Tag Archives: small cells

LTE-Advanced, 3.5 GHz, Small Cells and Neutral Host Services: A Powerful Mix to Abundantly Increase Network Capacity

At a recent GTI event in Japan, Huawei demonstrated 770 Mbps peak throughput in a market trial of LTE-Advanced in 3.5 GHz spectrum. This was achieved with TD-LTE access mode with carrier aggregation. The trial showed 500 Mbps average throughput over multiple sites. Furthermore, Softbank demonstrated the ability to provide 1.2 Gbps peak throughput using 5-carrier aggregation in… Read More »

Small Cell World Summit 2013: Wireless Analytics to the Forefront

The Small Cell World Summit just concluded, so I would like to summarize my thoughts and impressions from this event. For a little perspective, the conference is sponsored by the Small Cell Forum, which was called the Femto Forum before it rebranded in February 2012. In alignment with this new vision, the 2013 edition of this conference featured… Read More »

When Will Small Cells Be Deployed? A Case Study of Critical Strategic Planning Options for Mobile Network Operators

This case study was designed to help answer important questions related to small cell deployments. It is based on a traffic forecast and capacity planning tool developed to aid operator strategic planning activities. The tool can also be used by vendors and other ecosystem players to map their product offering and plan for small cell deployments. Demand for… Read More »

The Shifting Paradigm of Mobile Network Operations

The deluge of demand for mobile data has been much discussed and talked about. News is abounding with figures, quotes and graphics of the increasing consumption (about doubling every year) and its projection to the future (anywhere from 10-25 time increase within the next 4 years). On the other hand, there has not been much discussion on what… Read More »

Should Small Cells Be Deployed In Their Own Spectrum Band?

Small cells raise a number of practical implementation questions which are yet to be resolved. One such question is whether small cells should operate in the same frequency band as the macrocell layer (co-channel deployment), or on a different frequency band. The question has profound implications to operators, vendors, and to regulators alike. To clarify, recall that in… Read More »

Mobile Data Traffic Predictions Say: It’s WiFi Offload!

If you’re in the wireless infrastructure business, you’ve seen it many, many times. I’m talking about the predictions showing exponential mobile data traffic growth. Hardly a conference presentation goes by without seeing this graph on the first or second slide. It became customary to preface any discussion with this context, often with the idea to get people salivating… Read More »

The Hype and Reality of Small Cells Performance

Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) consist of large (macro) cells with high transmit power (typically 5 W – 40 W) and small cells with low transmit power (typically 100 mW – 2 W). The small cells are distributed beneath the large cells and can run on the same frequency as the large cell (co-channel), or on a different frequency. As… Read More »

How Small Cells Are Reshaping The Wireless Landscape

There’s much talk about small cells these days – on industry news sites, at conferences, in corporate announcements. This is not surprising given that mobile traffic doubles every year and, according to Cisco, will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 78 percent from 2011 to 2016. Wireless network architecture has relied greatly on macrocells, but… Read More »

Small Cells and the Predictability Challenge

Anyone closely involved with small cells base station could not have failed to notice the contentious debate on backhaul capacity requirements. On the one hand, vendors of millimeter wave equipment advocate the need to support peak capacity figures, while on the other hand, vendors of other types of backhaul solution including point-to-multipoint systems point that the peak is… Read More »

Exclusive versus Shared Spectrum: Scarcity to Abundance?

In a bold move, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommended for federal spectrum to be shared between federal and private sector. This radical departure from “business as usual” when it comes to spectrum management holds much promise for accelerating innovation in the wireless industry.

Cloud RAN vs. Small Cells: Trading Processing for Transport Cost.

Perhaps you heard of Cloud-based RAN (C-RAN), the latest acronym in the mobile industry. If you are familiar with “base station hotel,” then you’re familiar with this mobile network architecture. C-RAN takes the distributed base station architecture to its extreme: It pools the baseband processors in a central location and distributes remote radio headends which are connected through… Read More »

MWC 2012: Larger Devices, Smaller Cells!

Just back home from MWC’12… What a show this year… Over 67,000 attendees and some 1500 exhibitors, and some student protests in the mix… It was the biggest to date and a good finale for the Fira before moving next year to a new nearby location. For those in the mobile infrastructure space, long gone are the days… Read More »

What Gates Small Cell Deployments?

One thing is certain: outdoor small cells are getting ever larger attention as a solution to projected operator’s capacity woes. For the uninitiated, small cells are all-outdoor compact base stations that are easy to deploy on public infrastructure assets such as light poles or utility poles. They typically feature lower power output than their larger siblings – the macro base stations. So, what are the necessary elements to enable mass small cell deployments?