Construction: Vision for Indoor Structure in the Office of Future
Let’s step back into the previous thread on construction. In the previous post we discussed software architecture options for office buildings.
That led to a though processes that how should real estate owners think about the indoor structure of their properties so that it would meet the unknown needs of the future and give owners ability to offer better services. The requirements are roughly:
Users are looking for good connectivity. Currently done with WiFi, but all the wiring is somewhat costly
When renters change, there often is quite long-lasting renovations. Walls drawn down, new hosted, etc. This takes weeks (or a few months) and produces lots of waste. Overall it is costly.
How to do better?
This is one take:
Use infrastructure sharing (neutral host) as a way to shave costs in connectivity
Use elevator shaft at the digital backbone of the building and distribute connectivity from it throughout the building
Put servers into the no longer needed space that originally was reserved for the lift motor and host the building platform with easy APIs there.
Use lego-like floor panel solutions (see below) that allow rapid reconfiguration of the office floor space.
Neutral Host for Indoor
People spend 90% of their time indoors and consume data where they are. In fact, about 80% of data is consumed indoors. Tenants are demanding predictable coverage, capacity and speed of the service in the whole building. Indoor user experience with 4G and 5G should be as good as outdoor.
This is due to the higher CAPEX and OPEX per subscriber indoors resulting in a lower ROI. That’s why indoor network rollouts are common in very high-density places like stadiums, train stations etc. but not elsewhere. Indoor coverage relies mostly on outdoor networks in offices.
5G adds their own set of issues to the mix. Higher bands used in 5G have faster attenuation with shorter coverage. More base stations are used to cover the same area.
Use of energy efficient construction materials is increasing due to costs and tightening energy codes. These reduce overall energy consumption and e.g., mitigate climate change but increase attenuation of radio waves. Especially in higher bands used by 5G.
Office buildings tend to be much thicker than residential ones. This increases radio attenuation in central areas of the building further.
This leads to an unmet demand for indoor coverage.
Sharing of investments is a true and tested way to address the rising costs challenges. It can be done with increased levels of common infrastructure. The more sharing is achieved, the greater the cost advantage.
Indoor 5G is in a perfect spot for this. In 4G where the licensed bands are relatively narrow (20 MHz) compared to needs the case for multiple radios is stronger. In 5G however the bands can be 100 MHz or more, meaning that a single 5G band with a relatively short coverage can meet the needs of users well into the future This due to high bandwidths having faster attenuation and a multitude of barriers like floors, walls that the signal needs to bypass.
Neutral host is a model for selling capacity from a shared infrastructure to incumbent operators. It can be developed as operator-led where one of local operator rolls it out and sells to others or as 3rd party where the neutral host operator is an own entity just for that purpose.
Lift Shaft at Digital Backbone
Lifts companies are a natural provider for in-building connectivity towards big real estate owners for a number of reasons:
Single party to make an agreement with (versus tens of thousands of small construction/repair companies)
Have huge fleets of elevators under managed services (millions) in large commercial real estate buildings already. So there is an existing relationship with parties knowing and trusting each other
Big business opportunity for lift vendors in retrofitting and a differentiation story in next generation product.
The lift company could understand better the movement of people on the floor. (via location services of the radio technology). This allows to position lifts on the right floor when needed (prediction). Better customer experience and less lift movement means less wear and tear leading to savings.
Each floor could have a small base station integrated to the lift (or wifi or whatever technology is the flavor of the month)
Lifts have the shaft that is the cheapest conduit to draw optic cable connection (or perhaps wireless in shaft will work better due to weight limitations)
Many buildings were built when lifts still required a separate motor in its own room. Nowadays the motor is in the shaft and these spaces are unused. They make good places to host small data centres where the building related platform is installed.
Extras
As gravy on the cake (yuk!), buildings with own private network can use it for any of their own purposes. Replacing wired connections with wireless.
In energy this for example enables control and prioritisation of loads. This is an enabler for participating into grid operators’ demand-response schemes (selling NegaWatts). With enough real estate mass, the consumption curbing capacity will be quite valuable for the energy grid.
Retrofitting solutions
A longer terms approach would be to look for solutions that allow to quick retrofitting of office space.
Typically, in real-estate when tenant changes, then new tenant does extensive changes so that the space suits their needs. This takes weeks and generates construction waste.
Nextfloor and similar are modular solutions allowing rapid retrofitting without constructional changes. This is based on flooring panels. Under the floor electric and data cables can go as well sensors and even HVAC. The value promise is that instead of weeks slag time, do it in 1-2 days. This improves rental income and customer happiness. At the same time panels are re-usable so no waste is generated. For more:
http://innovationplus.fi/nextfloor/
The connectivity approach would be either to just take power-over-ether (PoE) from the floor to a Pico base station that is attached to wall or ceiling or brand matching “tile” to be installed on wall is developed as part of the portfolio.
This type of solution would offer real estate vendors faster turnaround time in tenants leading to increased revenue and a cost-efficient solution to bring in indoor 5G.
As value-added functions embedded sensors can detect ambient conditions in the room like temperature, humidity, air quality, noise level, and intensity of light. Either the panels or the 5G base station can be used to detect location of people. For maximal energy optimisation location can be used to heat only the area where people are located and the rest of the room can stay at lightly lower temperature. Companies such as The Warming Surfaces Company are active in this area.
Luminaires as alternative for connectivity
A competing approach to retrofitting solutions would be to use luminaires for providing connectivity. Some luminaires would have co-located base station. This requires that the base station is rather small and can be attached to the power socket and the light bulb to a socket on the base station (i.e. it would provide power to lights). Or a luminaire manufacturer might have a more integrated approach.
This has many benefits:
Power is already available
Luminaires are on the ceiling with good visibility everywhere
Luminaires are installed by professionals to office spaces and factories
Office spaces and factories are rather large halls and as long as there is optic connection to one location in the area, the rest of the base stations can use a radio link for backhauling
If there is no readily available backauling solution, one can be added at the same time the luminaires are installed
Summary
The vision is to use elevator shaft as the inner “digital backbone” in buildings and extend the utilities rapidly across floorspace using re-usable panels that allow cabling underneath. When tenants change, gaps reduce to a few days before rents starts accruing. This without scarifying the capability to tailor each space to specific customer needs. The most cost efficient technical and business model for connectivity is neutral host. For network rollout there are three viable alternatives: embedded in a lift, via quickly installable panels on the wall or in luminaires.
Add solar panels and solar heat collectors + ground heat pumps to the mix for energy and implement an open data and control platform for app developers to flourish as outlined previous post and you have something to start working with.