Showing posts with label MIMO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MIMO. Show all posts

Tuesday, 29 July 2025

NGMN’s Common Language for Antennas Lays the Foundation for Future-Proof Infrastructure

Base station antennas are critical components of mobile networks, serving as the final link between radio systems and the air interface. Despite their importance, there has long been a lack of consistency in how antenna systems are specified, validated and integrated into networks. This inconsistency has led to inefficiencies in procurement, difficulties in multi-vendor environments, and challenges in scaling network performance. The latest publication from the NGMN Alliance, “Recommendations for Base Station Antennas”, aims to change this by introducing a harmonised framework for describing passive, active and hybrid antenna systems.

The updated document combines the previously separate guidance on passive and active antenna systems into a single, unified publication. Developed under the BASTA (Base Station Antenna) project, it defines a comprehensive set of electrical, mechanical and environmental parameters relevant to base station antennas. These include radiation characteristics such as gain, beamwidth, front-to-back ratio and sidelobe suppression, as well as practical aspects like dimensions, weight, connector type, wind load and ingress protection. For active antennas, it also defines parameters for beamforming capability, scanning range, traffic beam configuration and power control.

One of the key motivations behind the updated recommendations is the growing use of hybrid antenna systems. These combine passive elements, such as the antenna array and remote electrical tilt, with integrated active components like transceivers and digital beamforming units. Hybrid configurations are especially relevant in 5G networks, which rely on advanced techniques like massive MIMO and dynamic beam steering to deliver high capacity and spectral efficiency. However, deploying such systems at scale, particularly in disaggregated or Open RAN architectures, requires a standardised way to describe and compare antenna products from different vendors.

The NGMN publication addresses this need by introducing a structured methodology for presenting antenna parameters, including definitions, recommended test practices and digital exchange formats. Notably, it supports XML-based datasheets aligned with an agreed schema, enabling machine-readable processing of antenna data. This is particularly useful for operators seeking to automate parts of the network planning and procurement lifecycle, including performance comparison, site design and integration testing.

The framework also incorporates coordinate system conventions, including multiple spherical and Cartesian reference models, to provide flexibility in how antenna orientation and beam direction are described. This is essential for accurate modelling of antenna coverage and interference in radio planning tools. The document additionally covers Remote Electrical Tilt (RET) systems, including configuration management, software upgradeability and compliance with AISG protocols.

Importantly, the NGMN recommendations are designed to be implementation-agnostic. Rather than enforcing performance thresholds or mandating design practices, the focus is on standardising the language used to describe antenna characteristics. This approach ensures that innovative antenna designs, including those supporting new form factors or frequency bands, can still be accommodated as long as they conform to the descriptive framework.

A further advantage of the framework is its extensibility. While the current version focuses on antennas operating below 6 GHz, it is expected that future versions will include extensions for higher frequency bands and additional attributes such as energy consumption, carbon footprint and circularity. These sustainability metrics will become increasingly important as networks aim to reduce their environmental impact while delivering ever-higher performance.

The importance of this work becomes clear in the context of multi-vendor and disaggregated networks, where interoperability depends not only on open interfaces but also on consistent component descriptions. A shared vocabulary for base station antennas enables smoother integration, better lifecycle management and more effective use of network resources. It also reduces vendor lock-in and improves supply chain flexibility, which is especially valuable for operators pursuing Open RAN strategies.

As antenna systems continue to evolve, the ability to describe their behaviour and capabilities with precision will be vital. NGMN’s BASTA recommendations offer a practical and forward-looking solution, supporting both current deployment models and the transition toward future architectures such as 6G. By promoting transparency, repeatability and interoperability, this common language for antennas strengthens the foundation of mobile network infrastructure and contributes to a more efficient, open and sustainable ecosystem.

Related Posts: 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Tuesday, 27 June 2023

Ericsson's Massive MIMO Handbook(s)

Sometime last year, Ericsson published a detailed Massive MIMO Handbook, which contains two documents:

  • Massive MIMO Handbook
  • Massive MIMO Handbook – Technology Primer

The main purpose of the Massive MIMO Handbook is to provide a guide for how to use Massive MIMO to meet the performance requirements in a 5G mobile networks. It should also provide a guide for how to choose suitable products in typical network deployment scenarios. The handbook shall also briefly explain key aspects of how Massive MIMO works and how the different technology components affect network performance in field.

This handbook primarily targets the Massive MIMO stakeholders in the communications service providers´ organizations. It can also be used by internal Ericsson organizations.

The document focuses on Massive MIMO solutions, including as a means for meeting the performance requirements in the network. Focus is on products operating with time division duplex (TDD) on mid-band spectrum, typically 3.5-3.7 GHz. Conventional radio solutions are also included as an alternative where Massive MIMO is not needed or not cost efficient. Furthermore, emphasis is on the radio solution, i.e. the radio parts and the antenna parts. To keep the document focused and limited in volume, the baseband solution, site solution other than radio parts and the antenna (e.g. power, enclosure, cooling, etc.), transport solutions (backhaul and fronthaul) are not included. High-band (mm Wave) and FDD are not included in this version. The service in focus is mobile broadband (MBB) as this is the dominating service in all mobile networks.

The purpose of Massive MIMO Handbook – Technology Primer is to provide a deeper understanding to how Massive MIMO works, why it works and what performance is achievable in a real network deployment. Many related topics that provide additional insights to the background of Massive MIMO, e.g. antennas and wave propagation, the implications of Massive MIMO, e.g. architecture and implementation and radio requirements are also covered.

The different chapters of the Technology Primer can be read selectively and standalone to deepen knowledge where the reader chooses. The chapters are however organized in a way that they best are read in succession. For example, the chapters: antennas and wave propagation, antenna arrays, multi-antenna technologies, 3GPP solutions, network performance and Massive MIMO features will be better understood if read in a sequence. If readers has a reasonably good understanding of an area from start, they do not need to read everything in these chapters, and rather selectively read what is important to them.

PDF can be downloaded from here.

Related Posts: 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Friday, 15 April 2022

ZTE Shows-off New 5G Products and Solutions at MWC 2022

Like all other big vendors, ZTE's booth at MWC 2022 was closed for visitors. They did however create a video explaining all their new products and solutions launched at MWC. Here is a summary from their press release:

ZTE's UniSite NEO, among the new solutions, is the industry’s simplest site solution. Powered by the integrated radio unit OmniUBR Series, it is capable of reducing the radio units from 18 to 5, and supporting a 6-band 3-sector site with only 5 units, thus significantly decreasing site rental cost by up to 57% and delivering 40% lower power consumption. 

Also, ZTE has updated its 5G RAN portfolio with the new-generation Massive MIMO product series. It includes 32TR and 64TR AAUs, up to 192 antenna elements and 320 watt, and introducing the industry's lightest Massive MIMO product weighing 9kg for high traffic site with limited space. ZTE's full scenario product portfolio update wraps up the radio network enhancement and improves the ROI for its operators.

At MWC 2022, ZTE presents an all-in-one 5G private network solution based on the new model of 5G network as a service. This is a one-stop order-to-service package with the pre-integrated software and hardware, as well as converged 4G and 5G networks. The package has the tailor-made network features to empower the digital society. 

ZTE introduces three major types of 5G private network, including the compact cabinet for smart factories with dozens of enterprise applications to be launched on the cloud, single server i5GC for comprehensive campus where applications are more diversified and data security and self-service are mandatory, and embedded MEC for a very limited equipment room and simple application scenarios.

In additon, ZTE has launched VMAX, the accelerator of digital transformation at MWC 2022, to satisfy the increasing complexity of the network O&M, which is regarded as one of the biggest issues for operators.ZTE's VMAX can help improve customer experiences, reduce costs and enhance operating performance.

VMAX is a part of uSmartNet, ZTE's Autonomous Network solution, and changes single-domain operation into all-domain and end-to-end perspective providing One-stop Insight. When network errors occur, VMAX supports cross-domain service self-healing. It gets to the root cause of service problem and customer complaint in minutes with more than 80% location accuracy and efficiency increase by 30%. 

In addition, VMAX can interpret the service intent, output network planning suggestion accurately with minimal intervention. Meanwhile, it provides end-to-end security for different scenarios to protect personal privacy.

Here is the video of their products and solutions

Related Posts: 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Friday, 17 December 2021

Demos from Ericsson's Radio Tech Day 2021

Ericsson's Radio Tech Day is a cyclical meeting intended for the telecommunications industry and technical staff of operators in Poland. Engineers share projects, describe best practices and learn from each other's experience. During the conference, the latest solutions in the field of radio and core technology, both in the field of software and hardware, as well as the achievements of start-ups cooperating with the company, are presented.

The following video is from the recent event held last month:

Related Posts: 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Monday, 29 November 2021

Huawei MetaAAU Promises Improvement in 5G Network Performance and Energy Efficiency


Huawei's latest Active Antenna Unit, MetaAAU is billed as having loads of improvement and potential. A sponsored article on Light Reading says:

Speaking at the recent Mobile Broadband Forum event in Dubai, Yang Chaobin, president of Huawei Wireless Solution, flagged numerous technology innovations and advances that take the traditional AAU (active antenna unit) found in Massive MIMO onto another level.

MetaAAU, developed by Huawei, incorporates ELAA (extreme large antenna array) technology supporting 384 antenna elements. It’s double the number of a traditional AAU.

“By introducing 384 antennas in the AAU, coverage can be improved by 3dB on both the downlink and the uplink, and the user experience can also be improved by 30%,” said Chaobin, “Energy savings of 30% can also be achieved.”

The Official Huawei press release points out: 

Released in October this year, Huawei's 64T64R MetaAAU is the ideal solution to improve both network performance and energy efficiency using innovative hardware and software. For hardware, MetaAAU introduces the extremely large antenna array (ELAA) which enables 384 antenna elements, double that of a conventional AAU (192). ELAA is combined with ultra-light integrated array and signal direct injection feeding (SDIF) to improve both coverage and integration. For software, MetaAAU utilizes the Adaptive High Resolution (AHR) Turbo algorithm to enable precise, dynamic, and targeted beamforming, significantly improving user experience and cell capacity. This hardware/software combo marks a new breakthrough in Massive MIMO coverage and energy efficiency.

In comparison with conventional 64T64R AAU and 32T32R AAU, MetaAAU improves coverage by 3 dB and 6 dB and user experience metrics by 30% and 60%, respectively. For example, in one of its flagship projects — 5G Capital that brings 5G to every corner of Beijing — China Unicom Beijing is using MetaAAU to add 30% in both uplink and downlink coverage along with 25% better experience among cell edge users.

MetaAAU is also a powerful energy-saving tool. It allows base stations to achieve the same level of coverage for cell edge users but with a lower transmit power, reducing energy consumption by approximately 30% over conventional AAUs. This has also been tested in the 5G Capital project.

With its advantages in energy efficiency and coverage, MetaAAU is slated for success. Going green is now a global objective — for example, 26 CEOs of European ICT companies have committed to combat climate change with the European Green Digital Coalition (EGDC). At the same time, 5G network coverage requirements will only continue to grow, rolling out 5G in rural and urban, outdoor and indoor contexts. Leading next-gen ICTs will be key in delivering on both demands; and Huawei's MetaAAU stands to be part of the innovation portfolio.

Going back to the Light Reading article:

If traditional materials found in antenna dipoles were applied to ELAA, for example, the weight would drastically increase, making it more difficult and expensive to install on cell sites.

Moreover, without miniaturized filters, ELAA dimensions necessarily become much bulkier compared with traditional massive MIMO antenna. Cell-site space is already constrained and operators don’t want to go through the lengthy process of gaining permission to occupy more tower space, which, in turn, increases maintenance costs.

Another challenge is that antenna elements in a traditional RF feeding network architecture are normally connected by cables, which are an inefficient way to transfer signals. If the antenna array doubles to 384 elements, the length of cable – along with the extent of inefficiencies – increases.

Through a series of hardware innovations, however, MetaAAU makes the transition to ELAA feasible and attractive. Using ultra-lite metamaterials, MetaAAU is around the same weight as the original 64T64R massive MIMO AAU. Adoption of Huawei’s compact wave filter also means MetaAAU dimensions do not require more space.

To address hardware energy inefficiencies, Huawei has adopted SDIF (signal direct injection feeding) technology. SDIF replaces cables with a more energy-efficient metal-type structure.

Aside from hardware innovation, MetaAAU introduces an adaptive high-resolution beamforming algorithm, dubbed AHR (Adaptive High Resolution) Turbo. It has various features, which, when combined, not only reduces wasted radiation energy but also cuts down on ‘noise’ that can degrade network performance.

Among the benefits of AHR Turbo is that it enables MetaAAU to generate extremely narrow beams that can precisely latch onto user equipment, as well as boost air-interface efficiencies by allowing beams to dynamically adapt to radio channel

Here is an official video of MetaAAU

Mobile World Live also has an infographic, which is the source for the image on the top. It's available here.

Related Posts: 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Monday, 15 November 2021

Will Distributed FD-MIMO be next big MIMO Enhancement?

We have looked at MIMO quite a few times in this blog. Back in February we looked at some of the advancements that Samsung and Ericsson had been showing here.

Last year, in a blog post, Samsung talked about Distributed Full Dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO). The key points were:

Around that time, the concept of Massive MIMO was proposed in academic papers. These papers proposed the idea of making the signal dimension at the base station much bigger by using a massive number of antennas such that all inter and intra-cell interference asymptotically go to zero. MU-MIMO performance would be improved significantly with a much lower interference level, therefore leading to capacity gain. It looked promising, but no one knew how to bring it to reality, since arranging 10s or 100s of antenna elements in the conventional way (i.e., in the horizontal plane) would lead to a base station that is longer than a bus, so obviously it was not going to work in a real deployment.  

An important breakthrough came when engineers at Samsung noticed that a concept called Active Antenna Systems (AAS), could be exploited to organize 64 or 128 antennas into a 2D active antenna array that is similar in size with a conventional 4-TX system as shown in the middle portion of Figure 1. Such a system is called a Full Dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO) system. Initial evaluation of the FD-MIMO system coupled with high-order MU-MIMO showed a capacity gain by a factor of 3-4 times for a 64 or 128-TX FD-MIMO compared to a 2-TX LTE system, as was summarized in a 2012 Globecom paper , “Fulfilling the promise of massive MIMO with 2D active antenna array”, and later in a 2013 IEEE magazine paper , “Full-dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO) for next generation cellular technology”. 

Samsung has been actively leading the FD-MIMO standardization process in 3GPP from the beginning, including the 3D channel model study in 2012 that paved the way for subsequent system design, the 4G LTE version of elevation beamforming and the FD-MIMO work from 2014, and more recently the 5G NR-MIMO version of FD-MIMO. Samsung has also been a leader in prototyping and testing the feasibility of the technology and was the first to demonstrate an FD-MIMO system supporting 12 simultaneous MU-MIMO users achieving a record aggregate capacity of > 20 bps/Hz in early 2015. These feasibility study result was later published in a 2017 IEEE JSAC paper , “Full Dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO): demonstrating commercial feasibility”.

…

Initial system level simulations show that the D-FD-MIMO system achieves up to 2 times cell average throughput gain compared to the FD-MIMO system, lifting both cell capacity as well as average user throughput. Such a cellular system can be flexibly deployed to “blanket” a given geographical area and provide better service for both outdoor and indoor users. 

We have developed a hardware prototype and performed field test to verify the feasibility and the performance gain of the D-FD-MIMO system. In the field test, 3 distributed LEGO MIMO RFUs and 7 UE emulators were used. When the number of active RFUs increased from one to three, the overall throughput improved by about 4 times.

A significant amount of work needs to be done before we can accurately quantify the benefits of the D-FD-MIMO technology, but these initial results are certainly promising and show a great potential for this new breakthrough of the MIMO technology.

Back in 2017, Samsung researchers also wrote a paper on this topic, Distributed FD-MIMO: Cellular Evolution for 5G and Beyond, which is available on arXiv here. Quoting from the paper:

Distributed Full Dimension MIMO (D-FD-MIMO) is an evolution of FD-MIMO. A D-FD-MIMO network assumes a cellular structure, where a cell is served by one BS and each BS is connected with a large number of antenna elements, of which individual elements are spatially distributed in the cell. One or more antenna elements are equipped with a digital port, and the signals transmitted and received from all the antenna elements within one cell are jointly processed to perform high order MU-MIMO operation.

Such a cellular system can be deployed outdoors in a city-wide area to provide service to both outdoor and indoor users. It can also be deployed inside the building to serve indoor users only. It is also suitable for providing service in a highly populated area, such as stadiums, shopping centers and airports, where a large number of the users are densely located.

Concepts relating to D-FD-MIMO includes distributed massive MIMO, CoMP (a.k.a. network MIMO) and distributed antenna systems (DAS). Distributed massive MIMO treats the entire network as one cell, featuring an enormous number of access points distributed over a large area, jointly serving all the users. pCell by Artemis can be seen as an implementation of the distributed massive MIMO albeit with a smaller scale in terms of the number of antennas. CoMP relies on the coordination among a few transmission points from the same or different sites to enhance User Equipment (UE) experience at the cell edge. DAS is initially proposed to improve coverage in an indoor cellular communication system, and is sometimes adopted in outdoor scenarios as well. One configuration for outdoor deployment is to have a few antenna arrays distributed throughout the cell to perform MIMO operations. Another DAS configuration deploys a number of individual antenna elements in a distributed manner in each cell of the network, which is similar to the D-FD-MIMO setting. Different from our system-level simulation approach, the analysis theoretically derives the asymptotic sum capacity when the numbers of UE and antennas in each cell both approach infinity with their ratio fixed, and assuming perfect uplink power control.

You can get the PDF of the paper here.

We have written about the Cell-Free Massive MIMO here and here. One of the realizations of D-FD-MIMO is as shown in Ericsson Radio Stripes. 

Researchers on this topic may also be interested in watching Wireless Future Podcast episode 13 on Distributed and Cell-Free Massive MIMO (embedded below). The description says:

In this episode, Erik G. Larsson and Emil Björnson discuss how one can create cell-free networks consisting of distributed massive MIMO arrays. The vision is that each user will be surrounded by small access points that cooperate to provide uniformly high service quality. The conversation covers the key benefits, how the network architecture can be evolved to support the new technology, and what the main research challenges are.

The description also contains some links and the discussion is also interesting to follow. You can jump on to the video directly here.

Related Posts:

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Friday, 9 July 2021

NEC's O-RAN Compliant Massive MIMO Radios


NEC has recently started receiving recognition and the attention is deserves for its massive MIMO radio units and other 5G infrastructure. Back at MWC 2019, they was already showing showing their O-RAN compliant Open RAN radio units (see tweet below)

Just in time for MWC 2021, NEC announced the launch of new radio units (RU) for 5G base stations that are geared for global markets and are scheduled to be available in 2022. Their press release said:

In terms of functionality, the new RUs will be compatible with the n77, n78 and C-Band 3.7GHz frequency band (3.3-4.2GHz), which is globally used as a 5G frequency. In addition, ultra-multi-element antennas utilizing Massive MIMO (*) and digital beamforming for high-precision beams will help to provide high-speed, high-capacity communications between a wider range of terminals. Also, the new RUs will feature higher output and wider bandwidth when compared to conventional products, thereby expanding the communications area and providing high-speed transmission. NEC's proprietary high-density mounting technology, power saving technology, and fanless design will also enable a compact format that is lightweight and power efficient.

The RUs will conform to O-RAN fronthaul interface specifications defined by the O-RAN Alliance and will be compatible with base station equipment from different vendors, making it possible to realize open, flexible and optimized networks according to a wide range of use cases.

At the MWC 2021 Virtual Stand, NEC was boldly showing off their O-RAN Compliant 5G Radio Units. Their product features include:


  • Full Digital Beamforming to Improve Customer Experience: AAS(Active Antenna System) improves the radio quality and realizes stable quality of service by Full Digital Beamforming
  • Sub6GHz Massive MIMO AAS for Macro Cells: Best suited for optimizing coverage and capacity in dense population areas. Can also be utilized as an “in-building” solution by horizontally penetrating the beam into buildings.
  • mmWave Massive MIMO AAS for Small Cells: Designed to be compact and light weight easing installation and expanding site options, and also reducing operational cost with its low power consumption feature.

With so many new hardware players emerging as a result of Open Networks, it remains to be seen if NEC is able to make most of its Massive MIMO leadership.

Related Posts:

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Friday, 18 June 2021

Cell-Site Construction And Evolution Strategies


We all agree that cell sites are complex beasts. The diagram above shows in a simple way all the tasks that may be necessary for cell site deployment. Late last year, ABI Research produced a whitepaper on "Global Cell-Site Construction And Evolution Strategies" that they made freely available here. Quoting the executive summary below:

5G networks are being rapidly deployed around the world with many of these networks working in parallel to existing legacy cellular technologies, such as 2G/3G and 4G, to provide higher data connections of 10X more throughput than 4G. 5G networks typically use high-frequency spectral resources (C-band and mmWave) and, according to the International Mobile Telecommunications 2020 (IMT-2020), the downlink and uplink peak data rate of a 5G network should be 20 Gigabits per Second (Gbps) and 10 Gbps, respectively, with downlink and uplink peak cell spectral efficiency of 30 bit/Second (s)/Hertz (Hz) and 15 bit/s/Hz, respectively. The use of higher frequency bands, which suffer from higher penetration loss and the continuous increase in requested data rates for end users, dictate the necessity of higher network availability and network capacity, which could be achieved through additional spectral resources and network densification. Many MNOs have already bought at auction spectrum for 5G deployment, but the network capacity can be maximized through network densification. Thus, the acquisition of cell site assets is critical for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) for the effective performance of 5G networks.

These network requirements have brought huge challenges to MNOs, local governments, vendors, and System Integrators (SI), as some of those challenges are well-known unsolved issues evidenced by the deployment of legacy generations of cellular technologies and have become even more relevant now with the advent of 5G and the expected large-scale cell site densification.

These challenges range from the high cost associated with deploying network infrastructure at street level, to complex approval processes from local government, including lengthy and expensive site acquisition processes; lack of power availability; limited backhaul availability; lengthy planning application processes for street works or build works; limited space availability on premises and within street furniture; size and flexibility of existing cellular equipment that can fit the different rollout scenarios (e.g., smaller antennas to fit within wall-mounted small cell enclosures); lack of availability of underground space for the deployment of a new chamber and ducts; decluttering policies from local governments that can largely impact the deployment of 5G networks; and increasing tenancy fees for additional 5G equipment and increased power supply.

In response to this situation, there is some pressure on telecom equipment vendors to come forward with solutions that suit each rollout scenario. Improved physical features, such as smaller form factor antennas similar to the Wi-Fi Access Points (APs), lighter-weight and smaller Massive Multiple Input, Multiple Output (mMIMO) antennas, and an innovative variety of vendor equipment, backhaul, and reduced power consumption solutions will help MNOs address these challenges and stay ahead of the competition.

Finally, unlike previous generations of cellular technologies, policymakers, urban planners, and local governments have an important role to play, providing more flexible legislation that enable the rollout of network infrastructure at a faster speed by providing clear guidelines for easy access to the assets for the deployment of cellular infrastructure.

While many topics have been covered in the whitepaper, one of the issues I have closely experiences is the insufficient power for the new upgrades. Again, quoting from the whitepaper:

ENERGY

When deploying a cell site, the power requirement can typically be categorized as: 1) static power consumption, which is associated with the support system of a base station, and 2) dynamic power consumption, which is associated with the data traffic load. For a cell site, the amount of energy consumption varies depending on the amount of equipment and the number of frequency bands supported. Optimizing energy consumption can help operators lower their OPEX and achieve environmental goals.

CHALLENGES

Insufficient DC power capacity. Energy consumption is expected to increase with 5G deployments. New frequency bands and an increased number of equipment contribute to the this. Research on developed markets indicates that the maximum power consumption of a typical site supporting five bands could exceed 10 Kilowatts (kW). However, the reality is that about 30% of macrocell sites do not have a power supply that could support such power requirements. The common solution for energy expansion is adding more rectifiers or more energy cabinets. However, the equipment room or cabinet do not always have sufficient space for additional equipment. To cater to the increasing demand for energy, operators need to either find solutions that improve the existing equipment’s efficiency or construct new cabinets at sites. However, newly constructed cabinets also entail increased civil work and rental costs for operators.

Grid reconstruction. Grid power for the existing sites may be insufficient, especially due to the increase in power consumption with a 5G deployment. Such sites need grid modernization, which can be expensive and can greatly slow down the pace of a 5G deployment. Due to the process and construction requirements, the time to modernize the grid could be up to a year for each site.

Insufficient power backup. Operators need to meet the strict five nines or high availability of services. Ensuring business continuity is crucial for any operator. In times of prolonged bad weather or a power outage, grid and solar energy might not be available to power the cell site. Energy storage systems with lead-acid or lithium-ion batteries, for example, are required to mitigate the risk of a power outage. Most existing networks are still using lead-acid batteries, while the low-energy density, heavy weight, and big volume of a lead-acid battery make it difficult to do an expansion when deploying 5G.

High electricity cost. Another key challenge for operators is how to optimize energy efficiency, translating into good investments by operators. Relying solely on the electric grid could result in high energy expenditure, and the need to consider multiple energy resources. Traffic usage is also not constant throughout the day and varies depending on the location (e.g., city centers versus suburbs). How operators can manage the energy system intelligently and efficiently to reduce unnecessary waste becomes a core consideration.

Given the rapid development of 5G technology and an increasing host of service applications, computing is getting closer to users, with communication technologies and information technologies evolving toward converged Information and Communications Technology (ICT) architecture at an ever-faster pace. The increasing applications and computing required at the edge means that the power supply demand is expected to increase. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the amount of Alternating Current (AC)/Direct Current (DC) power supply needed at the cell site, as well as the number of equipment rooms that are required.

The paper goes on to describe the solutions. You can download the paper here.

If you have a favourite cell site issue do let us know in the comments.

Related Posts:

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Friday, 26 March 2021

Huawei Explains Antennas and Radomes


In the last few months Huawei have produced some short videos explaining how antennas work and what innovations they are doing which is allowing them to have an edge over their competitors. The videos are embedded as playlist below.

There was a separate video explaining Radome, the antenna shell that needs to be weather-proof and withstand temperature fluctuations from -40˚C to 55˚C while still being ultra-light and signal-penetrable. Here is a video on that

Let us know if you know of other interesting videos on these topics.

Related Posts: 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Friday, 19 March 2021

KMW's C-band 64TRx 640W 25kg Massive MIMO


There is a Massive MIMO weight wars taking place. Last month, Ericsson announced that it had a 64T64R Massive MIMO antenna radio unit that weighs just 20kg. Two days later, Huawei announced at MWC Shanghai that its latest equivalent tips the scales at only 19kg. The Mobile Network covered it nicely here and so did Light Reading here.

While Huawei & Ericsson are number 1 and 2 players in the world, at a far smaller scale is KMW (Korea Micro Wave). In conjunction with RCR Wireless, they announced a C-band 64TRx 640W 25kg mMIMO Hardware Ready along with a whitepaper and a video. 

The whitepaper can be downloaded from here and the summary says:

Massive MIMO technology has been deployed for capacity improvement as the 5G NR system. However, in the aspect of coverage expansion, there has been no satisfactory solution so far.

KMW applies the Modular Architecture technology to develop the mMIMO RU (64TRx, 640W, 25kg) with the natural convection cooling system as a solution of 5G coverage expansion.

This Modular Architecture, AFAM (Antenna, Filter and Power Amplifier Module), introduces Radio’s heat source separation that maximizes heat dissipation performance and minimizes the size and weight. And it allows operators to provide the desired smartest service at a lower investment.

Modular RU can also be a standardized platform with easy frequency variation just in time. Moreover, if the market requests O-RAN RU, the product shall be provided on time with the set of HW/SW.

KMW is a professional RU H/W company delivering 5G mMIMO RU to Global Market collaboration through S/W JDM with Global OEM. KMW is ready to cooperate with the global partners and customers.

It would be nice to see some of these massive MIMO units deployed in Open RAN networks later this year. 

Last year Vodafone had announced a bevy or Open RAN radio vendors. Hopefully we will see some more massive MIMO units from others. 

Finally, it should be noted that KMW also goes by the name GigaTera, which is what was earlier known in the US as KMW Inc. Details here.

Related Posts:

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Friday, 26 February 2021

Samsung and Ericsson Talks Massive MIMO


Massive MIMO is a fascinating topic. First is that there is no end to learning about it and secondly, the more information I put out, the more hunger people have about it. In the recent months there have been quite a few product announcements on the topic so we thought, why not do a blog post on it. 

Before we start, why not look at Massive MIMO and Beamforming. Mpirical has a short and sweet video explaining it. It is embedded below.

The video discusses four main topic areas: Beamforming vs Spatial Multiplexing, Beam Creation and Steering, Massive MIMO and finally MIMO Panel Antennas.

Now that we have refreshed the concept, let's look at what the product announcements were. 

The first was this blog post by Ericsson on 'How to build high-performing Massive MIMO systems' where they talked about how Ericsson has mastered the Art and Science of Massive MIMO to both unleash the full capacity benefits and extend the coverage of the new 5G mid-band spectrum - bringing outstanding user experience today, and setting the stage for the advanced applications of tomorrow.

The post starts with the 101 of radio physics, then talks about “Outsmarting” physics with Massive MIMO and Beamforming and finally it talks about the secret sauce in Ericsson AAS (Advanced Antenna Systems). The tweet below shows a practical Massive MIMO antenna and how it works.

In addition, Ericsson announced an "ultra-light Massive MIMO radios and RAN Compute baseband solutions." You can read all about it on their Massive MIMO page here and in the Tweet below.

The second was a press release by Samsung announcing Massive MIMO Roadmap in New Whitepaper, which is available here.

The following video shows world's 1st commercial 5G Massive MIMO Radio by Samsung

As the deployments start ramping up, we will see more product announcements on these. The main challenge that needs solving is the huge amount of power consumption. Probably a year or two before we see a breakthrough.

Related Posts:

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

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:




Related Posts:

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Saturday, 15 February 2020

Verizon's Small Cells Start Paying Dividends

Pictures Source: Dr Jonathan L Kramer

In their recent investor meeting presentation, Verizon talked about many different approaches that have helped them keep pace with the increasing traffic.


While basic improvements like 256-QAM, 4x4 MIMO, Carrier Aggregation and CBRS/LAA have helped, other innovations like Interference Management Software has helped improve capacity.


Densification solutions include increasing number of small cells and more carriers per sector.


This chart above from the deck is a good summary of how different enhancements affect the LTE User Peak Throughput as well as the LTE Network Spectral Efficiency. According to the graph, this year they are planning to deploy FD-MIMO, a.k.a. Full-Dimension MIMO.

This research paper (link) on FD-MIMO provides an excellent overview of the topic. According to that "3GPP decided to use tens of antennas with a two dimensional (2D) array structure as a starting point. Full-Dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO), the official name for the MIMO enhancement in 3GPP, targets the system utilizing up to 64 antenna ports at the transmitter side."


This chart above is a good summary of how these enhancements have helped Verizon expand capacity to handle the increase of user traffic.


With regards to the small cells, the number of 5G small cells is expected to increase by at least 5 times this year to cope with the 5G traffic increase and coverage improvement. As Verizon has deployed mmWave spectrum for 5G, they will need significant number of smaller cells to provide coverage.


The tweet below shows an example of 5G Small Cell


Here is an interesting recent video from Verizon explaining small cells to their end users.


It would be interesting to see in the next few years how these small cells solve the coverage gap and handle the capacity need.

Related Posts:
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)