Small cell, big idea

Parker Moss, Alcatel-Lucent’s VP of Strategy and Marketing Wireless was in the region recently discussing the importance of metro cells, and advising on ways service providers may start thinking beyond the box. Moss offered Comm. a more detailed view of the growing importance of small cells in the evolution of mobile networks

As investment in data-centric and LTE mobile networks continues in earnest, Parker Moss believes that service providers need to focus more on operating cost (opex)-related issues rather than capital expenditure (capex)-related ones when investing in infrastructure.

“80 per cent of network development costs and complexity is beyond the box, in areas such as site acquisition and backhaul,” Moss says. “More importantly, it is advisable to implement small cells at scale and develop a good radio product.”

A dense underlay of metro cells can deliver unbelievable amounts of total capacity, which is exactly what is going to be needed in the not too distant future. But being closer to the user has other benefits. The short range provides a much better quality radio channel, which can achieve higher speeds and better throughput. There will be a lower battery drain on the handset device, increasing battery life. There are also many more potential locations to install metro cells (although more are needed). An extra benefit is that each metro cell frees up capacity on the microcell. Locations which are difficult to reach because they are deep indoors, behind buildings and so forth, consume a lot of the total microcell resource to deliver a relatively slow throughput.

In June Alcatel-Lucent launched its end-to-end LightRadio Metro cell Express solution that it believes assists service providers to implement a cost-effective method to deliver massive capacity to urban hotspots. Service providers also need to enhance customer quality of experience by improving coverage to in-building locations and this has been traditionally challenging due to macro-only networks, and rural locations where macro coverage has been non-existent.

The LightRadio Metro cell Express solution leverages Alcatel-Lucent’s LightRadio 936x and 976x Metro Cell and Metro Radio portfolio, providing operators with a comprehensive product and services solution that:

· accelerates the deployment of metro cells

· reduces operational and technical risks, and

· simplifies operations and maintenance by addressing the planning and deployment challenges of implementing a metro cell network.

In regions such as the Middle East, provision of indoor data coverage remains challenging, particularly in high rise buildings, and this is where small cell solutions have a significant role to play. Moss believes that parts of the Gulf in particular could be involved in the deployment of the first phase of metro cell deployments globally given the new build developments and greenfield infrastructure available.

“Service providers can typically trench fibre more easily in these newer cities, and can end up working at an early stage with property developers,” Moss says.

Operators in the US such as Sprint AT&T and Verizon have already embarked on metro cell deployment projects, which they are currently trialling, and the trend is likely to gain momentum in other parts of the world as demand for mobile broadband grows.

In a recent Mobility Report, Ericsson said that mobile data traffic volumes have doubled during the past year (comparing the third quarter of 2012 with a year earlier) and were up 16 per cent compared to the second quarter of 2012, driven by the rapid uptake of smartphones and LTE subscriptions.

The vendor also expects data traffic volumes to grow at an average annual rate of 50 per cent between 2012 and 2018, with video streams driving that growth.

In order to keep up with that data traffic growth, Ericsson believes operators will need to deploy small cells to supplement the capacity and coverage of their macro base station networks in some places.

By 2017, Ericsson expects each macro base station in urban areas will be supplemented by about three small cells. Today, there are about five million macro base stations deployed worldwide and those in metro areas account for about 15 per cent of the total – so, about 750,000.