LuxCarta Announces Availability of Geodata

Sophia Antipolis, France – March 19, 2019 – LuxCarta, the leading global geodata provider to the wireless ecosystem, announced today it has produced over 100,000 km2 of specialized digital maps for 50 metropolitan areas in the United States ideally suited for RF planning at high frequencies. The
2-meter resolution City Planner data sets include 3D building and tree models, as well as related terrain and clutter layers.

“We have a large archive of recent vintage data for 50 cities, and in many cases their surrounding suburbs, across the United States,” said Albéric Maumy, managing director of LuxCarta. “This data is ready for use by mobile operators, as well as wireless Internet providers, to undertake RF planning projects in these metropolitan areas.”

LuxCarta’s high-resolution 3D buildings, individual tree and canopy model data are ideally suited to planning 5G networks using millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies — including the 28 GHz band frequencies recently assigned in the FCC auction. These high frequency waves attenuate dramatically when they encounter physical obstructions, including buildings and trees. As a result, RF planners designing networks that utilize these frequencies need digital maps that accurately reflect the environment being modeled.

The recently produced US metropolitan areas, including Pittsburgh and Houston, as well as San Diego and Philadelphia, are available for delivery. They were created using an automated production process developed by LuxCarta to generate building and tree polygons from satellite imagery. The company undertook a substantial R&D investment to automate key production processes in anticipation of demand for large areas of 3D data needed to support 5G rollouts. LuxCarta’s AI-enhanced production processes can be applied on high-resolution multi-stereo satellite imagery from a variety of commercial satellite providers to automatically extract these 3D shapes. This new production pipeline allows LuxCarta to extract 1000 km2 of buildings and tree models per day.

“We have a substantial on-shelf inventory of 3D data and a rapid process to create anything our 5G customers need,” concluded Maumy. “Our company has a long track record of delivering geodata to meet the needs of telecom operators. We have been actively producing digital maps for 5G trials and commercial rollouts, and look forward to supporting our customers deploying this technology.”