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Showing posts with label Country USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Country USA. Show all posts

Monday, 2 September 2019

5G Small Cells on 'Smart Poles' in Denver


There was a good report in FierceWireless about Verizon installing 5G in Denver using special ‘smart poles’. We have covered this topic of smart lampposts and poles extensively for many different countries including India, UK, Portugal, China and even Japan.

The article states:

The Boulder, Colorado-based company Comptek Technologies has designed stand-alone poles to house wireless small cell equipment that is completely hidden within the poles. The City of Denver has approved the design of these Comptek City Poles, and Verizon is now deploying them in Denver for 4G and 5G small cell equipment.

 In addition to Verizon, Comptek is also working in different parts of the country with all the other major wireless carriers either directly or through their deployment partners. For instance, Comptek is working closely with its customer Xcel Energy, which has an eight-state footprint. Xcel is helping carriers to deploy their small cells on the utility’s existing vertical infrastructure. And in some cases, Xcel is taking down existing light poles and replacing them with Comptek poles that combine small cell equipment along with a streetlight.

 The company has a national agreement with Verizon. Besides Denver, Comptek is working with Verizon in other cities including Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati, Ohio; Anaheim, San Diego and Los Angeles, California; as well as Salt Lake City. In the Denver/Front Range area, the company has about 350 poles under contract. And across the U.S. it’s got contracts to erect about 1,000 poles by the end of 2019.

CityPoles' website here isn't updated with the latest info but the earlier press release stated 300 small cells in Denver.


Continuing from the article:

The poles are designed in modular sections. There’s a foundation, base cabinet, shroud, upper pole and top antenna section. They’re custom-designed to incorporate various wireless equipment configurations, cabling, power supplies and antennas. In addition to the physical pole itself, Comptek also provides electronics and environmental controls. The poles can support single or multiple carriers.

 Jim Lockwood, CEO of Comptek said that for 5G, Ericsson’s mmWave equipment is mounted in a tri-sector format, meaning that the radios and antennas are integrated with each other and they’re mounted at the top of the pole in three panels that face in different directions. Representatives from Ericsson and Verizon could not verify the "tri-sector format" or provide any additional information about it.

Related info:

Related Posts:
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Tuesday, 4 June 2019

The Big Small Cell Update by iGR

iGR Wireless Research presented this webinar recently. The brief from the webinar says:

Small cells are becoming an increasingly important part of the 4G and 5G infrastructure, despite the issues with deployment. iGR is continually updating its extensive research on the small cell opportunity, including total addressable market, actual deployments and TCO.

 This webinar provides an update on iGR’s view of the indoor, outdoor, CBRS, mmWave and sub 2.5 GHz small cells


There is a lot of useful information but I should mention this is very USA specific.

There is no direct link but you can register to watch the webinar recording here. 
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Tuesday, 14 May 2019

T-Mobile USA's Indoor CellSpot (a.k.a. Femtocells)

Sometime back I saw this tweet by T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray


I started wondering if T-Mo had femtocells and voila!

Pic Source: Dane Powell

According to the T-Mobile website, there are 4 types of devices:

  1. 4G LTE CellSpot V1 
  2. 4G LTE CellSpot V2 
  3. 4G LTE Signal Booster 
  4. 4G LTE Signal Booster Duo
The product comparison chart can be seen below
Now let's look at the Functionality comparison chart
As you can see, the cellspots require an ethernet connection as they create a small coverage bubble while the Signal boosters are just repeaters.

You can get detailed specifications here on 4G LTE CellSpot V1 and 4G LTE CellSpot V2.

Detailed specifications here on 4G LTE Signal Booster and 4G LTE Signal Booster Duo.

In Addition, T-Mobile also supports Wi-Fi calling and also sells T-Mobile 'Wi-Fi CellSpot AC1900 Gigabit Router'
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Tuesday, 7 August 2018

Sprint's Outdoor Small Cells - In Pictures


Sprint has been deploying outdoor small cell with more than 15,000 already deployed. This is not as aggressive as T-Mobile that plans to deploy 25,000 just this year but Sprint is also deploying MagicBox, its indoor small cells. According to Sprint newsroom, more than 260,000 magic boxes have been distributed to date. In fact they are so popular that the hospitality edition was released last month.


In this post, I am going to post some tweets with pictures of Sprint's outdoor small cells:










It should be pointed out that in USA, the definition of Small Cells is often fuzzy. While we refer to small cells as complete base stations, out there small cells can also mean small form factor RRH/RRU. Some of these small cells will have BBU hidden away. For more details see our tutorial on small cells and macrocells here.
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Saturday, 10 March 2018

Some pictures of Small Cells from California (USA)

I came across them on various LinkedIn/Twitter posts

Two Small Cells on adjacent light poles in SF (signs used to somewhat shroud mRRU) - Source: Omar Masry

The comment mentions that One is Verizon. Other is likely ATT
I would argue that if this is an RRU (Remote Radio Unit) then its probably not a small cell but let's leave that one for another day.

Small Cell. Financial District. San Francisco - Source: Omar Masry


Comment mentions: Either T-Mobile or Verizon.  Likely done by Modus. Might be worth checking out this earlier post here too.

The next one is from Steve Blum's Blog of T-Mobile Small cell in Gage Canal, Riverside, California



The final one is from Santa Rosa, California. From a PressDemocrat article titled 'New Verizon antennas generate unwelcome buzz in Santa Rosa'


From the article (more pictures of this installation in the article):
A city-sanctioned bid to improve wireless connectivity for internet and cellphone users in Santa Rosa has run into opposition from some residents and generated concern among city officials after the first round of “small-cell” antennas went up on utility poles in recent weeks. 
The equipment — including large metal in-ground utility boxes about 5 feet tall — varies greatly in design from anything the city was previously shown by Verizon, the wireless provider installing the antennas, said Eric McHenry, director of Santa Rosa’s Information Technology Department. 
While the city had no role in the equipment design, Santa Rosa officials went through a significant amount of back-and-forth with representatives of the wireless carrier on what the units would look like on city-owned streetlights, McHenry said. Officials took pains to make sure the antennas would be as unobtrusive as possible, he said. 
“We frankly as a city were also surprised by what these first ones looked like,” he said, referring to the units Verizon is installing on utility poles. “They look nothing like what we had discussed with Verizon for our city streetlights or even the pictures that we shared with the council (of the installations) on wooden poles.”
Definitely a scope for improvement out there.

Related Article:

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Thursday, 7 December 2017

Connecting the remote Alaskan Villages


A very nice article from the recent IEEE Spectrum Magazine here.

The $300 million telecom project will boost speeds or provide service to many areas of Alaska for the first time. TERRA was completed in October after six years of construction when engineers installed its final microwave repeater. The network uses a combination of repeater data links and fiber optics to form a giant, 5,000 kilometer ring around southwest Alaska — a sparsely populated region with few paved roads and wilderness areas larger than West Virginia.

Quoting from the magazine:

With TERRA, Kotzebue residents now pay $59.99 per month for an Internet plan with download speeds of 3 Mb/s, which is not even fast enough to stream a high-definition movie. To be able to do that, they would need to pay at least $149.99 per month for 6 Mb/s. Compare that with New York City, where residents pay an average of $55 per month for 25 Mb/s.

 So was it worth $300 million to bring slightly better Internet to approximately 45,000 people in 84 rural villages spread out over an area roughly the size of Germany? For GCI, it was a strategic move. The project was completed as more customers began to watch more content online. Large clients such as hospitals and schools in rural communities also needed better access to the outside world. Partly thanks to TERRA, the company welcomed $12 million in new revenue for Internet service in the first three quarters of 2017, while losing $8 million from its cable-TV division.

Here is a video on how its done and the challenges:



Complete article here.

If you like to learn more about different backhaul types, see our short video tutorial here.
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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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Thursday, 28 September 2017

Drones, More Drones & Droneway

I have written about Drones and Balloons in the past, mainly to BT/EE. Take for instance this presentation by Mansoor Hanif at TIP Summit and this one on Flying Small Cells. In addition I have also talked about Telefonica's Nano cell, which is a small cell on a drone; Verizon's 'flying cell-site' and AT&T's flying COW.


This week the US operator Sprint announced that they are trialing their Magic boxes on drones. Here is a video on that:


Back in August, IEEE Spectrum ran an article on how Flying Cell Towers Could Aid Search and Rescue. Base stations carried by drones would form an ad hoc network and connect first responders.

Picture Source: IEEE Spectrum

From the IEEE Spectrum article:

An aerial communications system supported by drones could be deployed much faster and operate with minimal interference. In 2013, we started to think about what such a drone-based communications system for public safety agencies might look like. We knew it would need a shared radio-frequency channel for first responders, drone-portable base stations, a power supply, and a digital database for exchanging information. We would also need controllers that would be easy enough for a licensed drone pilot to operate in a crisis.

 Our first major challenge was to find a base station small enough for a drone to support. Drones under 25 kilograms—the limit now imposed by U.S. air-safety regulators—can carry a maximum payload of about 2 kg, so we would need a base station that weighed less, even with its battery.

 Finally, my search led me to a startup named Virtual Network Communications. This company, based in Chantilly, Va., sells a product called a GreenCell that seemed suitable. It’s a scalable LTE base station, known as a picocell, which is typically used to extend the reach of an existing network but can also generate its own network. The base station contains an E-UTRAN Node B radio with two antennas and a credit-card-size component called a Micro Evolved Packet Core, which uses LTE technology to form an ad hoc network with nearby radios. Then, that local network connects to a nationwide cellular network.

 With these components, our GreenCell can support communications for up to 128 users at a time from a distance of up to about 2 kilometers on any LTE frequency. Better yet, it measures just 12.5 by 12.5 centimeters and weighs only 2 kg with its battery, just light enough to be lifted by a drone.

 Once we had found a suitable base station, we still needed to find a suitable drone. Ideally, it would be affordable and be capable of flying for 10 to 12 hours before needing a recharge. Unfortunately, no such drone exists today. Most commercial drones can stay aloft for fewer than 45 minutes.

 After some research, I found a company named CyPhy Works, which has developed a drone powered through a 150-meter cord that extends up from a grid or generator. Technically, this drone could stay in the air for as long as it had access to a power supply on the ground. But in a disaster scenario, it would have to be tethered to a van loaded with a generator and fuel. That would limit it to serving the same road-accessible places to which mobile units already travel. Another drawback: The drone’s tether restricts its mobility once it’s in the air. We wanted to be able to reconfigure our network in an instant.

 We briefly considered using balloons instead of drones, but we discovered through trial and error that balloons are difficult to reposition and hold in place, especially during high winds.

 We decided instead to use the AR200 drone from AirRobot, a company based in Arnsberg, Germany. The AR200 has six rotors that allow it to hover more steadily than the usual four. And because the AirRobot drone is battery powered, it can zoom off to any location.

In summer, Qualcomm unveiled [PDF report] the results of a months-long drone trial program, which found LTE networks today already provide the aerial connectivity necessary to support commercial unmanned aerial vehicle deployments. But the tech giant noted some network optimizations will be necessary to take drone deployments to new heights. As per their blog post:

During the field trial, approximately 1,000 flights were performed to collect datasets that were post processed and analyzed. We also performed simulations to complement field trial results by allowing study of performance tradeoffs when the network is serving many mobile devices and LTE-connected drones simultaneously over a wide area. Simulations also enabled rapid testing of parameter and feature changes that are more difficult to study in a commercial network.

 The field trial demonstrated that LTE networks can support safe drone operation in real-world environments. Our findings showed that existing commercial cellular networks can provide coverage to drones at low altitudes up to 400 feet AGL. Our test drones also showed seamless handovers between different base stations during flights. Below is a glimpse of these findings.


According to Mobile World Live,

 The head of AT&T’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) business development team said the operator is working with regulatory authorities and standards organisations to “unlock” the potential of drones.

 Speaking with Mobile World Live, Greg Belaus said many tests of drones on cellular networks so far have been conducted at a height of 400 feet. In the US, Belaus explained that airspace is governed by the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Part 107 rules. Belaus said “a lot of work” on drones right now is focused on what needs to be done to open that area for drone services.

There is an interesting AT&T Flying COW presentation on Youtube for anyone interested, here.

Finally, looks like "Droneway" may be becoming a reality soon. As one of the partners involved in the project, I may not be at a liberty to say much but this photo of the article below (click to expand) provides an idea 😊



*Full Disclosure: I work for Parallel Wireless as a Senior Director, Strategic Marketing. This blog is maintained in my personal capacity and expresses my own views, not the views of my employer or anyone else. Anyone who knows me well would know this.
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Friday, 15 September 2017

Small Cell Infrastructure in Denver

The City and County of Denver (Colorado, USA) is receiving growing numbers of requests from wireless providers and wireless infrastructure companies to construct small cell facilities in the public right of way. As a result Denver Public Works has created a small publication about how they are working with companies to bring small cell infrastructure to the city. Its available here.

Here is one of the points from that publication:

9. Can the City limit or standardize Small Cell infrastructure?
As mentioned above, the City is currently exploring its policies and ordinances for Small Cell infrastructure within the parameters of Federal and State law. Under current law, it is not clear how the City can restrict height, design, or location (unless conflicting) of Small Cell infrastructure. However, as the City as a whole considers new polices and rulemaking, the City Public Works Department is having success in coordinating expectations and recommendations through enhanced communication efforts at the outset of each company’s program. So far each applicant has been receptive to:
  • Considering standardizing pole design elements, color, location, etc. to meet intent and character of existing infrastructure in the public right of way.
  • Limiting pole heights to match existing street lighting and other poles in the public right of way.
  • Generally avoiding placing poles adjacent to parks and historical places.
  • Encouraging pole and equipment designs that enclose as much equipment as possible to minimize visual impact.
  • Co-locating equipment onto existing infrastructure wherever feasible.
  • Installing consistent infrastructure that does not discriminate based on neighborhood type, demographic, or character.
  • Exploring new concepts in combining equipment from multiple companies into specially designed poles.
Public Works has placed top priortiy in coodinating design elements for proposed Small Cell infrastructure, and how companies should maximize aesthetics while minimizing congestion of the public right of way. Below are several examples of Small Cell equipment recently constructed in Denver.


You can download the document from here. 
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Monday, 14 August 2017

T-Mobile USA Small Cells - backhauled via dark fiber

Picture Source: Reddit

Picked this one up from Wireless Week (emphasis mine):
Speaking at the Wells Fargo 5G Forum this week, T-Mobile VP of Radio Network Technology and Strategy Karri Kuoppamaki said the Un-carrier carefully considered its options before settling on a small cell strategy that utilizes dark fiber for densification. Kuoppamaki explained T-Mobile works with a number of partners who provide the fiber, real estate, and manpower for the build outs while the Un-carrier supplies the equipment and facilitates municipal dialogs. The result is an overall cost structure that has been whittled down to a “manageable level,” he said. 
“We work together in deploying those small cells. This strategy has worked for us really, really well,” Kuoppamaki commented. “Ultimately small cell deployments, or successful small cell deployments, depend on the cost structure, especially the backhaul piece. If you can do that by partnering up with the right people, and bring that cost down a fraction of the cost of a macro then it makes sense.” 
According to Kuoppamaki, T-Mobile currently has about 15,000 small cells today, including 13,000 DAS nodes. The Un-carrier is on track to add “several thousand” more by the end of 2017, and has another 25,000 in the pipeline for the next few years, he added.
While fiber is a great strategy in the long run, especially for densification and 5G, it drives the initial cost up. Its not a great strategy for operators who may be more interested in deploying small cells for coverage mainly.

In earlier posts, I have argued for in-band backhauling (IBBH). A similar concept by the name of self-backhauling is used in 5G. In another post we also looked at Sprint MagicBox which uses similar approach to improve coverage and capacity. The main advantage of this approach is quicker deployment at a far lower cost. Backhaul can always be improved after initial deployments once coverage obligations are met.


Anyway, finally coming back to the T-Mobile small cells, here is a much more detailed picture from Omar Masry's slide-deck.
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Friday, 5 May 2017

Sprint's Magic Box


Is Sprint doing Small Cells? That's a question probably asked too many times. Back in January, their COO Günther Ottendorfer said the company’s small cell partners conducted a range of trials last year in order to determine fast and efficient methods to deploy small cells, a situation he said led to some misunderstandings in the market. However, he said those trials are largely behind the carrier and that he expects the carrier’s small cell efforts to expand this year.

 “There was a learning process in 2016. We did a lot of trials in the beginning. We had some trials that led to misunderstandings, when you have a lot of boxes there because you were trialing different things, different—for example—transmission methods,” said Ottendorfer, Sprint’s chief operating officer for Technology, in a recent interview with FierceWireless. “But now we have streamlined the concepts and so I’m very confident that with streamlined and very elegant small cell solutions we will have a good rollout this year.”

They again mentioned about their small cells commitment at MWC. Finally this week, they announced the Magic Box.

Sprint has billed it as "World’s First All-Wireless Small Cell". This is a point where I would disagree with them, mainly for two reasons.The first being that for an all-wireless claim, they have to get wireless power to the small cell and secondly, this has already been done for a while. I have explained about In-band backhaul here and have provided examples of how Parallel Wireless has been using this for a while.

The Magic Box is made by Airspan and is 4G/LTE only in band 41 (2500 MHz TD-LTE). One of these units provide an average coverage of 30,000 square feet indoors and can benefit adjacent Sprint customers inside the building. The signal can also extend coverage 100 meters outside a building, benefiting customers in nearby buildings and improving street–level network performance. It does not use the closed subscriber group (CSG) feature hence anyone can camp on it and use it.


Sprint has a large amount of 2.5GHz spectrum available, as a result they are able to use dedicated spectrum for the Magic Box. This ensures that interference is kept to minimum. They also announced the availability of HPUE that will allow this band reach to improve. See my blog post here for details.

“It’s a far cry from just a repeater,” he said, explaining that it improves the efficiency of the network as long as it has a good connection to the macro cell. It will work with any Sprint phones using 2.5 GHz. The backhaul channel uses 2.5 GHz or 1.9 GHz, but ideally it would use 2.5 GHz because that offers a lot more capacity.

 The Magic Box includes self-organizing network (SON) capabilities and operates on its own channel in Sprint’s spectrum, allowing it to decrease the noise level and increase the capacity of the overall system, which is the big difference from repeaters, explained Sprint Technology COO Guenther Ottendorfer.

Some of the details I couldn't find but hopefully some of the readers would know and can answer are:
  • Whats the power output of these small cells?
  • I am assuming they will support VoLTE calling for voice - even though generally that feature is transparent to small cells?
  • Does the small cell radiate a single 20MHz channel?
  • Does the backhaul do carrier aggregation?

Further Reading:

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Wednesday, 19 April 2017

Verizon's Small Cells and the roadmap to 5G

This Blog has moved here.

Picture: Stephen Donner

Verizon just disclosed their small cells numbers. Their CEO Lowell McAdam said in Fotune:

McAdam has so far decided that his company will follow a 5G strategy of adding many thousands of small cell sites in major urban areas, instead of relying just on the big cell towers it used in the past, and then connecting them with fiber optic cables. On Tuesday, Verizon announced a new deal to buy at least $1.05 billion of fiber optic cable and related hardware from Corning over the next three years–enough to cover 12.4 million miles, the companies said.

 Verizon already has 13,000 small sites deployed, McAdam said, disclosing the total number for the first time, compared to about 60,000 current cell tower sites in its network. But Verizon will be adding in each major city 8,000 to 10,000 more small sites, tiny transmitters that can fit in the palm of a hand and be tacked onto a lamp post or traffic light pole.

 Unfortunately, according to McAdam, the fiber networks that cable companies have installed don't have nearly enough capacity to meet Verizon's needs to connect all the small cells in big cities. While a typical fiber cable may have contained 144 separate strands of glass wiring in the past, Verizon's newest installations in Boston have 1,700 separate strands per cable.

Their VP of network, Mike Haberman earlier said in Fierce Wireless: Verizon is increasingly looking to small cells to increase capacity and improve network performance, particularly in urban areas. Small cells are complementary to more traditional macrosites, Haberman said, enabling carriers to fill in small gaps and transmit more data in areas where towers may not be sufficient.

 “Think of it this way: The macrocells are sort of the umbrella network, and the small cells are underneath the umbrella network to provide the capacity needed,” he continued. “We’ve been doing this for many years. We’ve been on utility poles, we’ve been on traffic lights, and we’re putting the small cells on those locations.”

In Nebraska, the city of Lincoln inked a 20-year lease agreement with Verizon in December to install more than 100 small cells on light poles.

 The deal calls for Verizon to pay a $1,500 permit fee, and $1,995 per pole, per year. The per-pole rent jumps 2.3 percent each year, meaning Verizon will pay more than $3,000 in the final year of the agreement.

 According to the Lincoln Electric System’s website, the pole attachment fee is $16 per pole, far less than the $1,995 in the agreement, and applies to “other utilities and certain entities which may occupy public right of way and who attach communication appliances on SYSTEM poles.”

Plans by Verizon Wireless to strengthen and modernize wireless data service in Sioux City took a major step forward Monday, as the City Council granted approval to site plans for 11 small cell poles.

 FiberComm LC, a Sioux City telecommunications company with an extensive fiber optic network, will build and maintain a dozen of the 35-foot poles, each of which will be capable of accommodating two cell phone service providers. The 12th tower had previously received the green light from the council during its Feb. 27 meeting.

 Pole locations will include strategic spots throughout the city, including near the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, the Tyson Events Center and UnityPoint Health -- St. Luke's hospital. 

 "Many of these areas are where there is very poor coverage," Jeff Zyzda, FiberComm's director of operations and engineering, told the council Monday. "Also many of these areas are areas where there are events and high traffic."

Verizon is also demoing 5G in Washington and at the same time lobby for the access to city's poles.

To make that 5G simulation a reality someday will take hundreds of thousands of new, smaller, cell phone antennas all over the urban landscape. And that’s why the Verizon 5G bus came to Washington’s Capitol.

 The wireless industry hopes to revive legislation that would preempt local zoning rules in order to fast-track placement of the new network of antennas.

 Verizon’s Gordon Cook showed off one of these antennas.

 “It’s a box about half the size of a toaster,” he said. “This one’s painted white, that one’s painted green to match the utility pole.”

 Cook said Verizon wants to strap 5,000 to 6,000 of these boxes onto street poles in Washington in the next few years. First they’d be used to augment current 4G service. Eventually they would be swapped out with 5G antennas.

 “We want to be able to put these up quickly and to serve more folks with them and bring higher quality data services to people,” Cook said.

 But Cook said current local zoning rules are an impediment. City officials have fought back saying they want some control over how and where small cell antennas are placed.

In addition to all of the above, Verizon has been testing drone based 'flying cell-site' for emergency or disaster scenario, using small cells to connect indoor DAS and thinking about the possibility of deploying small cells in 3.5GHz CBRS bands.

Related Posts:

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Saturday, 11 February 2017

Deployment guidelines for Small Cells and Not So Small Cells

This post is collection of an article and presentation from Omar Masry, Senior Analyst at City and County of San Francisco. The presentation is a good quick summary and the article below gives a more detailed explanation of some of the issues



Also read: 10 Key Issues for California Cities & Counties on the Challenges of Small Cells & “Not So Small Cells” by Omar Masry.

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Wednesday, 16 November 2016

Small Cells for Public Safety Communications


One of the many use cases for Small cells is for public safety communications. In case of emergency situations (earthquake, floods, terrorism, etc.) when the macro network is damaged or as it generally happens, the power supply is disrupted, small cells can quickly come in action and provide a coverage solution. This was discussed in an earlier post here.

Another scenario is when dedicated public safety coverage needs to be provided for hard to reach places or in a stadium kind if scenario, small cells be fill the void.

While in USA there is a dedicated band (Band 14 – 700MHz) available for use with public safety communications, most other countries do not rely on dedicated spectrum. In case there is no dedicated spectrum, there are still many different approaches to make sure that the personnel from emergency services can continue communication (as long as there is coverage available).

Parallel Wireless*, a Small Cells solution provider based in Nashua, NH, USA specializes in public safety and rural coverage solutions using small cells. The following slide pack contains some of their stories of deployments, demos and trials:



Further Reading:

*Full Disclosure: I work for Parallel Wireless as a Solutions Architect. This blog is maintained in my personal capacity and expresses my own views, not the views of my employer or anyone else. Anyone who knows me well would know this.
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Sunday, 17 January 2016

Small Cells & Wi-Fi in the pavements & roads


Back in October last year, Thinksmallcell reported that Vigin Media in UK is deploying WiFi in pavements.



ISPreview reports that:

Ordinarily most operators prefer to install WiFi access points above ground, not least because it helps the 2.4GHz signal to propagate, but telecoms infrastructure owners like Virgin Media have a lot of manholes around the place that can also be used (makes it easier to tap directly into their core capacity links) and apparently this approach can still cover an area of up to 80 metres.

 The use of a submerged rainproof access point, which sits beneath a specially developed resin cover, is certainly a different twist on the usual deployments. Never the less Virgin Media are also using plenty of traditional access points too, which have been discreetly installed on local street furniture.


Wireless antenna maker Kathrein has teamed with Ericsson and Swiss operator Swisscom to develop an in-ground antenna system that will help provide additional wireless coverage in densely populated areas. The technology, called the Kathrein Street Connect, was developed to help operators deploy additional cell sites in places where site acquisition is difficult due to zoning issues.

 Kathrein designed the antenna while Ericsson provided the radio. The rugged solution was designed to withstand deploying in streets with heavy vehicle traffic. Currently there are 17 sites piloting the technology in Switzerland with plans for commercial deployment in 2016, said Jim DeKoekkoek, product line manager for antennas and filters at Kathrein, in an interview with FierceInstaller.

Kathrein also has a video on Youtube explaining this:


Its interesting to see that pavements and roads may become the new battleground for providing connectivity through Wi-Fi and Small Cells.


Related Posts:
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Sunday, 18 May 2014

Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) techniques for Small Cells and Wi-Fi

Licensed shared access and unlicensed shared access
Picture Source: Analysis Mason

There is a lot of spectrum which is used sparingly or is kept reserved for unlicensed or shared access. Any party that wishes and is allowed to use this spectrum has to co-ordinate with the license holders or others in similar situations. Hence we have different access mechanisms which are collectively called as Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) techniques.

An article by Analysis Mason on this topic suggests the following:

The term DSA has come to encompass a number of different approaches and techniques that aim to increase the utilisation of the radio frequency spectrum. At its most ambitious, it is hypothesised that cognitive and software-defined radios could intelligently choose when to transmit, so as to avoid other radio transmissions and also to avoid causing undue interference to fellow frequency users. Short-term propositions include near-real-time spectrum assignment in certain bands and greater use of long-term secondary spectrum leasing to authorised spectrum partners.
DSA is therefore all about making better use of radio spectrum through re-use of 'idle' bandwidth, being either frequencies that are not used in all locations, in which other systems could be deployed, or frequencies that are only used intermittently, and which could therefore be re-used outside these times. These 'gaps' in utilisation, which provide opportunities for DSA, arise for a number of reasons.
  • Coverage: a licence holder might not be using its allotted licence in a specific region.
  • Time: an area of spectrum might by less-frequently required at different times during a day (or on longer timescales).
  • Lack of service users: there may be a limited number of subscribers taking advantage of a service.
  • Licence technical parameters: the regulator may have mandated that a piece of spectrum can only be used for a specific purpose, while other technologies emerge during the life of a licence that can use the same spectrum.
  • Pragmatic under-utilisation to prevent interference: empty guard bands are placed between spectrum bands to stop transmission leakage to prevent interference, which could be re-used by systems that have the appropriate characteristics to avoid interference.
One of the overarching drivers for DSA is to help overcome spectrum shortages – particularly noting that under-utilised bands may exist across a relatively wide range of the spectrum. Even in the economies where wireless communications have developed the most and usage restrictions have been removed, thus making spectrum use as flexible as possible, spectrum under-utilisation is still considered to be widespread.

The Cisco vision on the other hand seems far too optimistic and suggests the following:


TV White Spaces (TVWS) are spectrum allocated to TV broadcasts, but not being used in a given geographic location. TVWS radios allow for use of white space spectrum for unlicensed wireless access.
Authorized Shared Access (ASA) or Licensed Shared Access (LSA) allow a secondary licensee to use the “shared” spectrum when the primary licensee is not using it.
The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed a three-tier model for shared access in the 3.5-GHz band. Tier 1 would be for incumbent federal agencies, including military radar users. Tier 2 would be authorized prioritized access similar to ASA and LSA. Tier 3 would be generalized authorized access, which is similar to unlicensed access.
A number of DSA technologies already exist or are in exploration.
Geo-location, database-based spectrum sharing techniques have the most traction as a practical approach to spectrum sharing. Devices that want to use shared spectrum must geo-locate themselves and consult a database to determine what spectrum is available.
The geo-location database manages the spectrum resource allocation based on predefined policies and availability to ensure the primary licensee is not impacted. An enhanced version of the geo-location database system—called a Spectrum Access System (SAS)—is the basis for the FCC spectrum-sharing proposal in the 3.5-GHz band.
A second technology is cognitive radio, which senses and monitors the radio environment. This includes knowing the location and policies for self-regulation. Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) and Transmit Power Control (TPC) are cognitive radio techniques that allow co-existence with radar and satellite systems.
Another technology is Software-Defined Radio (SDR), which allows devices to adapt to local radio conditions and use the appropriate radio frequencies.
I came across this very interesting whitepaper by MIT that details all the DSA techniques and its progress. Paper embedded below:


We will discuss in the future post how the DSA techniques could be useful for using Small Cells in the unlicensed spectrum (a.k.a. LTE-U).

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Monday, 25 November 2013

Wi-Fi as the preferred cellular access and barriers to roaming

Republic Wireless, a regional carrier in the USA is doing some interesting stuff with Wi-Fi and is possibly going to create some interesting challenges for established cellular carriers. An extract from a recent article in Washington post as follows:

Consider Republic Wireless, a Raleigh-based business that announced this month it would sell Motorola's new flagship phone, the Moto X. Republic enjoys all the traditional advantages of an MVNO — low capital expenditures on infrastructure and spectrum — but it's taken the additional step of cutting out 3G and 4G data use whenever it can. Technically, Republic operates on Sprint's network, but it's more appropriate to think of Sprint as a backup for when a call or message can't be completed over WiFi.
Yes, you read that right: WiFi. Republic's business depends on shunting all of your communications — data, voice, everything — onto the free stuff you get in your office or in coffee shops. What makes this beautiful is that whenever a Republic customer chooses to place a call over WiFi, that saves Republic money. As a result, Republic can offer a $5-a-month plan for unlimited talk, text and data. For another $5 a month, customers get access to Sprint's cellular network (minus 3G). Higher-tier plans provide 3G and 4G Internet on Sprint, though it's almost a joke to call them "higher-tier" when the most expensive plan tops out at just $40 a month. The tiered plan supersedes an old, $19-a-month all-you-can-eat plan.
"The crazy plans at $5 and $10 have never been tried," said CEO David Morken. "That's because we focus on unlicensed spectrum as the primary, and licensed spectrum as the secondary."
This approach can be quite disruptive for the MNO's. With NGH / HS2, soon MVNO's like republic wireless will be able to offer roaming on WiFi, thereby cutting the costs while not in the home market.

WBA released an Industry report recently (embedded below) which had some interesting findings.

Industry bodies, vendors and device manufacturers are working hard to get rid of some of these limitations and barriers. Once these limitations are gone, there is going to be a good business case for offering of global Wi-Fi roaming for example.


Another interesting question in the survey was what would be your preferred means of building Wi-Fi footprint. One of the answers is shown above, a similar question was asked in a webinar and posted in the 3G4G blog post here.


Finally, since the WBA report mentions about Wi-Fi and Small cells data offload, you may find a previous post of interest here.

The complete WBA report as follows:



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