The team at Pletronics have a very up to date view of what's going on today at many small cell vendors. As one of the two leading suppliers of specialist oscillator components to the industry, they have a birds-eye view of the types of products under development and some of the issues arising. While not divulging specific customer details, they shared some great insights into the state of the industry today. Residential femtocells showing steady rather than spectacular growth; LTE small cell designs needing refinement and a new requirement for 3G Metrocells.

I spoke with the team there including K. Claude Lee (President); Johanna (Joey) Warren (Director Global Accounts); Dave Kenny (Vice President Research & Development) and Robert Henry (Vice President Quality Engineering).

There are so many different spectrum options for LTE (more than 50 are already standardized) combined with a choice of FDD and TDD modes. This is likely to lead to a two tier market for smartphones and mobile devices, but what will it mean for small cell vendors?

I had the good fortune to attend the LTE LATAM (Latin America) conference last week in Brazil. LTE is still at an early stage in the region, and there are some spectrum and other issues which may hold back takeup. But with strong demand for mobile data, LTE is seen as an essential part of the solution. Several vendors and operators now openly recognize that small cells have a strong part to play.

Nextivity have developed the Cel-Fi Booster, a simple to install device which improves indoor coverage. Unlike unmanaged repeaters, it is tied to a single network and can be remotely controlled by the host network operator. Here George Lamb, VP Operations at Nextivity, lifts the covers on the product, and forecasts strong market potential – especially in areas without wireline broadband where traditional small cells could not be used.

Rakon have dominated the market for femtocell oscillators since their inception with well over 85% market share. Here we look back at how they established their position, and look ahead to the changing requirements for LTE.

There are many analyst reports forecasting dramatic growth in the numbers of small cells. Rapid growth is predicted across all sectors. The quarterly Small Cell Forum market report lists several. I took the opportunity to ask Dimitris Mavrakis, Principal Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, who compiles the report for more insight into the assumptions and basis behind it.

Ubiquisys has been promoting a unique feature in their small cells, which they call EdgeCloud technology. They have worked with Intel to incorporate a comms-tuned computing platform based on Intel® architecture into their public access metrocells, with copious amounts of RAM and flash memory. The resulting device is an interesting hybrid combination of a small cell and a cloud server, which both Ubiquisys and Intel call a smart cell. We asked Keith Day, Marketing VP, to explain what it does and what benefits he sees for network operators who adopt it.

Timing and synchronisation are critical components of an efficient mobile network architecture. Get it wrong and you can dramatically affect the efficiency and capacity of the network, not to mention dropped calls or data sessions during handovers. There are two significant differences for public access small cells that require different solutions than residential 3G femtocells. Here we look at the options and best practices.

One of the useability issues with 3G small cells has been that handover (or handoff) from an outdoor macrocell onto a femtocell hasn’t been implemented extensively. Calls typically remain on the outdoor macrocell until they complete.  A handset feature has been specified in the standards which helps, but this doesn't quickly fix the problem for existing phones. Here we highlight one innovative technical solution from Qualcomm that addresses this together with a video they've produced which clearly explains it.