ARLINGTON, TX – Cowboys Stadium is the largest domed stadium in the world – and with Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport's communication towers nearby, it posed some Texas-sized wireless communications challenges.
"Any pro sports arena is an extremely hostile environment when it comes to wireless RF spectrum," said Demetrius Palavos, senior sales and design engineer at Pro Media/UltraSound, Hercules, Calif., which implemented the audio spec provided by Kevin Day, a senior consultant with WJHW.
The challenge posed by the airport, "a maximum of about eight miles away," is heightened by the fact that "a lot of the airport's communication towers are even closer," Palavos noted.
To optimize the sporting and music events staged in the 80,000-capacity venue, 16 channels of Shure UHF-R wireless span the stadium all the way from the field through the club levels and up to the main systems control room. Joining the single and dual-channel UHF-R systems dedicated to the task, Shure PSM 700 systems bring four channels of personal monitoring capabilities to the main bowl system.
Pro Media/UltraSound has played a key role in upgrading the sound systems at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, American Airlines Arena in Dallas, Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. and Kyle Stadium at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.
For Cowboys Stadium's club levels, single channel UR124S/Beta 87A combo systems with a handheld UR2 receiver and UR1 bodypack transmitter are available. For use with the bodypacks, Shure's cardioid WL185 lavalier microphones also get used on each of the club levels.
Elsewhere in the stadium, such as in the control room system used to capture on-field entertainment and the singing of the national anthem, dual-channel UR124D/Beta 87A combo systems are available, using the same UR2-UR1-WL 185 approach. For the on-field entertainment system, Shure's PSM 700 PMs are available.
An active UA845-SWB antenna combiner splits a pair of UA870 paddle antennas for use across the channels in the on-field system. "The distance is a good 250 feet from the 50-yard line up to control booth-mounted receivers," Palavos said. "We initially talked about using helical antennas for this part of the project, but the stadium's RF coordinator felt the Shure receivers and transmitters were already well-equipped for the job, so they wouldn't be necessary. As it turned out, he couldn't have been more correct."
Keller McCrary has served as the stadium's RF overlord since the earliest phases of the facility's construction – and Palavos credited McCrary for the complex venue's wireless performance.
"The other component responsible for our success is found in the Shure gear itself," Palavos said. "The electronics in the front-end of these systems does a great job of rejecting any off-band interference that may try to step on us. Having Keller lay down the law on who is going to occupy what frequency is vital. But some systems in use here may transmit extremely hot, or not be engineered that well. In the latter cases, a system may indicate that it's tuned to a specific frequency, but in reality may be off-center to that frequency. The Shure gear holds its own in the face of this kind of competition and makes any potentially harmful episodes a non-issue."
Pro Media/UltraSound tuned the Shure wireless systems with the aid of Shure's Wireless Workbench software for operation stadium-wide on the H4 bandwidths (518 – 578 MHz). By his own account, Palavos, along with Pro Media colleagues Richard Bratcher and Ted Leamy, "spent quite a bit of time walking around looking for dropouts. Richard exercised a phenomenal amount of patience in getting the club levels just right.
"All of our efforts were worth it in the end, as operation today is painless," Palavos added. "If you go to where Keller tells you to tune and turn on the mic-wham! It works every time. We've never had to make any frantic changes, game-day mischief, or need to re-tune. Everything just works flawlessly."
For more information, please visit www.shure.com.
