Showing posts with label In-building Solutions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label In-building Solutions. Show all posts

Friday, 5 November 2021

Deutsche Telekom Launches Indoor Booster 5G Repeater


On his LinkedIn post, Dr. Alex Jinsung Choi, Deutsche Telekom Senior Vice President, Head of Strategy & Technology Innovation and COO of O-RAN Alliance announced the launch of Telekom Deutschland GmbH's Indoor Booster 5G in Bavaria. The post said:

This small low-power repeater brings 5G into offices and homes that did not have sufficient indoor coverage of mobile networks before. It enables customers to experience best streaming, gaming, education services, home office and video conferences with 5G indoors.

I am proud to announce that this new product is result of the cooperation of Deutsche Telekom with our strategic partner SK Telecom. SKT developed and launched 5G repeaters in 2019. In 2020, DT and SKT colleagues trialed a customized 5G repeater in a customer test in Germany which was starting point for the successful launch this year.

Furthermore, the Indoor Booster 5G is the first product of Techmaker GmbH, the tech joint venture of SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom. I would like to thank all the many colleagues in Techmaker, SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom who made the project a success!

We looked at SK Telecom's In-building 5G NR Repeaters couple of years back here.

The website explains the working of the booster as can be seen in the picture on the top. All information is in German and is translated using Google translate below: 

The 5G signal is picked up by an antenna on the outside and routed inwards by cable to a so-called booster. This only requires a 230V connection. This results in faster cell phone reception even in remote rooms with stable walls. You can continue to use the Indoor Booster 5G with your existing mobile phone contract.

The Indoor Booster 5G consists of an outside antenna and a booster inside. You should be authorized to have an antenna installed on your building and to grant access.

Couple of FAQ's have interesting info as well:

Why can you only rent the Indoor Booster 5G and not buy it?

Since the indoor booster reproduces the cellular signal, Telekom is the operator of the device and cannot transfer ownership of it to the customer.

Why do I have to commission the installation service?

Since the Indoor Booster reproduces the cellular signal, Telekom is responsible for the operation of the device and must ensure that the radio signal does not interfere with the cellular network. At the installation appointment, you will also be advised where the external antenna is best placed in order to achieve the best possible improvement in performance.

If you own one of these, we would love to hear from you about your experience.

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Wednesday, 29 July 2020

Nokia's AirScale indoor Radio (ASiR) Small Cells

Nokia’s AirScale indoor Radio solution, ASiR for short, is the latest in a long line of small cell solutions deployed in more than 300 networks around the world. ASiR supports multiple radio access technologies and is a great solution across a wide variety of situations from a small office to large enterprises, hospitals and transportation hubs. It’s easy to deploy, using Cat 6a cable, which significantly simplifies and speeds up installation. What’s more, the ASiR pico radio heads (pRRH) are powered from the same Cat 6a cable, via power over Ethernet; no more unsightly power supplies and their cables.

 ASiR is highly flexible. Begin with LTE and when the time is right, add 5G. Need to expand coverage? Simply daisy-chain additional pRRHs in the required locations. Network planning of in-building solutions can be challenging. However, with ASiR’s single frequency network (SFN) approach, interference and network planning concerns all but disappear … and so do the associated costs.

ASiR System is an enhanced indoor solution with a centralized architecture, including multi-band ASiR-pRRH, ASiR-sHUB, and AirScale BBU. The platform supports 2G/3G technology via an optional ASiR-RFC (RF Converter). ASiR System is 5G-ready and can evolve into a 4G+5G mixed network on the same platform via graceful 5G radio insertion.

 Nokia’s next generation indoor system supports all technologies (2G/3G/4G/5G) and is designed to upgrade 4G to 5G NR via plug-and-play with minimal on-site work. To ensure consistent network performance across all layers, ASiR is driven by AirScale BBU and combines multiple ASiR-pRRH into one Single Frequency Network (SFN). Each ASiR-pRRH is a high power ( 4x250mW) access point that is connected via a single Ethernet cable for both fronthaul and Power over Ethernet (PoE). Planning should be considered in such a way that support the capabilities of each technology.

 The key components of the ASiR solution include:
  • ASiR-BBU: Same BBU used by the macro deployment.
  • ASiR-sHUB: Connects to the ASiR-BBU via CPRI 9,8Gbps (Option 8) and serves as an ASiR-pRRH aggregation point. For the downlink, the ASiR-sHUB provides multi-casting to all ASiR-pRRH in a given SFN. For the uplink, the ASiR-sHUB provides radio summing and forwarding to the AirScale BBU.
  • ASiR-pRRH: Connects to the ASiR-sHUB via a proprietary CPRI over 10GBASE-T/5GBASE-T. The ASiR-pRRH provides DFE and Radio functions.
  • ASiR-RFC: Supports neutral hosting, 2G/3G/4G technology.
The connection between ASiR-sHUB and ASiR-pRRH is a highly optimized interface designed to specifically carry more carrier bandwidth and MIMO layers as well as support the ability to chain 5G ASiR-pRRH other ASiR-pRRH. Since ASiR-pRRH chaining provides both traffic and power, ASiR-pRRH (e.g. 5G or non-5G) may simply connect together without the need for additional ASiR-sHUB cabling.

 The ASiR solution is very flexible and supports various indoor deployment scenarios.

 ASiR-pRRH
  • Tri-bands support – 3 technologies into 1 box
  • 40MHz OBW / legacy band , 100MHz OBW / 5G band
  • 50 - 250mW output power – Wide coverage, high ceiling support, cost saving
  • Integrated / External antenna variants – Extend deployment to full scenarios
  • 4G-5G chaining – 4G/5G co-site with just one Cat6a transmission
ASiR-sHUB
  • 12 x 10GBASE-T ports – The highest pRRHs connectivity in industry, perfect for adding 5G
  • 4 x 9.8G (SFP ports) backhaul to BBU – Strong backhaul capability to enable 4 Hub chaining or use 1x 9,8G for ASiR RFC connectivity
  • 4G/5G concurrent support – smooth upgrade to 5G without hardware changing
  • Rich feature support (SFN, Virtual 4T4R) – coverage or capacity driven, as customer wish
ASiR-RFC
  • Multi-tech RF conversion – GSM/WCDMA/LTE in one system
  • 3 x 4 RF ports (12 SMA connectors)– Neutral Hosting for multi-vendor scenario
  • 8 x 9.8G SFP ports (CPRI interface)– Strong connectivity to Hubs
Resolving the issue of indoor densification and providing a path to 5G
Today’s networks must be densified to provide the extreme capacity needed to meet soaring traffic demand. Yet densification is often perceived as a challenge by many CSPs as it may require multiple small cell sites, which could delay roll outs and incur large investment.

 The ASiR was designed to provide the flexibility needed to ensure smooth installations with an easy and cost-effective upgrade path from 4G to 5G.



With Nokia deploying 5G networks with many different operators, we will surely see more of these soon.

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Tuesday, 14 July 2020

Huawei 5G Lampsite wins awards and speed tests

I have talked about Huawei Lampsite since early days, the first being nearly 6 years back. Recently I talked about them with regards to Neutral Host networks and as an Indoor digital network vision.
Back in Feb this year, Huawei's 5G LampSite won the iF DESIGN AWARD at the 2020 iF International Industrial Design Forum due to its consistent high-quality design, high level of integration, and simplified, intuitive installation experience. A press release on their website said: 

 Launched in March 2018, 5G LampSite is the industry's first multiband integrated solution that provides digital indoor coverage through both 5G NR and 4G LTE technology.

 The all-new 5G LampSite series product continues the tradition of the family's "morning-dew" styling, featuring a sleek, smooth arc surface that ensures an extraordinary user-friendly layout. On top of a perfected appearance and curved visual style, the tensile design allows for excellent flexibility and adaptability, enabling it to perfectly blend in with modern urban environments.


Less than 2 liters in dimension, 5G LampSite supports 5G NR and LTE modules integrated in one box on both C-band and all sub-3 GHz bands, while also allowing for both CAT6A Ethernet and fiber-optic transmission. At a result, both eMBB and IoT services are implemented with a single box, achieving a superb balance between product performance and aesthetics.


As with all 5G rollouts, there are loads of speetests on Sunrise, Switzerland network to prove their in-building effectiveness. Here is a short promo video by Huawei from the Sunrise network.



A presentation from last year is embedded below and can be downloaded from techUK here.



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Tuesday, 30 June 2020

QCell - ZTE’s 5G Solution for Gigabit Indoor User Experience

ZTE unveiled its 5G RAN product portfolio for the 'Networks of the Future' back in February, just in time for the MWC that was unfortunately cancelled. One of the products was QCell.

ZTE’s QCell 5G indoor solution provides not only multi-mode, multi-frequency, ultrawide-bandwidth and large-capacity 4TR products, but also a more budget-friendly 2TR product that supports 300 MHz bandwidth, which is ideal for indoor RAN sharing and rapid introduction of 5G with lower deployment cost.

Yesterday, ZTE announced that along with the Jiangsu branch of China Telecom, they have deployed 5G 200 MHz Qcell 4T4R digital indoor distribution system in the indoor scenarios with high amounts of data traffic, such as shopping malls and subway stations, in Xuzhou, China. The system provides high-quality 5G indoor coverage, and accelerates future 5G indoor system deployment.


This commercial deployment has employed ZTE’s latest 5G Qcell ultra-wideband product series, which supports 200MHz continuous ultra-large bandwidth at 3.5 GHz frequency band, and 100MHz+100MHZ dual-carrier aggregation technology that doubles download rate. 

 For the time being, by virtue of China Telecom’s 100MHz 5G bandwidth, the single 5G user download rate has turned out to exceed 1 Gbps. In case of the activation of 200 MHz bandwidth in the future, the single 5G user download rate will exceed 2 Gbps, providing an excellent 5G experience. 

 Moving forward, ZTE will give full play to its technical and commercial advantages in the 5G field, continue to work closely with China Telecom to build high-quality 5G digital indoor networks, and develop 5G industrial applications, thereby facilitating the development of smart cities.

A partner feature on Mobile World Live provides a lot more technical details:

The ZTE QCell system consists of pRRU/pBridge/BBU (Baseband Unit) 3-level equipment. The 3-level efficient architecture supports the rapid cabling of CAT6a network cables or optical-electrical hybrid cables. It supports pBridge multi-level cascading, cell splitting and combination, and can rapidly respond to the operator’s requirements for the complex networking of different frequency bands and systems, rapid adjustment and flexible expansion of capacity and coverage.

 The 300 MHz large bandwidth products with multi-mode and multi-frequency band enable the ZTE QCell solution the powerful network architecture integration capability, to meet the requirements of multi-operator’s co-building and sharing and have the compatibility and adaptability of global deployment. It not only supports the overlay networking of the existing DAS and 5G QCell, but also supports the feed-in of the GSM/UMTS DAS RF signals from different manufacturers in the existing network through the MAU, to protect the operator’s existing indoor distribution investment and introduce value-added services based on 5G coverage and precise positioning. QCell supports GSM/CDMA/UMTS/FDD LTE/TDD LTE/5G NR, which makes once deployment to implement the multi-operator/multi-band/multi-system indoor distribution system that achieves agile, long-term, co-construction, sharing, and lowest cost indoor distribution network, multi-system equipment and common management and maintenance. It only needs software upgrade for service expansion and network architecture evolution in the future so as to protect the investment in early-stage 5G indoor deployment and reduce the overall TCO cost from the perspective of long-term operation.

 ZTE adopts innovative design of QCell products to reduce the cost and power consumption of equipment units. The pRRU transceiving channel not only supports high-performance 4T4R, but also supports low-cost 2T2R, further reducing the cost and power consumption. The pBridge enhanced product is designed to reduce the cost and power consumption after the electrical interface and optical interface are separated and the SoC solution is introduced. Moreover, the simplest BBU product is introduced to further reduce the QCell system networking cost.

 The hierarchical QCell networking well matches diverse scenarios

 Based on the analysis of the requirements for indoor distribution of operators, vertical industry enterprises, and large business owners, the indoor distribution scenarios can be divided into three types: capacity-sensitive scenario (type A), capacity and coverage balancing scenario (type B), and coverage-sensitive scenario (type C).

 For the above three types of scenarios, ZTE provides hierarchical QCell networking solutions. Compared with the Benchmark QCell solution of 4T4R built-in antenna pRRU, ZTE provides a cost reduction solution of 2T2R built-in antenna pRRU and a low cost solution of 4T4R pRRU+ connected with external DAS antenna according to the scenario requirements, thus achieving the accurate network construction and saving operators’ investment. Evaluations based on the 40,000 square meters isolated indoor distribution scenario show: for scenario type B, the total main equipment investment is reduced by about 1/4; for scenario type C, through the external DAS antenna, the single-pRRU coverage area is greatly expanded and the overall investment is greatly reduced by about 1/2.

 Extensive QCell Digital Smart Indoor Application, Making 5G Service Ubiquitous

 The QCell digital intelligent indoor distribution system can be deployed for indoor and semi-indoor to achieve wireless coverage and service provision in high-value areas, such as large traffic hub, large stadiums, CBD and university campuses.

 The large-scale traffic hub scenarios, such as airports, railway stations, and subway stations, have a large area and high population density, and are high-value areas for operators to guarantee both coverage and performance. The Wi-Fi system of most transportation hubs is often limited in capacity and cannot meet passengers’ requirements for future 4K/8K HD video. In Changsha Huanghua Airport, ZTE deployed the indoor high-capacity digital intelligent QCell solution with high-density networking and the first 3-carrier aggregation technology in China, to achieve the throughput of 8400Mbps for the airport. The solution supports 3,500 people simultaneously to enjoy HD video smoothly. At present, the QCell solution has been widely used in various metropolitan airports and railway hub stations, including Changsha Airport in Hunan, Xiaoshan Airport in Hangzhou, Nanjing South Station and Xining Railway Station, serving millions of passengers. Nanjing South Railway Station has a total building area of 45.8 million square meters, which is the largest railway station in Asia. After QCell is deployed, the SINR is increased by 13% and the throughput is increased by 91.8%.

 The large stadiums, such as stadiums and exhibition halls, have a large number of users and a huge amount of data volume in a centralized manner. The QCell solution supports vertical partitioning to achieve seamless multi-layer coverage from the upper stands, the middle mezzanines to the bottom passages. At present, the QCell solution has been widely deployed in large stadiums such as Hangzhou Olympic Center, Hangzhou Expo Center, Suzhou International Expo Center, and Shenzhen New High-Tech Center. In August 2019, the ZTE 5G Smart Digital Indoor Division QCell solution covered many important sports venues including the Main Conference venue of the Red Lantern Stadium for the second National Youth Games (Shanxi), and made the Game the first “5G Games” in China. Through such technologies as MEC deployment and low delay coding, the ZTE 5G Smart stadium solution reduces the end-to-end live broadcast delay to 1 second, and provides audience with the excellent experience comparable to watching on the spot. In addition, ZTE also provides audience with brand-new experience in three 5G scenarios: immersive viewing experience from multi-angle live streaming, “Flexible Zooming” and “360-degree Free View” services. As an iconic application in the Game, the 5G Smart Stadium Solution provided an excellent demonstration for the live broadcast of sports events.

A recent promo video of QCell is embedded below:




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Tuesday, 29 October 2019

SK Telecom's In-building 5G NR Repeaters and 'Layer Splitter'


In-building coverage is the new battleground in South Korea. According to this report by Korea Times back in August

SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus, which have been in cutthroat competition to improve the quality of their fifth-generation (5G) network services, are now in a race to boost 5G data speeds inside buildings.

Their move comes amid growing complaints over disappointing 5G network coverage since the next-generation mobile network services were launched in early April.

SK Telecom said Wednesday it has completed the development of the "5GX In-building Solution" that is capable of doubling the speed of 5G data transfer inside buildings and effectively dispersing data traffic to prevent overload on base stations in crowded areas such as shopping malls and subway stations.

The nation's top mobile carrier said the new technology will be applied to its commercial 5G networks after the third quarter of the year.

"We expect 80 percent of data traffic to be from inside buildings in the 5G era," said Park Jong-kwan, who heads 5GX Labs at SK Telecom. "We will continue to give efforts to provide users with seamless, high-quality 5G services inside buildings and in crowded areas."

The company said its new system features "Active Antenna" technology that allows 5G small cells, which refer to small indoor base stations, to be equipped with eight transmission and reception antennas.

This will double the speed of 5G data transfer as existing indoor base stations are capable of operating four transmission and reception antennas.

KT has also been working hard to expand 5G coverage inside buildings.

In May, the nation's largest broadband service provider and second-largest mobile carrier interlocked 5G repeaters with commercial 5G networks in cooperation with small and medium business partners.

Installed inside buildings where radio waves from base stations can hardly reach, the device helps improve the quality of 5G services.

KT is in charge of expanding 5G coverage in 95 large buildings out of 119 nationwide, such as airports and KTX stations, in a joint project by the three mobile carriers.

LG Uplus, the smallest player, also has been active in installing repeaters in small and medium buildings and underground parking lots to expand 5G coverage.

The company is planning to expand the application of beam-forming and multi-user MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) technologies to its 5G networks nationwide.

Back in May, SK Telecom won SCF Small Cell Awards 2019 in the category of “Commercial Small Cell Design and Technology” for commercializing the world’s first 5G NR RF repeater. According to the press release:

SK Telecom won this year’s SCF Small Cell Awards for developing and commercializing, for the first time in the world, two different types of 5G NR RF repeaters operating in the 3.5GHz band in 2018. 5G RF repeaters, which amplify 5G radio signals to allow them to travel greater distances, are used to enhance 5G service quality by improving coverage for in-building areas.

SK Telecom’s RF repeater is built with 5G NR standard-based Time Division Duplex (TDD) Synchronization detection technology, which enables a more efficient use of limited frequency resources. In addition, the 5G repeater provides wide bandwidth support and operational optimization features.

Going back to the Small Cells World back in May, SK Telecom presented their solution but the presentation was not shared. Here are some relevant pictures from their presentation:


Source: Phil Kendall

As can be seen in the picture (click to enlarge), depending on the use case and location, the InBuilding solution would change from Small cells to AAU and Repeaters.

Source: Dean Bubley

As you can see in the picture above, the 3.5/28 GHz layer split solution improves capacity of the building by creating multiple layers to improve the capacity. There is a new press release on this topic, which is covered in the post later on.

Source: Dean Bubley

The Speed Repeater above and the RF Repeater below is backhauling on the existing macro, similar to the In-band backhauling (IBBH) I have described earlier or Sprint/Airspan MagicBox.

Source: Dean Bubley

In a recent press release, SK Telecom announced that they have expanded the 'Layer Splitter', a dedicated equipment for 5G inbuildings, to 1,000 buildings, starting with WeWork Seolleung Branch (Gangnam-gu, Seoul). SK Telecom customers will be able to use 5G services twice as fast as existing in-building equipment in major domestic buildings such as shopping malls and department stores.

'Layer Splitter' is the equipment based on '5GX In-building Solution' developed by SK Telecom in the world in August. If existing indoor equipment is equipped with two antennas for data transmission and reception, 'Layer Splitter' is a four-integrated antenna equipment that can process more data simultaneously in the same frequency band.

It also integrates several signal conversion devices * that go through for communications services. The integrated device is half the size of the device as before, and data transfer rates are faster with fewer signal conversion steps. In addition, the integrated device is placed forward in the base station and only the antenna is installed inside the building, enabling quick action in the event of a problem without visiting the building.

※ Previously, it had to go through four-step signal conversion (digital signal → optical signal → base signal (IF) → optical signal → wireless signal (RF)), but 'layer splitter' Combined 'matcher' and 'donor', a device that converts the base signal (IF) into an optical signal

SK Telecom plans to expand in-building coverage centered on 'layer splitters' in buildings with a large number of floating populations such as large shopping malls and department stores. 

Wework, the first construction site, is a shared office where several ICT-related companies collaborate and expect various business models based on Korea's best 5G infrastructure. In particular, SK Telecom and Wework have been working together since last year's strategic partnership, including building 5G infrastructure.

Chang-Kwon Chung, head of infrastructure engineering group at SK Telecom, said, SKT customers can experience differentiated communication quality with the only equipment dedicated to 5G in-building. “In-building will be able to efficiently accommodate in-building traffic that will continue to increase in the 5G era. "We will continue to advance our proprietary solutions."

Hopefully we will learn more about this solution in near future.


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Tuesday, 5 February 2019

Sprint's Trebl: Magic Box + Alexa + HiFi Speakers


Sprint's award winning MagicBox that we have written about multiple times in this blog has launched a new product called Trebl that contains indoor Magic Box small cell, integrated Amazon Alexa voice capabilities and Harman Kardon sound quality.

According to Electronics 360:

The TREBL with Magic Box, introduced this week at CES 2019, won a CES Innovation Award in the Smart Home product category. TREBL is a wireless small cell that accelerates LTE data coverage and speed while controlling smart home devices using Amazon Alexa. The small cell can also play music with Harman Kardon audio through two 8 W speakers, an embedded amplifier, three built-in far-field microphones, Bluetooth, and noise and echo cancellation.

The TREBL with Magic Box is water-resistant, making it suitable for both indoor and outdoor use, and it is lightweight for portability.

And it has been nominated for MWC 2019 Glomo award too



While we love the style, we are not exactly sure why someone would need this combination of Magic Box and Alexa. We will wait and see if it succeeds. In the meantime we wish Sprint the best of luck for Glomo awards.
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Sunday, 29 April 2018

Ericsson's 5G Radio Dot coming in 2019

One of the top 5 posts on this blog last year was one about Ericsson's Radio Dot so I thought its about time I write one about their 5G Radio Dot systems. If you have seen my tutorial on Macrocells & Small Cells, you will know that I don't necessarily agree that these are small cells but anyway lets leave that aside. Lets start with the slides that Ericsson shared:



While I wasn't allowed into any of the big vendors stands at MWC, it was good to see that all of them had put their MWC videos, demos, etc. online. See here. Good to see that Evan Kirstel managed to get us a nice picture of the Radio Dot.

Ericsson also has a page dedicated to Radio Dot here. The Facebook live video of the product below.


Finally, here is a short and sweet article from TMN magazine on this topic. Here is a short extract:

Ericsson has said that it will have a 5G compatible version of its Radio Dot System by 2019.

The company today “introduced” the 5G Radio Dot – a new line of its DAS-lite small cells. The new access points will be able to offer 2Gbps speeds, and will add band support across the 3-6GHz range that are targeted as a pioneer 5G band.
...
TMN : When is the expected actual release date (GA) for the 5G Dot?

Ljungberg: In line with general introduction of the 5G technology in the market in 2019.

This sort of gap between launch announcement and actual availability mirrors the original launch of the Radio Dot, which saw a 14 month gap between introduction and availability.

We will see it being rolled out next year.
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Thursday, 21 December 2017

CW Seminar on DAS vs Small Cells

I mentioned about the CW seminar in my earlier post here. The event is over so here are a few takeaways from the seminar.

The good news about CW Small Cells events is that David Chambers (ThinkSmallCell) does a very comprehensive summary. For this one, its available here.

For a limited time (for non-members), the presentations from the speakers is available on CW website here.

I wanted to highlight few takeaways and stats that were quoted during the seminar as follows:

  • The 5 challenges of deploying small cells: compelling event, capacity, complexity, coverage, cost
  • 90 operators now offer unlimited service with voice, SMS & Data
  • Due to European roaming charges having been scrapped, there is 300% growth in European roaming traffic since last year.
  • Average consumption is 1.9Gbytes/month forecast to be 15.8Gbytes by 2022. Finish operator Elisa is already running at an average of 18GB/month
  • Modern inbuilding systems are 2T2R with many older installation still using SISO.
  • 40% of the workforce will be freelancers, temps, independent contractors and solopreneurs by 2020 (Not sure if this is UK or worldwide figure)
  • 39% of millenials say they interact more with their smartphones than they do with theur significant others, parents, friends, children or co-workers
  • By the end of 2017, around 14000 co-working spaces will be in operation worldwide
  • 67% of people around the world use a personal device at work to some degree

I have highlighted Opencell's view on DAS vs Small Cells in the earlier post here. This Tweet below also shows the comparison points


Bob Slorach, from Wireless Infrastructure Group (WIG), drew some clear guidelines about building size, pointing to the needs of buildings between about 50000 to 300000 sq. ft. This represents a huge unmet demand of around 2 Billion sq. ft. in the UK alone.



As can be seen in the picture above, picocells can serve smaller venues while a 5 watt small cell (microcell) with distributed RF can satisfy the 100 - 300K sq. ft. venues. For bigger venues, a higher power unit would be required. It would also justify to have a neutral host solution so the costs could be distributed and coverage is available for everyone.

Adis Omeragic, Special Projects Manager at EE, shared his side of the story. While his slides are still not on the site (they are expected to be available), I have emnedded a tweet below.

Some of the points he made were, while passive DAS may no longer be used, active DAS will be around. Only about 5% of DAS deployments in the UK have all four operators connected as of today.

According to Adis, DAS displacement is slow because of lack of roadmap alignment between macros and small cells. Small cells upgrade path is very limited. DAS allows Carrier Aggregation, Multi-technology and multi-band capability, SON features which are more common in macros, etc.

Due to the new features like 4x4 MIMO and even Massive MIMO, things may start going in favour of small cells.

One final point that was discussed in the panel was whether VoWiFi is good enough so there is no longer a need for residential or enterprise femtocells.

While the panelists agreed that VoWifi is good enough for residential, it may not be good enough for enterprises. I disagree. If the enterprise has designed their WiFi networks properly, this may not be much of an issue.

There is other issue of the lack of devices and operators support for VoWiFi. As EE pointed out, they only support it for post-paid customers, on direct contract with them. So pre-paid, MVNO and partner customers wont benefit. Also, its supported in limited number of devices.
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Monday, 20 November 2017

DAS vs Small Cells for In-building coverage


Small cells vs DAS has been a topic of discussion for a long time. ThinkSmallCell covered this topic back in 2014. I don't think things have changed much.

Recently I came across ClearSky and Opencell. They both have a slightly different approach to providing in-building coverage solutions. Instead of focusing on having neutral host small cells with MOCN or other network sharing approach, they act as neutral host providers responsible for integrating small cells from multiple operators within the building.


ThinkSmallCell has a detailed write-up of Opencell and Clearsky Technologies. What impressed me is the Opencell article saying (emphasis mine):
This isn’t a true neutral host where a single set of small cells is shared by all operators and routed through a central gateway. Each small cell is connected directly to its host operator – there is no shared gateway switch  through which all traffic is concentrated.
Instead they use Enterprise Small Cells to provide in-building cellular service from all four UK networks at a 75% lower price than DAS including basestations. Parallel sets of small cells are installed, one set for each operator. Typically a single dedicated LAN is used with a single separate fibre backhaul through the Internet. Each installation is designed, commissioned and maintained directly by the OpenCell team.
A 24/7 Data Centre with fault and performance monitoring service constantly tracks operation and identifies problems. We can remotely diagnose and fix issues, and will attend next day to fix or replace faulty hardware. We charge an initial setup fee and an ongoing operational support rate. There would also be a callout fee and additional cost for major changes, such as when the building is redeveloped, layout changed or new tenants are introduced.
It can be 75% cheaper to install enterprise small cells from multiple operators rather than install DAS. Again, I am sure there is a point till which it would make sense to do this. After that, it would be cheaper to have a DAS solution.


In couple of weeks, Cambridge Wireless is hosting a seminar on this topic, 'DAS and Enterprise Small Cells - Competition or Collaboration?'. I am hoping to hear more details about this.

In the meantime, if you would like to explore more about this topic, see the links below.

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Sunday, 6 March 2016

Current-State and Future of In-Building Tech

From a talk presented by John K. Bramfeld (@johnbramfeld) in Wireless Training Seminar & Networking Event - DASpedia West. The talk was 60 minutes but there are just 26 slides; most of the info was in the commentary. Anyway, it is an interesting presentation.



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Monday, 19 January 2015

In-Building Options: Facts, fiction, Architecture and Solutions

In-building solutions are still a big topic of discussion. While there are neutral solutions like Wi-Fi will become more common, does it mean that cellular is no longer a necessity? To answer these questions and to make everyone familiar with the options here are a couple of videos of recent webinars.

The first one is from Alcatel-Lucent titled "Fact vs. Fiction – The Debate on In-Building Architecture Options". It discussed the three architectures (as seen in the picture above) DAS, Distributed Radio Systems (DRS) and Small Cell. Here is the video:


The other webinar (actually 2) is from ThinkSmallCell.

"Choosing the right In-Building Cellular Solutions" is a high level webinar that discusses the needs and available solutions. It also shows the decision process in selecting the right solution. The video is embedded at the end of the slides below but can also be seen directly from Youtube here.



The other older webinar and presentation by ThinkSmallCell that goes more in-depth of these In-building solutions has already been covered in an earlier blog post here.
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Sunday, 26 October 2014

In-building Wireless Solutions Webinar


Last month, David Chambers from ThinkSmallCell held a webinar exploring available In-building solutions and comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each solution, also looking at the approach taken by different vendors. Worth a look. The presentation and Youtube video are both embedded below.




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Sunday, 14 September 2014

Airvana's OneCell™ with C-RAN and Super-cell

Airvana recently announced its OneCell™ system was named the winner in the “In-Building Wireless – Small Cell, Wi-Fi, LAN” category of CTIA’s annual Emerging Technology (E-Tech) Awards competition. I remember back in June, it received a lot of praise for this product. So what exactly is so unique in this OneCell™.

From their press release back in June:

Based on cloud RAN principles, the OneCell system consists of a Baseband Controller and multiple Radio Points. Together they form a single "super" cell that delivers consistently high quality LTE service across indoor spaces ranging from 50,000 to 1,000,000 square feet without handovers or inter-cell interference issues. OneCell supports plug-and-play deployment over standard Ethernet cabling and switches, eliminating the need for proprietary networks or expensive optical links. Further, its unique small cell cloud RAN architecture dramatically simplifies radio frequency planning and integration with wireless macro networks.

There is a mention of C-RAN (though I have had discussion where this claims have been disputed), Super-cell and is pitched towards enterprises.

Airvana's website has a good picture explaining how a super-cell gets rid of interference on cell edges as all the cells work together as a single large cell.

In fact the scheduler can cleverly assign the same resource blocks to different users and hence increase capacity.

Below is a video explaining their solution in more details:

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Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Huawei's Lampsite


Huawei unveiled its 'Lampsite' for 'Deep Indoor Coverage' back in 2013. This is what they announced then:
LampSite includes a comprehensive set of BBU, RemoteHUB(rHUB) and PicoRRU(pRRU) products along with accompanying transmission solutions. The compact pRRU supports multiple bands and modes and can simultaneously support LTE TDD, LTE FDD, UMTS and GSM. A LampSite indoor coverage network can also be deployed simultaneously with Huawei’s SingleRAN solution. 
Thanks to BBU’s baseband sharing feature, one fiber is used for several cells, saving up to 87% of fiber typically used for indoor deployments. rHUB connects to pRRU by cable, and support power over Ethernet (PoE) to simplify site construction and reduce total deployment costs. 
In an early deployment phase, individual pRRU cells aggregate into one cell to reduce interference. Once the network offloads heavy traffic, the cells are split again and Adaptive SFN is enabled to balance capacity and interference. Huawei iManager system and evaluation tools are then used to accurately monitor and intelligently optimize indoor hotspot traffic.


This innovative solution has not only helped them to win contracts with China Unicom, TDC Denmark and Telenor Norway but according to TMN magazine article, "Huawei is shipping more than 10,000 PRRUs (Pico Remote Radio Units) per month in some countries and regions for its LampSite in-building system, according to Peter Zhou, Huawei's President of Small Cell & WiFi, Wireless Network."

Recently Huawei and Telenor also won an award in the LTE World Summit for "Innovation in HetNet Development". With Huawei’s LampSite, Telenor is able to provide average downlink throughput of 46Mbps at any location in a building and significantly cut costs. Deployment of each pico Remote Radio Unit takes only three hours – from site survey, through installation, commissioning, to going live, ensuring rapid rollout in areas with weak signal penetration.

Based on presentations in different events, looks like Huawei is not complacent with its achievements. It plans to develop the next generation or NG Lampsite to achieve 1Gbps Indoor throughput with whole lot of technologies to help achieve this. Multi-stream Aggregation (MSA) being the key. See my earlier post on MSA on the 3G4G blog here.


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Thursday, 14 February 2013

Infonetics: In-building, outdoor small cells to handle quarter of mobile traffic by 2016 - FierceMobileIT

By 2016, telecom operators expect in-building and outdoor small cells, such as microcells, picocells, and public access femtocells, to handle around one-quarter of mobile traffic, according to the latest research from Infonetics Research. 
A full 86 percent of the operators surveyed by Infonetics plan to backhaul small cell traffic to nearby macrocell sites using a variety of locations, including buildings, streetlights, and traffic and utility poles 
Operators will deploy various forms of microwave technology, such as non-line-of-sight, standard microwave and millimeter wave, although fiber is their preferred backhaul technology.

More info here: Infonetics: In-building, outdoor small cells to handle quarter of mobile traffic by 2016 - FierceMobileIT:

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