Exploding Femtocells: How Testing plays an important role

The Register pointed out a while back that some of Vodafone's Sure Signal Femtocells (designed by Alcatel-Lucent) are exploding.

Vodafone says that anxious customers of its home femtocell box are safe, despite experiencing continuing brownouts. Although Vodafone is replacing the Alcatel-made units on request, it has declined to carry out a full recall.

Vodafone's user forums have a lot of info and pictures. The one from which I took the above picture says:

The failure was announced by a loud bang, a flash and the tripping of the power circuit.

Luckily there has been no serious accidents but it is enough to highlight the importance of all the different kind of testing that is done for all different kinds of devices.

This picture above, even though highlights the testing for mobile devices, is not very different to the steps required or testing small cells.

Due to the pressures of delivering more is shorter duration's, it can sometimes be a challenge to finish all of these to the highest possible standards. In any case, if its not done in the right way, the end results are visible soon enough, once it goes live.

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.

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.

Site Selection - Nice animation by Alcatel-Lucent

See Also:

• The biggest challenge to Small Cells deployment

Multi-standard Metrocells (MSM): 'Still a year away'

From a recent Fierce Broadband Wireless article:

The carrier is also working on what it calls Multi-Standard Metrocells (MSMs), or small cells that combine LTE, HSPA+ and Wi-Fi into a single unit, but these are apparently proving tricky as the carrier appears to be in no rush to hustle the MSM devices out of the lab and into real-world deployments.

"It would be foolish to think less than a year" for the MSM deployments, Mansfield told Light Reading Mobile, but he added the rollout effort probably will not take two years either.

Speaking at the Citi Global Internet, Media & Communications Conference held during January in Las Vegas, John Donovan, senior executive vice president of AT&T technology and network operations, emphasized the importance of multi-standard small cells in the operator's network plans. "Our objective for 2014 is that we won't do any small cell or in-building systems that don't include Wi-Fi," he said.

AT&T announced last November that it intends to deploy more than 40,000 small cells over the next two years as part of its expansive Project Velocity IP (or VIP). The project also will entail the rollout of 10,000 new macrocells and 1,000 distributed antenna systems (DAS) throughout its service footprint.

During AT&T's Innovation Showcase in New York last week, Mansfield indicated that the end-of-2015 target for 40,000 small cells still seems quite feasible. "At this point I see no reason to believe that we won't hit that number...and we could revise it next year," he said.

Another article by the same author in the same publication:

The small cell market is bifurcating between public access and metrocell equipment vs. consumer-grade femtocells, resulting in two distinct roadmaps for sales of baseband processors for small cells, according to ABI Research.

Baseband system-on-a-chip (SOC) platforms for public access or metrocell equipment, which is targeted at higher price and feature points, will sell in smaller volumes than less costly baseband SoCs for femtocells installed in homes and businesses, said ABI.

"The difference in price points is explained by the fact that enterprise and consumer femtocells are, as the name implies, consumer grade, and with performance levels much less than their metrocell cousins, less costly components can be used. Conversely, public access metrocells are ruggedized, often for outdoor use, and come with advanced features which allow them to handle many simultaneous subscribers often in simultaneous multimode 3G/LTE, and increasingly Wi-Fi, at much higher RF power levels than a femtocell," said ABI.

Complete article here.

In another news, CJ Meurell, vice president and general manager in JDSU’s Communications thinks that Small cells (inc. Metrocells) would play a key part in the helping with the quick rampup of the demand in mobile data serrvices in African and Asian countries. Complete article here.

Are we going to see more of Cloud RAN (C-RAN) in future?

China Mobile was in news a few times the last month with regards to Metrocells and C-RAN. The first item from TelecomAsia:

Alcatel-Lucent has unveiled a new TD-LTE metro base station for its lightRadio product line that will be deployed by China Mobile, which co-developed it.

 

The compact lightRadio Metro Radio – revealed at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona – houses two lightRadio cubes, fully integrated with a directional antenna, with an output of 5W.

 

Alcatel-Lucent says the design allows it to “provide the coverage normally associated with a much bulkier, heavier remote radio unit linked to an external antenna via an RF coaxial cable.”

 

China Mobile will deploy the 2.6 GHz Metro Radio in its TD-LTE network in Shanghai, Nanjing and Qingdao – specifically, in busy indoor and outdoor locations like shopping centers where macro coverage can suffer either from building density or too many people trying to access the network.

 

The Metro Radio is the first product to result from a co-creation agreement signed by Alcatel-Lucent and China Mobile just over a year ago to conduct joint development and test activities on lightRadio TD-LTE projects.

An article on the same topic in Rethink-wireless throws a bit more light:

The TDD lightRadio Metro Radio houses two of ALU's now-famous 'cubes' (highly compact radios which can be installed on lamp posts) integrated with a directional antenna. This enables a level of coverage which would normally require a far larger remote radio unit linked to an external antenna via cable, claimed ALU.

China Mobile's first trial TD-LTE network using the lightRadio product covers 13 cities including Shanghai, Nanjing and Qingdao. The base station will be deployed in busy indoor and outdoor locations, such as retail malls and sports stadia. As well as C-RAN, Mobile also plans to deploy compact metrocells combining 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi on a massive scale in future.

Another one:

ASOCS Ltd., a Silicon IP provider of software defined radio solutions and CMRI, Research Institute of China Mobile (CMCC) Ltd., the world's largest mobile operator, have signed a strategic memorandum of understanding for the joint development, commercialization, testing and deployment of large-scale baseband processing units for China Mobile's next generation Cloud-RAN network.

Earlier trials undertaken by leading mobile operators, identified the bottleneck of Centralized Base-band Units, consisting of general purpose CPU, to perform major baseband calculations in cost and power efficient management. The solution was to introduce significant offloading capabilities of such calculations with highly specialized Modem Processing Units (MPU).

Today there is a growing understanding in the industry that such MPU should support a wide range of system partitioning, topologies and real time system performance, including large scale Collaborative Multi-point communications (COMP) and massive MIMO. Since communication algorithms are evolving over time, and since the C-RAN concept provisions on-the-fly reconfiguration of the BBU to support a variety of mobile communication standards, an MPU solution which is re-configurable at runtime has a great advantage over traditional hard-wired designs.

China Mobile (CMCC) has been pushing the cloud agenda for a long time. A whitepaper from them on the same topic is available here.

Picture source: NTT Docomo press release

NTT Docomo is another operator who believes very much in C-RAN. Occasionally it refers to the C-RAN as Centralized RAN. There were couple of announcements from their side:

The first one was a press release from Docomo here:

NTT DOCOMO, INC., Japan’s leading mobile operator and provider of integrated services centered on mobility, announced today it will begin developing high-capacity base stations built with advanced C-RAN architecture for DOCOMO’s coming next-generation LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) mobile system. The new architecture will enable quick, efficient deployment of base stations, especially in high-traffic areas such as train stations and large commercial facilities, for significantly improved data capacity and throughput.

Advanced C-RAN architecture, a brand new concept proposed by DOCOMO, will enable small “add-on” cells for localized coverage to cooperate with macro cells that provide wider area coverage. This will be achieved with carrier aggregation technology, one of the main LTE-Advanced technologies standardized by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The small add-on cells will significantly increase throughput and system capacity while maintaining mobility performance provided by the macro cell.

High-capacity base stations utilizing advanced C-RAN architecture will serve as master base stations both for multiple macro cells covering broad areas and for add-on cells in smaller, high-traffic areas. The base stations will accommodate up to 48 macro and add-on cells at launch and even more later. Carrier aggregation will be supported for cells served by the same base station, enabling the flexible deployment of add-on cells. In addition, maximum downlink throughput will be extendible to 3Gbps, as specified by 3GPP standards.

Another one from Rethink-wireless here:

Japan's Docomo has selected the vendors, Nokia Siemens and Panasonic, which will upgrade its network with certain LTE-A features like carrier aggregation.

This is a good win for NSN, which has not featured as heavily as Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent in the most advanced LTE roll-outs to date. Breaking into the Japanese carriers is tough, since Docomo in particular tends to rely on trusted local suppliers with which it has long-standing development alliances.

Panasonic, of course, falls into that category - it has worked with the operator since 2007 on LTE network infrastructure, but NSN was also brought into that project at an early stage and its efforts have borne fruit. The European vendor will supply its Liquid Radio multiple standard RAN. Like Docomo's LTE network, there will be heavy use of remote radio heads, with baseband processing virtualized in the cloud, as well as increasing roll-out of small cells to increase indoor and outdoor capacity. NSN says the base stations will deliver capacity of 300Mbps.

In future, the two vendors will support Docomo's own particular definition of Cloud-RAN, a concept which is being pioneered in China, Japan and South Korea, and which takes the idea of remote radio heads and shared basebands to a new level. Docomo says it favors C-RAN because the cell site equipment, consisting of radio and antenna, is compact and low power, and so can be deployed quickly in high traffic areas like train stations. It calls its architecture Advanced C-RAN and this will rely on some HetNet principles, including a separate layer of 'add-on' small cells adding localized capacity while cooperating with macrocells.

In the C-RAN, there will be high capacity master base stations supporting multiple macrocells plus the local small cells. The master BTSs will handle up to 48 macro and small cells at launch and more later. Carrier aggregation will be supported for cells served by the same base station. The carrier says it will boost peak downlink speed to 3Gbps over time, hitting 'true 4G' and 3GPP LTE-B standards.

If you are wondering what 'LTE-B' or the 'true 4G' is, see this post here.

In South Korea, both KT and SK Telecom have announced C-RAN strategies for their LTE deployments, dubbed Cloud Communications Center (CCC) and Smart Cloud Access Network (SCAN) respectively. As early as June 2011, SKT had deployed 1,772 RRHs and 609 baseband units within its LTE network in capital Seoul. The lower amount of baseband units suggests an average of almost three RRHs per baseband unit, assuming each RRH is single sector.

The above two pictures are from the Small Cells Standardization presentation here.

An old article from Rethink-wireless mentions the following:

This is the central concept of C-RAN, deconstructing the traditional base station to leave a low power unit at the cell site, integrating antenna and radio, while centralizing all the baseband activity and supporting hundreds or thousands of sites flexibly from the cloud. KT calls its LTE approach its Cloud Communications Center (CCC) architecture, and it has been co-developed with Samsung and Intel. The latter is leaping on the opportunity to bring its expertise in servers and data centers to the telco network, and in this case its platforms are integrated with Samsung modems to create a centralized exchange for signals communications processing. This is linked by fiber (essential for C-RAN) to the cell sites.

As seen in vendor strategies like ALU's lightRadio and Nokia Siemens' Liquid Radio, the CCC also harnesses virtualization technology so that the central processing resources can be allocated flexibly according to the peaks and troughs of demand in different sites. Yung Kim, senior EVP head of strategy planning at KT, told TelecomAsia: "For example, at a sports stadium you can dynamically allocate more resources for that area during a game on a millisecond basis." The design also improves coverage at the cell edge, he added, claiming twice the capacity per cell, on average, because of better improved edge management.

The CCC architecture can manage 144 base stations per server and accommodate 1,000 servers in each data center, all them acting as a central processing entity. Most tasks are run on off-the-shelf processors rather than dedicated ASICs, also a key trend to reduce the cost of data networks and to converge the norms of the IT data center with those of telecoms. The performance and power advantages of modern computer processors are now up to the task of massive telecoms networks, believe carriers like KT, hence the intense interest of Intel, although some ARM-based chip vendors like Marvell and Freescale are also pushing from the network into the data center.

Do you have an opinion on the C-RAN architectures in the future? If yes, we would like to hear.

What is a Metrocell? - definition by Alcatel-Lucent

Looking through an old ALU whitepaper, I found another way of describing Metrocell, so here it is:

Metro cells, the latest evolution in small cells, are based on the same low cost femtocell technology that has been successfully used in home and enterprise cells, but with enhanced capacity and coverage. With higher processing and transmit power, the first generation of metro cells is engineered to serve from 16 to 32 users and provide a coverage range from less than 100 meters in dense urban locations to several hundred meters in rural environments. However, unlike home and enterprise cells, metro cells are owned and managed by a MSP and typically used in public or open access areas to augment the capacity or coverage of a larger macro network.

Available in both indoor and outdoor versions, metro cells are plug-and-play devices that use Self-Organizing Network (SON) technology to automate network configuration and optimization, significantly reducing network planning, deployment and maintenance costs. While indoor versions use an existing broadband connection to backhaul traffic to a core network, outdoor versions may be opportunistically deployed to take advantage of existing wireline or wireless sites and backhaul infrastructure, such as Fiber-to-the-Node (FTTN), Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH), Very-high-speed Digital Subscriber Line (VDSL) street cabinets, and DSL backbone.

Since metro cells use licensed spectrum and are part of the MSP’s larger mobility network, they provide the same trusted security and quality of service (QoS) as the macro network. With seamless handovers, users can roam from metro cells to the macro network and vice versa. Metro cells also deliver the same services as the macro network (for example, voice, Short Message Service (SMS), and multimedia services), and support application programming interfaces (APIs), that may be used for developing new, innovative services. In short, metro cells promise to be the ideal small cells for network offloading.

Original post: 3G and 4G Wireless Blog: Macrocells or Metrocells?:

There is one final chance to register for our Metrocells Masterclass in London on the 21st of Feb. Details here.

Where to Deploy Metrocells - Infographic by Alcatel Lucent

Where to Deploy Metrocells - Infographic by Alcatel Lucent from Zahid Ghadialy

Metrocell Q&A: Dedicated or Shared carrier?

From Alcatel-Lucent techzine:

SHOULD I USE DEDICATED OR SHARED CARRIER?

While both dedicated and shared carrier solutions can be built, a selective dedicated carrier is always preferred over shared carrier for metro cell deployments, especially in outdoor environments where macro cell signal levels will be higher (Figure 6):

• With dedicated carrier, the MNO reserves a carrier for the exclusive use of metro cells in geographies that have been specifically targeted as needing extra capacity. In all other areas this same carrier may be used by macro cells. The use of a dedicated carrier avoids interference with the macro cell, which enables metro cells to cover wider areas and to absorb a larger amount of traffic off the macro network – greatly improving the TCO.
• With shared carrier deployments, metro cells use one of the same carriers assigned to the macro layer, which would normally have one or more additional dedicated carriers. The coverage range and offload effectiveness of metro cells deployed with shared carrier are lower than those using dedicated carriers. Additionally, metro cells cannot be placed too close to high-power macro cells with this type of deployment, as represented by the red exclusion zone in Figure 6.

Figure 6. A dedicated carrier is preferred over a shared carrier

TURNING ANSWERS INTO STRATEGY

Each MNO’s metro cell deployment strategy should be based on their W-CDMA spectrum holdings and LTE launch timing (Table 2).

Table 2. Metro cells deployment strategies depend on W-CDMA spectrum and LTE plans

Spectrum-rich W-CDMA MNO launching LTE early (2011 – 2013)

MNOs with rich W-CDMA spectrum holdings and launching LTE early should deploy W-CDMA metro cells to both indoor locations and traffic hotspots using a dedicated carrier, while also deploying LTE metro cells to traffic hotspots. To help offload the macro network in hotspots, the MNO may also consider deploying Wi-Fi-integrated metro cells.

Spectrum-rich W-CDMA MNO launching LTE late (2013 – 2015)

Operators with rich W-CDMA spectrum holdings, but launching LTE late, should also deploy W-CDMA metro cells to both indoor locations and traffic hotspots, using shared carrier. To help manage interference and avoid handoffs, traffic should also be segmented, so only HSPA data traffic is offloaded to the metro cells in hotspots. These MNOs will also benefit from deploying Wi-Fi access points that are integrated with the metro cells to help further offload the macro network.

Spectrum-poor W-CDMA MNO launching LTE early (2011 – 2013)

MNOs with poor W-CDMA spectrum holdings and launching LTE early should deploy W-CDMA metro cells in shared carrier to indoor locations only, while also deploying LTE metro cells to traffic hotspots for extra capacity. If the MNO has a Wi-Fi access network, these sites can easily be used for the deployment of metro cells by simply swapping out the legacy Wi-Fi access points for Wi-Fi-integrated metro cells.

Sprint’s Metrocell Move Should Bring 5 Million Shipment Bonanza By End 2013

OYSTER BAY, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In what is a major endorsement for public access small cells, Sprint Nextel has announced that it will deploy Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio Cube Metro Cell to densify its Network Vision LTE network. Sprint plans to use lightRadio metrocells starting in high traffic indoor areas such as entertainment venues, transportation hubs, and business campuses.

“This is a significant win for Alcatel-Lucent and its lightRadio technology, but more importantly dispels the notion of small cells being hyped, and that heterogeneous networks represent a major shift in mobile radio network architecture”

“We believe that this type of indoor public-access small cell will become a popular method for operators wishing to preserve spectrum and augment the data capacity of their networks while improving QoS in high traffic areas,” says Nick Marshall, principal analyst at ABI Research. Marshall adds, "We estimate total indoor and outdoor small cell shipment numbers reaching 4.55 million by end 2013, and this announcement validates that view with a high likelihood of shipments reaching closer to 5 million."

“This is a significant win for Alcatel-Lucent and its lightRadio technology, but more importantly dispels the notion of small cells being hyped, and that heterogeneous networks represent a major shift in mobile radio network architecture”, says Aditya Kaul, practice director of mobile networks. Kaul adds, “While we have seen Korean and Japanese operators forge ahead with small cells both indoors and outdoors especially in public spaces, Sprint’s announcement could spark off other operators in North America and possibly Europe to accelerate plans for metro cell deployments.”

While we await more details from Sprint on which markets will receive the lightRadio equipment, Alcatel-Lucent has contracted with Sprint for its LTE macro deployment and upgrade along the East Coast and Southwest. Ericsson and Samsung are the other two vendors on the LTE Sprint Network Vision project, and are known to be supplying macro base station equipment.

More details at:
Sprint’s Metrocell Move Should Bring 5 Million Shipment Bonanza By End 2013, Says ABI Research | Business Wire:

'via Blog this'

10 Metrocell (3G and LTE) trials in the CALA region

Alcatel-Lucent has long claimed that femtocells and metrocells can boost wireless networks, but this time, it seems that carriers are also betting on the technology. According to Osvaldo di Campli, Alcatel-Lucent’s president of the Caribbean and Latin American (CALA) region, three femtocell contracts have been signed in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. Di Campli said that there are ten metrocell trials across CALA, using both metrocell equipment for 3G and LTE, in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Uruguay.
...

However, in Brazil both femtocell and metrocell adoption face challenges. Although the government is studying regulation changes, currently carriers have to pay equal taxes when deploying macrocells, metrocells or femtocells, which can hinder investment.

Complete article here.