PIM Brings a New Perspective to DAS Installations

Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) are commonly deployed inside buildings or large venues
such as stadiums to provide localized coverage and capacity. In some cases this is done to offload the outdoor network and in other cases it is done to extend coverage to areas the outdoor
network is not able to reach. Regardless of the reason, DAS installations have proven to be a real
challenge due to their susceptibility to Passive Intermodulation (PIM) interference. I was
reminded of this fact during a recent visit to a potential customer.
It was a serendipitous PIM evaluation. Upon my arrival at the companys facility, I was given the
option of going ahead with my carefully prepared PowerPoint presentation or to do a live demo
of the PIM Master MW82119A on a new DAS recently installed at the customers location.
Live demos are more interesting so we skipped the conference room and headed directly to the
DAS front end. Within minutes, we were able to use the PIM Master to identify and repair PIM
problems within reach, as well as identify branches that require further investigation.

Figure 1

The installation certainly passed the visual inspection. It was well organized and the overall
construction appeared to be solid, as you can see in figure 1. PIM measurements told a bit of a
different story, however. We began our tests at the GSM1800 input to the DAS and later
performed branch level tests at each of the six 7/8 feed line connections. The initial system
measurement showed an IM3 level of -80 dBm (-123 dBc). A quick tap test on the accessible
RF connectors using the rubber end of our adjustable wrench identified the source.

In some spots, installers forget to torque the RF connectors after routing cables and making the
initial connections. The connections were tight enough to pass the system sweep test for Return
Loss, but not tight enough to prevent PIM. By simply taking a torque wrench and tightening all
the RF connectors we could reach, the PIM improved by >20 dB (figure 2).

Figure 2

At this point the system was technically passing, but we continued investigating to see if
additional improvements could be made. Using Distance-to-PIM (DTP) we could see that the
next largest PIM source was >60 m into the system (figure 3). By testing each branch
individually we determined that the next largest PIM problem was on branch S6. The allotted
time for our meeting was coming to an end so we did not have time to investigate and repair the
PIM source on this branch. We did, however, terminate the jumper feeding this branch into a low
PIM load and re-measured system performance. This measurement showed that the system level
PIM could potentially be reduced by another 12 dB by performing additional work on branch S6,
as shown in figure 2.

Figure 3

All in all, the test was beneficial. We were not only able to improve the PIM performance of their
system by more than 20 dB, we were also able to validate the usefulness of the Distance-toPIM technology for isolating PIM faults in a DAS. In addition, we were able to emphasize the
importance of paying attention to simple details such as connection torque when building low
PIM systems.