Mobile World Congress 2014 - Small Cell Report

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Published on Friday, 28 February 2014 15:24

Written by David Chambers

MWC comprises a huge exhibition, tons of meetings and a co-located conference. Here we review it from a Small Cell perspective. In my view the conference itself was pretty dull (fireworks party without matches). The keynote themes were broadly to expand and grow user base, exploit the SIM card to authenticate for access control in many other ways, and evolve data capacity. The exhibition itself featured $25 Firefox smartphones, an enormous variety of Apps (especially wearables and the Internet of Things), mobile payments, and plenty of network solutions (including many new Small Cell and related aspects). The event seems to be much more about meetings now than anything else, with perhaps only 10% of delegates attending the conference presentations, and remains the number 1 worldwide mobile get-together. The official Small Cell conference track was pretty tame - Vodafone have deployed 300K Small Cells in total, KT (Korea Telecom) and Radisys spoke of 18K LTE deployed in mostly indoor metropolitan areas. Vodafone said they continue to drive vendors to deliver multi-technology small cell and backhaul products with high operational efficiency and look for added value to help the business case. By contrast, the Small Cell Forum booth hosted extensive and popular presentations and is perhaps outgrowing its booth format.

What can we expect at Mobile World Congress 2014 from a Small Cell perspective?

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Published on Monday, 24 February 2014 08:23

Written by David Chambers

MWC has evolved to become the primary annual event of the mobile network industry, attracting over 70,000 to Barcelona each year. As we enter what will be a very intensive week ahead, here's our take on what to expect, what to look out for and what are the key themes. This is from a Small Cell viewpoint – such a large event covers many different topics, and others will highlight radically different views.

The three key differentiators between DAS and Small Cells for Enterprise

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Published on Thursday, 20 February 2014 18:44

Written by David Chambers

Recently, we looked at the need for a wider business perspective to deliver better in-building cellular service. Here, we explore the three major business differentiators between Small Cell and DAS (Distributed Antenna Systems) solutions.

The DAS industry isn't standing still, and we can see more investment from different product sectors in addition to supporting planning and configuration tools. It's a sign that the industry is waking up to the need for improved in-building service, which aren't being met by a traditional outdoor only approach.

Should Small Cell rollout be driven only from the RAN department?

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Published on Tuesday, 18 February 2014 16:36

Written by David Chambers

Basestation planning, deployment, upgrade and optimisation have always been the remit of the operations department. Highly skilled professionals with budgets in the hundreds of millions or billions per year determine the best ways to invest in the growth of network quality and quantity. Tactical decisions about where/when/what to deploy are made on a daily basis. A raft of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) report on their success and effectiveness.

60GHz chipsets expected to drive down costs of outdoor small cell backhaul

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Published on Thursday, 13 February 2014 15:33

Written by David Chambers

One of the critical factors for the success of outdoor/urban small cells is low cost wireless backhaul. Various technologies at different frequency bands are being actively proposed, with the lightly licenced 60GHz V-Band being a popular early choice. One way of assessing whether the industry is on-track to achieve that lower price point is to examine investments and progress being made today by RF silicon vendors.

Here, we can clearly see a couple of associated applications that should accelerate development of this specific technology generally, enabling lower costs in the longer term.

Network emulation of Small Cells and HetNets delivers faster deployment with lower risk

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Published on Tuesday, 11 February 2014 16:02

Written by David Chambers

As Small Cells become closely integrated with the existing macrocellular network, there are many areas of interworking and interoperability to consider. The system grows in complexity as our smartphones are guided between 3G, LTE and Wi-Fi technologies as we move around. We'll also be switched between Macrocells and Small Cells too, yet expect ever-higher data rates and performance and ever-lower cost.

Today's network test platforms can scale to emulate real-world usage from thousands of devices, allowing realistic behaviour to be determined and assessed before deployment. This reduces the risk of deploying ineffective or inefficient systems, and helps operators roll out all aspects of new Small Cell technology faster with a higher degree of confidence that it will achieve superior quality of experience.

Amenity Wi-Fi and Small Cells: Competition or complementary?

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Published on Tuesday, 04 February 2014 16:03

Written by David Chambers

Two industry hot topics at the moment are Enterprise Small Cells and Carrier Wi-Fi Hotspot 2.0. Both primarily address in-building non-residential wireless service, reducing the pressure on congested outdoor macrocells while improving the voice and data quality.

But these aren't the only game in town. There are a number of different ways in which our smartphones log on to wireless networks and these will continue to thrive. We look at the different levels of Wi-Fi access methods and discuss one set of real world statistics comparing two different cities.

Extending small cell capacity further through RF lens technology

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Published on Thursday, 30 January 2014 16:33

Written by David Chambers

It often seems there is a binary choice for RF planners between making macrocells even more spectrally efficient versus deploying large numbers of small cells. Techniques such as sector splitting can add extra capacity to macrocells, but are insufficient to meet growing demand. Small cells add enormous amounts of capacity, but can't always be positioned exactly where required. In some cases prospective small cell sites can be either too costly or simply not feasible.

Expanding the capacity of small cells through multi-sectors could be a useful option in some situations. We look at one way of achieving that using Luneberg lens based antenna solutions.

Todd Mersch, Radisys, reports a mix of bleeding edge and practical Small Cell engineering

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Published on Tuesday, 28 January 2014 16:36

Written by David Chambers

Todd Mersch, General Manager of Software and Solutions at Radisys, is well placed to provide a high level view of the state of Small Cell product development. He travels the globe talking with many different designers and operators about all types of Small Cell products. We caught up with him recently and asked him whether he sees most activity in 3G or LTE, how significant TD-LTE will become and what part the larger RAN vendors are playing in the Small Cell market today.