ISSUE 03 2014
IN-BUILDING COVERAGE
35
With LTE, cell-edge interference intensifies, and so becomes a more significant factor to take into account when using small cells to improve the indoor wireless network experience
five years. Therefore the race is on for CSPs to solve the issue of poor indoor coverage and capacity.”
of sense. However, in a large indoor venue, like a shopping mall or conference centre, the solutions become a bit more challenging. Both higher capacity/higher power small cells and DAS systems can work, dependent on the scenario. If it is mainly a coverage solution, then DAS can work well and deliver great coverage throughout the building. If it is a coverage and capacity challenge, then small cells tend to deliver much better results. Neither approach yet resolves the ‘multi-tenancy’ challenge of delivering operator agnostic capacity and coverage. For DAS you need to have dedicated base stations for each operator; and the small cell scenario may require a small cell per operator. The small cell industry is tackling the multi-tenancy issue by leveraging features in the standards originally defined to support RAN sharing, called Multi-Operator Core Network (MOCN). There are a number of integrators emerging that are offering to deploy multi- radio small cell networks and lease the capacity to the big operators.”
Smaller cells and smarter cells The new approaches to these issues – adding intelligence and new and simpler deployment options – is reflected in the recent product announcements by SpiderCloud, Commscope, Kathrein and a number of other vendors. Art King, director of enterprise services and technologies at SpiderCloud, expands on this theme: “For buildings with above 150 subscribers, using a scalable small cell Enterprise Radio Access Network (E-RAN) system makes sense. In the enterprise, to minimise RF engineering and hardware/wire costs and clutter, it is desirable to leverage the existing Ethernet connection for transport and power. This is where small cells come into their own. With LTE, cell-edge interference intensifies, and so becomes a more significant factor to take into account when using small cells to improve the indoor wireless network experience. Considering that a survey by YouGov in the UK last year found that 50 per cent of enterprises would churn to an operator that could provide better in-building mobile coverage and capacity, the situation becomes even more urgent as LTE becomes more pervasive over the next two to
He concludes: “As it is no easy task to deploy small cells in an indoor environment, currently few, if any, mobile operators and equipment manufacturers have solved these deployment issues. Large-scale small cell deployments using existing enterprise Ethernet/VLAN have arisen as the best solution for CSPs. These can be funded either by the Enterprise IT department directly or by the CSP who justifies this due to the high volume of devices in the enterprise and cash flow from the account. As LTE adoption increases, CSPs need to solve this issue in the most cost efficient and effective way possible and that is through a small cell system that is capable of scaling to support thousands of devices. For the enterprise, a small cell system managed and hosted by the mobile operator on an ongoing opex basis is highly desirable as it cuts out high upfront capex costs and also enables them to benefit from additional hosted and managed mobility services provided by the CSP over that platform, such as cloud PBX integration.”
Added services – added value and profit And what of the services and applications that can be delivered – hopefully profitably – into these environments? NEC’s Martin Guthrie explains his vision: “A small cell E-RAN gateway could enable a ‘clientless unified communications’ so that real-time native interfaces on the mobile device can be used for both public (PSTN, SMS) and enterprise (PBX, IM) type services. The gateway represents mobile handsets as virtual SIP clients facing an enterprise IP-PBX or UC installation without the need for additional handset client software or enhanced capability in the core network. Additionally, The E-RAN small cells could be used to enable indoor navigation and asset tracking, in addition to employee location sharing and paging. This includes supporting multiple levels of application access, for example enforcing tight restrictions in the finance department in an enterprise or the patient records department in a hospital. Or, operators could enable the automatic lock-down of employees’ smartphones and tablets as part of the enterprise’s BYOD policy, restricting employee access to inappropriate websites when they are on-site without the need to install any permanent apps on the devices themselves which would be time consuming and invasive.” LTE
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