WASHINGTON, D.C.-When you look at a postcard of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with its magnificent beaches flanked by a line of mountains, the landscape seems timeless and still. But looks can be deceiving. As with any big city in the last part of the 21st century, changes in Rio have come fast and furiously, delivering a tough challenge to those charged with planning and designing wireless systems there.
In the past, wireless systems in Brazil had been designed based on cartographic and topographic maps designed in the 1960s and 1970s. But “maps produced by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics are outdated, both in terms of the kind of terrain (farming, forests etc.) and of the usage and urban occupation (low housing units, tall buildings, industry etc.),” explained Vagner de Freitas Carneiro, an engineer with the planning division of Telerj, the Telebr
