Hiding a Cellular Base-Station in Plain Sight

ABI Research’s Jake Saunders recently gave a presentation in Bangkok on the importance of mobile telcos deploying innovative cell-site solutions. Mobile telcos have been spectacularly successful in building out population coverage for 2G, 3G even 4G LTE coverage. However, mobile telcos have difficult financial, operational, and logistical challenges balancing the various needs of mobile cellular voice, mobile broadband and video. Fundamentally, mobile telcos have primarily resorted to 3 main strategies to help boost telco capacity:

• Spectrum Allocation Solutions: Spectrum is essentially the first pillar for building capacity and extending mobile phone coverage to some of, or all of, the country. A combination of low frequency (<1.5 GHz) and high frequency (1.5 GHz to 2.6 GHz) bands can help deliver coverage as well as capacity.
• Technology Solutions: LTE is not standing still. Mobile telcos can upgrade from LTE to LTE-A to LTE-A Pro. LTE-A Pro will boost data throughput by enabling potentially 450 Mbps via 256 QAM downlink/64 QAM uplink, as well as 3 component carriers CA and higher, up to 32 carriers, enabling Category 9 and above devices as well as full-dimension MIMO and elevation beamforming.
• Network Typology Solutions: Historically, telcos strived to deploy macrocells, a considerably smaller ratio of microcells, and only use picocells sparingly (i.e., inside airports). Given the growth in mobile data traffic and the need for a strong link budget regarding people’s workspaces and homes, there has been a growing interest in deploying not just indoor but also outdoor small cell and reduced TCO cell-site solutions. 

In the case of Network Typology Solutions, there is still considerable innovation taking place. In addition to macro tower cell-site and rooftop cell-site solutions, mobile operators are resorting to small footprint, “slim profile” pole-site solutions. Given the reality that 5G will require not just spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band but also higher frequency bands such as the 26~28 GHz band (and higher), mobile telcos will need to deploy an increasing proportion of lamp post/pole cell-solutions. Examples include:

• In Ukraine, lifecell, has requested Huawei to deploy its Easy Macro 2.0-based PoleStar site solution in the tourist city of Lviv. The number of tourists per day can swell by as much as 200,000, which has placed the network under considerable strain. lifecell cited traditional macro base station solutions faces three challenges - difficult site acquisition, long site approval period, and high site construction costs. After deployment of the PoleStar site solution, coverage was extended by 8.7%, voice traffic increased by 24.9% and data traffic increased by 22.1%.
• In early 2016, Los Angeles’ Bureau of Street Lighting announced it had completed the first phase of SmartPoles small cell base-stations onto 100 lamp posts. The 4G LTE SmartPole solutions were developed by Philips in conjunction with Ericsson. Traffic is backhauled via fiber-optic. In addition to the enhanced cellular coverage, the lamp-post cell-site uses Philips’ CityTouch system, which allows their LED lights to be controlled and managed wirelessly. Over the next 4 years, an additional 400 lamp-posts will be converted to SmartPoles to further enhance broadband coverage in the CBD area.

These pole cell-site solutions do require a re-assessment by mobile telcos. Pole cell-sites don’t just provide coverage in the street but also improve coverage and capacity inside nearby buildings. Small cells have been presumed to be indoor solutions but the reality is, outdoor small cells can deliver on both fronts – indoor coverage as well as outdoor coverage.