, which meant that it could only be done at night. 

On completion of the project, extensive testing by Nedaa and the customer confirmed that TETRA coverage was excellent throughout the centre, including the areas that originally had weak coverage or none at all. 

James Samuel, chief executive of Waves Middle East, reflected: “We are very proud to be associated with this project. We had 60 days to complete this project from the time of order placement, and thanks to the excellent support from Creowave, the Deira City Centre mall management team, Nedaa and the Waves personnel, we were able to complete the project within the milestones as scheduled”.