Drones for Tower Inspections and Optimization

With the advancements in drone design, technology and automation, over the last couple of years I have noticed quite a few announcements about drones for tower inspections and optimisation. It would not be possible to cover all the companies here that have a solution but here are three big well known names in our industry that we are going to look in this post.

Back in March 2019, NTT Docomo announced that they have agreed to test docomo sky(TM) for Tower Inspection with PT Solusi Tunas Pratama Tbk. (STP), a company that leases out telecommunication towers in Indonesia. 

The service uses drones to photograph base stations and telecom towers and transmit the information to a command center in real time. The partners hope to expand the scope of the test to include other locations and facilities prior to launching a full-scale commercial service in the first half of this year.

The system being tested is based on an operational drone-based tower inspection system developed by DOCOMO for its commercial network throughout Japan, and supports the "docomo sky" ground control station (GCS) app for assistance in inspection tasks, enabling drone operators to input flight data with ease. For the test, DOCOMO will provide its cloud-based platform for operational support and data analysis. The drones fly automatically, take photos and transmit the images via the platform in real time, enabling technicians to inspect the towers via the docomo sky web browser immediately.

Indonesia is undergoing rapid urban development, including the construction of tall buildings and transportation infrastructure, which has resulted in large structures occasionally interfering with radio propagation from telecom towers. STP, which manages such facilities, must dispatch technicians to visually check conditions by climbing the towers. The new service will enable remote inspections to be conducted much more quickly and safely than at present, thereby allowing STP to achieve greater customer satisfaction with its service to mobile network operators.

In addition, the service is expected to support efforts to speed up procedures for inspecting and restoring telecom facilities in Indonesia whenever a natural disaster occurs.

Going forward, DOCOMO will continue to develop and upgrade its advanced drone services, one of the many ways the company is serving society by leveraging its diverse technical assets and know-how, including mobile network technology and platform businesses.

This week Docomo announced new features of drone platform "docomo sky" and new tariff. Details (in Japanese) available here.

Back in April this year, Rakuten Mobile announced that it will collaborate with Rakuten Group company Rakuten AirMap, Inc., which provides solutions supporting safe and compliant drone operations to enterprises, airspace authorities and drone operators in Japan, in using drones to conduct completion inspections of base stations for its mobile network.

As Rakuten Mobile expands its base station network across Japan, drones will take multi-angle photographs of the newly constructed base stations. In typical completion inspections, an engineer climbs the antenna tower on which the base station is installed and visually inspects the equipment. However, these inspections raise a number of concerns regarding safety, the time required to carry out the inspections and personnel costs. By carrying out the work with drones, completion inspections can be conducted in a shorter amount of time, more efficiently and with a higher degree of safety. Completion inspections will be conducted using AirMap’s TowerSight, a unified system that allows tower companies and MNOs to transform their tower inspections using automated drone workflows.

To date, Rakuten Mobile has conducted limited trials of base station completion inspections using drones in certain areas, and will now fully adopt drones for completion inspections nationwide. By using drones in completion inspections, Rakuten Mobile aims to improve the efficiency of base station construction and accelerate the expansion of its network area.

Drone captures of the base station and surrounding area are shared through Rakuten AirMap’s cloud-based inspection system, allowing staff working on the construction of the base stations to manage and share information efficiently and chronologically.

Rakuten AirMap has been instrumental in establishing the infrastructure for safe and scalable drone use in Japan and will leverage its expertise in completion inspections to contribute to the growth of drone applications in business. The two companies are also looking into the use of drone-based inspections during natural disasters and other emergency situations.

The official Rakuten Blog has a much more detailed article here.

The final announcement is from Samsung Electronics where they announced a successful demonstration of their new drone-based antenna configuration measurement solution for 4G and 5G networks in the company’s campus.

This automated solution will offer operators a simplified way to more efficiently manage cell sites, improve employee safety, and ultimately optimize network performance.

In the demonstration, an engineer on the ground used a smartphone with a remote control application to fly a camera-equipped drone that captured photos of the antennas installed on a building’s rooftop. The visual data was viewable via the engineer’s smartphone and then was transmitted to a cloud server within seconds. The deep learning-based artificial intelligence (AI) solution instantly verified the rotation and tilt of the antennas, so that the engineers could determine if the antennas were installed correctly at predefined optimal angles.

It took less than a minute to transmit the data and process the results, enabling the engineer to view results on-site in real-time on the smartphone screen. The demonstration verified that Samsung’s solution can accomplish the task within 15 minutes – starting from flying the drone to the delivery of measurement results. This compares to the several hours it can take for a tower climber to prepare, climb up and down a cell tower, and measure antenna configurations.

In conjunction with this new solution, Samsung will continue to add additional features, which will allow the engineers to remotely adjust the antenna tilts to its optimal position from a mobile device and PC.

Cellular antennas are typically installed at significant heights on sites such as cell towers or rooftops, in order to ensure optimal mobile coverage. Operator field engineers ordinarily carry heavy and expensive equipment as they climb up cell sites to measure the antenna configurations. With Samsung’s drone-based AI solution, operators will have a new approach for reinforcing the safety of their employees.



The solution’s safety benefits will be especially helpful during site audit and maintenance in the U.S., which often requires two field personnel to be dispatched to a site to audit or adjust the antenna angles -- and requires climbs that use more advanced safety training.

“As the number of 5G network sites grows, there has been a heightened focus on network performance by operators, and we are seeing an increased market demand for intelligent solutions for site maintenance,” said Sohyong Chong, Vice President and Head of Network Automation, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Once this solution launches globally later this year, it will offer a safer, more cost-effective and convenient way to satisfy market demands, leveraging our unique capabilities in combining the latest technologies—drones, AI and 5G.”

Samsung Networks is a pioneer in the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions ranging from chipset, radio and core network to cloud platform for both mid-band (2.5GHz/3.5GHz) and mmWave (28GHz/39GHz) frequencies. The company has been supporting 5G commercial services in leading markets, including Korea, U.S. and more recently Japan, where the majority of worldwide 5G subscribers are currently located.

Small Cells and Free Wi-Fi for 'City of London'

Most people outside the UK will not realise that there is a 'City of London' which is a city inside London city. Anyone interested in learning more can quickly get up to speed by watching this YouTube video. The City of London is also colloquially known as the 'Square Mile'.

The following is from a press release from City of London Corporation (emphasis mine):

The City of London Corporation has announced a deal that will deliver a free, public access WiFi network, offering internet access anywhere within the Square Mile. The multi million pound project is one of the largest investments in wireless infrastructure ever seen in London.

Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure Ltd (CTIL) has been awarded a major 15-year contract to roll-out and manage the City of London’s new wireless network in conjunction with O2. The new network will deliver wireless services across all mobile networks for City businesses, residents and visitors.

CTIL will build 4G mobile “small cells”, which will be housed on City street furniture such as lampposts, street signs, buildings and CCTV columns to provide enhanced mobile coverage at street level, and ensure that the City is best placed to become an early adopter of 5G which is widely expected to become available in 2020.

CTIL will partner with O2 in building the WiFi network which will be free for the public to use. The project will replace the current service provided by The Cloud and will be fully operational by Autumn 2017.

The network will be more technically advanced than those found in other leading global financial centres, including New York. State-of-the-art equipment will provide speeds and see users able to enjoy high bandwidth services like video-calling and video on demand over free City WiFi following a one-time only registration.

For those who may not know, there are 4 operators in the UK. Vodafone & O2 jointly own CTIL who provides them the passive infrastructure while EE and Three own MBNL for the same purposes.

This is a very ambitious ask by the City of London. Only time will tell how far they will succeed.

Deployment guidelines for Small Cells and Not So Small Cells

This post is collection of an article and presentation from Omar Masry, Senior Analyst at City and County of San Francisco. The presentation is a good quick summary and the article below gives a more detailed explanation of some of the issues

Wireless (Small Cell) challenges for California Cities & Counties from Omar Masry, AICP

Also read: 10 Key Issues for California Cities & Counties on the Challenges of Small Cells & “Not So Small Cells” by Omar Masry.

Rogue One: When Small Cells interfere with Macro

Came across this interesting case study from Cellcom Israel where femtocells cause interference with the macro to reduce availability and in one case paralyze the whole area. Case study embedded below

Small Cells for Public Safety Communications

One of the many use cases for Small cells is for public safety communications. In case of emergency situations (earthquake, floods, terrorism, etc.) when the macro network is damaged or as it generally happens, the power supply is disrupted, small cells can quickly come in action and provide a coverage solution. This was discussed in an earlier post here.

Another scenario is when dedicated public safety coverage needs to be provided for hard to reach places or in a stadium kind if scenario, small cells be fill the void.

While in USA there is a dedicated band (Band 14 – 700MHz) available for use with public safety communications, most other countries do not rely on dedicated spectrum. In case there is no dedicated spectrum, there are still many different approaches to make sure that the personnel from emergency services can continue communication (as long as there is coverage available).

Parallel Wireless*, a Small Cells solution provider based in Nashua, NH, USA specializes in public safety and rural coverage solutions using small cells. The following slide pack contains some of their stories of deployments, demos and trials:

Further Reading:

• 5 Considerations for a Successful Public Safety LTE Deployment

*Full Disclosure: I work for Parallel Wireless as a Solutions Architect. This blog is maintained in my personal capacity and expresses my own views, not the views of my employer or anyone else. Anyone who knows me well would know this.

Small Cell Installation Challenges

Today I decided to focus on an area which I don't normally look at much detail. While going out and about in the field, I can always notice the different types of deployments. Some are nice and clean while others are really messy like the ones in picture above.

While all of the situations cant be fixed easily, some of them require clever connectors that can simplify the connections. This presentation from Huber+Suhner embedded below provides some good solutions and examples.

Densification – Small Cells & ODAS

An analyst's view on densification using Small Cells and Outdoor DAS (ODAS). Presented by Ken Rehbehn in 5G World Antenna Evolution Day 2016. Presentation below

Related posts:

• Underground Small Cells
• Small Cells & Wi-Fi in the pavements & roads

Related Article:

• 10 Key Issues for California Cities & Counties on the Challenges of Small Cells & “Not So Small Cells” - Omar Masry

Small Cells Deployment Stories

I recently got an opportunity to hear about the small cell deployment studies, organised as SCWS pre-conference workshop. The combined slides from the presentation are embedded below and available to download from Small Cell Forum page here.

Small Cells & Wi-Fi in the pavements & roads

Back in October last year, Thinksmallcell reported that Vigin Media in UK is deploying WiFi in pavements.

ISPreview reports that:

Ordinarily most operators prefer to install WiFi access points above ground, not least because it helps the 2.4GHz signal to propagate, but telecoms infrastructure owners like Virgin Media have a lot of manholes around the place that can also be used (makes it easier to tap directly into their core capacity links) and apparently this approach can still cover an area of up to 80 metres.

The use of a submerged rainproof access point, which sits beneath a specially developed resin cover, is certainly a different twist on the usual deployments. Never the less Virgin Media are also using plenty of traditional access points too, which have been discreetly installed on local street furniture.

Wireless antenna maker Kathrein has teamed with Ericsson and Swiss operator Swisscom to develop an in-ground antenna system that will help provide additional wireless coverage in densely populated areas. The technology, called the Kathrein Street Connect, was developed to help operators deploy additional cell sites in places where site acquisition is difficult due to zoning issues.

Kathrein designed the antenna while Ericsson provided the radio. The rugged solution was designed to withstand deploying in streets with heavy vehicle traffic. Currently there are 17 sites piloting the technology in Switzerland with plans for commercial deployment in 2016, said Jim DeKoekkoek, product line manager for antennas and filters at Kathrein, in an interview with FierceInstaller.

Kathrein also has a video on Youtube explaining this:


Its interesting to see that pavements and roads may become the new battleground for providing connectivity through Wi-Fi and Small Cells.

Related Posts:

• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: NTT Docomo's Underground LTE Small Cells with possibility to deploy 5G in future
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Underground Small Cells

Interference cancellation in high density small cells deployment

I looked at some 3GPP Release-12 small cells enhancements in an earlier blog post here. David Chambers, ThinkSmallCell has also published a post on 3GPP small cells enhancements in Release-12 and Release-13 which is available here.

In a recent NTT Docomo technical journal, there is an article that focuses on Interference suppression and cancellation techniques that have been introduced as part of 3GPP Release-12. These techniques can be used in conjunction with high density small cells Hetnet deployment. The article is embedded below.

'Inside-out' or 'Outside-in'

Going through my old presentations, I came across this prestigious lecture delivered by Dr. Tim Whitley of BT. The main argument of that lecture was, The future of mobile is fixed and the future of fixed is mobile. During the ending of the presentation there is a discussion on Outside-in v/s Inside-out. Lets look at those slides here:

The Future of Mobile is …Fixed from Zahid Ghadialy

Qualcomm is a big fan on Inside-out as can be seen here. Other small cell manufacturers support the inside-out approach too.

The question is, does inside-out approach matters any more. By next year many operators and devices will support VoWiFi in native client. Which means that even if your coverage is poor or non-existant inside, you will still receive voice calls and text messages. Data will continue over WiFi as normal.

An argument in favour of cellular is better/guaranteed QoS as in VoLTE and maybe new services can be available faster but private WiFi best (or no) effort is not bad generally.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Case Study: Deployment scenarios with DAS, RRH, Small Cells and Wi-Fi

I attended an interesting webinar (details in the end) from Infonetics Research, EXFO and ExteNet Systems where one of the areas of discussion was around which technology for which scenario. The four main technologies being considered was DAS, RRH, Small Cells and Wi-Fi. There was some interesting deployment examples that I have embedded below:

How to Get the Best Out of DAS, Small Cells, and WiFi from Zahid Ghadialy

NOTE: If the slides are not working, please view it on Slideshare - slides 21 to 24

To watch the webinar recording and download slides, please follow this link: http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=783410&s=1&k=CD70E2F6D98C3E67A3B5A1936E23DB13

Operator plans for the ultra-dense network

The following is from Rethink Wireless article last month:

Large-scale deployments of public access small cells are still in their infancy, but there is already talk of 'hyper-dense' networks to cope with hotspots of intense data usage. Most of this remains just talk, but Qualcomm - on the rampage in metrocells after a hesitant start- is showing off how the approach might work in reality. 

The chip giant, never averse to a bold demonstration, is claiming the densest network ever constructed in a working environment, equating to 1,000 cells per square kilometer (a neat figure given that Qualcomm's ongoing marketing campaign revolves around the '1,000x Data Challenge', predicting an increase of that magnitude over the coming decade). 

It has put the trial together for Sprint's TDD technology, working with Airspan, the WiMAX specialist that has evolved into a small cell vendor with heavy emphasis on self-organization and integrated backhaul.

We recently heard from Caroline Gabriel in our Cambridge Wireless Small Cells SIG this (last) week. This very interesting presentation below is from that event. A very important slide is the tools that are available for achieving this ultra-dense networks. Anyway, presentation as follows:

Operator plans for the ultra-dense network from Zahid Ghadialy

HetNet and LTE Trends and Challenges

Metrocells and C-RAN has been a frequent area of discussion on this blog. A good post about Metrocells is available here and about C-RAN is available here and here.

I found a small and useful presentation in my collection that highlights the trends, opportunities and challenges with the HetNets. The presentation is embedded below:

HetNet and LTE trends from 3G4G Blogs

Urban Small Cells

During the recently concluded Mobile World Congress (MWC), Small Cell Forum launched their 'Release 3' on Urban Small Cells. The following is an extract from their press release:

Release Three: Urban Foundations has been developed to help operators with the rollout of small cells in the important public access arena. It builds on two earlier releases that focused on the established market for residential small cells (Release One) and the growing market for enterprise small cells (Release Two).

Release Three addresses a step change in market evolution: the commercial deployment of small cells in the urban environment. It establishes the business case and market drivers for urban small cells. It also identifies and starts to address many of the technical, economic and operational challenges to successful deployment and the opportunities this market could offer.

As part of its Release Three output, the Forum commissioned an independent operator survey from consulting firm Maravedis-Rethink. The survey found that capacity, value-added services and the opportunity to integrate Wi-Fi were among the most commonly cited market drivers for urban small cells. Backhaul, optimal site acquisition, monetization and network management were identified as the primary concerns. 

Release Three addresses these varied issues realistically and coherently. Alongside the authoritative body of Small Cell Forum work it can already draw on, this Release includes 18 new and updated documents aimed at identifying demand and supporting operators in the deployment of urban small cells. These range from economic and commercial issues such as market drivers, business case and service opportunities to technical areas such as self-organizing networks, backhaul, Wi-Fi integration and network architecture as well as regulatory challenges and deployment processes.

To a lot of extent, this blog has focussed on Urban small cells mainly. Often, the Urban Small Cells are referred to as Metrocells. The term Meadowcells is now being used to differentiate the rural small cells. Urban Small cells come with their own set of problems, hence the release includes quite a few documents to help the operators look into their deployment. A list of documents from the Scf.Io is as follows:

SCF103	Urban Small Cells: Release overview
SCF096	Deployment issues for urban small cells
SCF095	Backhaul for urban small cells: a topic brief
SCF091	Small cell application programmers’ guide
SCF090	Small cell services in the urban environment
SCF089	Next generation hotspot-based integrated small cell Wi-Fi
SCF088	Urban small cell network architectures
SCF087	Business case for urban small cells
SCF086	Market drivers for urban small cells
SCF082	LTE eNB L1 API definition
SCF077	Urban SON use cases
SCF076	Regulatory aspects of small cells
SCF075	Synchronisation for LTE small cells
SCF050	Market status statistics Q1 2014 - Mobile Experts

A presentation made by the Small Cell Forum chairman, Gordon Mansfield is embedded below:

ThinkSmallCell has written an excellent report on MWC that is available here. A quick extract from that summary on the Urban Small cells as follows:

Tuesday saw the Small Cell Forum issue Release 3: Urban Foundation which contained a surprising number of documents (19). Gordon Mansfield, Chairman of SCF, told me it exceeded his expectations, especially since it followed so closely after December's Enterprise release. The same release co-ordination team have presided over another mammoth edition. The complete Urban document set will be published in June, now renumbered Release 4, and the roadmap for updates and further releases will be finalised in April. The Forum also has a new CEO, Sue Monihan, who brings expertise from running the GSMA North America organisation and I'm sure will continue to expand the remit, membership and influence of the organisation. She will continue to work part time for both organisations concurrently.

Many (but not all) organisations now seem to be focussing on LTE+Wi-Fi rather than 3G/LTE/W-Fi multi-mode for urban capacity solutions - something that Vodafone specifically stated during the conference.

Mike Schabel, VP Small Cells at Alcatel-Lucent, pointed out the radical shift from voice to data is still fairly recent and has had huge impact for operators. Their commercial activity in Small Cell trials and business opportunities has never been busier. Speaking at the conference, he said "I can't keep up" with the number of RFPs today. They are working with 65 operators around the world (without double counting). This is happening in all regions - it's all over the world. While the technologies are the same across the small cell sector, what varies are the different business drivers found across their different customers.

Randy Cox, Head of Small Cells at NSN, showed me their latest LTE+Wi-Fi Urban Small Cell. This is quite a compact unit (about the size of a large dinner plate), capable of up to 400 concurrent sessions/calls. It's very much a downsized macrocell, reusing the same TI silicon chipset and optionally connected through a Flexi-Zone controller. They aren't planning a 3G/LTE multi-mode product at the moment, believing that LTE is the future. "We are in this for the long term" he told me. They continue to support their existing femtocell customers (using NSN's femtocell gateway and Cisco/Ubiquisys small cells), but it seemed to me that their Small Cell focus had shifted firmly to LTE.

NEC bring their own LTE expertise from Japan, with a range of in-house products complemented by partner solutions, both for Small Cells and wireless backhaul. They'veselected Radisys as their LTE Small Cell software supplier for their next in-house products. They position themselves as a one-stop shop for the new last mile, offering to handle everything from the initial planning through operational management of a portfolio of equipment. They told me that where macrocell deployments might have had four or five standard templates or scenarios, they've seen more like 400 to 500 different use cases. I do hope that's an exaggeration!

I saw several supporting technologies to de-risk HetNet deployments, ranging from smarter RF planning tools with more Small Cell features, SON vendors making further inroads, test validation and performance loading. There is a wider ecosystem here, finding newer and smarter ways to plan, manage and validate the network which wouldn't be cost effective at scale using traditional methods. Highlights included ERCOM's integration with Infovista/Mentum, allowing emulation of huge numbers of users in real-world scenarios, characterising the behaviour of small and macrocells that can be fed back into the planning tool. IXIA also have a comprehensive test and validation suite, de-risking the rollout of new features or vendor equipment by pushing the envelope and exploring the limits - not just conformance testing against standards. Sources of usage data now include directly from the handset, not just the network. OpenSignal published their "Global State of LTE Report" with actual performance results from 6 million users worldwide. Apparently Sweden has the fastest LTE in the world. The average speed worldwide is now just over 10Mbps. This whole area of back office planning and network management is evolving rapidly with many new technologies, tools and approaches coming on stream. Don't be distracted by the concepts of SDN and NFV - there are many more relevant and beneficial changes to how networks are managed coming along.

IP.Access: From Startup to Volumes

We heard from Nick Johnson last month in our Cambridge Wireless event, talking about Enterprise Small cells. He gave us some very good real life deployment examples of Small cells in public and enterprise scenarios. One such slide is shown above and others can be seen from his presentation below.

IP.Access also did a webinar with ThinkSmallCell recently in which they expanded on their offering, approach and solutions. Considering that they are one of the leaders and pioneers in the Small cells arena, it may be worthwhile hearing the webinar. The video of the webinar is embedded below and the slides are available from Slideshare here.

Optimizing Small Cells and the HetNets

Came across a whitepaper from JDSU, not so new but its got some interesting stuff. In an earlier post here, we saw the challenges for small cells deployment, the picture above shows another view.

Another interesting item is adding intelligence to small cells. This can mainly help by reducing the traffic back to the core. This also relies on predicting the user behaviour which could be a challenge in it self. There is a lot more interesting stuff in the paper, which is embedded below:

JDSU: Optimizing Small Cells and the Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) from Zahid Ghadialy

The Statutory Hurdle in Small Cell Deployment

A presentation from MLL telecom in our recent event highlights the rules and the requirements from regulation during Small Cells deployments. The regulation hurdles are higher in Europe compared to most other parts due to strict requirements to make sure its not going to affect the character of an area and at the same time not to cause any damage to health and environment. Anyway, the complete presentation is embedded below:

Small Cell Deployment The Statutory Hurdle: Town & Country Planning (De-)Regulation of Small Cell Roll-out from Zahid Ghadialy

SK Telecom: Commercial deployment of LTE Femto cell

SK Telecom does not fail to impress with their aggressive roll-outs and impressive solutions to challenging problems. One such presentation from the Small Cells World Summit 2013 in London is embedded as follows:

Commercial deployment of lte femto cell with the innovative technologies and the roadmap from Zahid Ghadialy

Another presentation from late last year is available here.

Site Selection - Nice animation by Alcatel-Lucent

See Also:

• The biggest challenge to Small Cells deployment