Small cells contribute to 5G network and market trends, such as densification, standardized open interfaces and disaggregated RANs, according to the Rohde & Schwarz webinar “Small Cells — An Essential Paradigm Shift for Cellular Networks,” which featured as speakers Mahesh Basavaraju, Market Segment Wireless Communications, Rohde & Schwarz; and Nikola Serdar, Product Manager Rohde & Schwarz.
The webinar included a definition of small cells, their inner workings and a discussion of small cell test cycle challenges and solutions, along with a demonstration of the R&S®CMP200 Radio Communication Tester, which was conducted by Serdar.
A small cell is a compact base station covering a smaller coverage area, serving fewer users and with less power, according to Basavaraju, or some say a small cell is anything that is not a macrocell. The Third Generation Partnership Project recognizes three types of base stations: wide area; medium range, which is a micro cell; and the low area, which is a picocell. The latter two fall under the umbrella of small cells.
Basavaraju gave a brief history about how the use of small cells has evolved over the generations of wireless technology.
“Across the different generations of technology, beginning with 2G, small cells have had a role in providing coverage,” Basavaraju said. “Later, in LTE networks, small cells were providing not just the coverage, but added capacity without adding additional spectrum.”
In the 5G era, network operators have begun to use small cells for densification as a strategy to provide seamless 5G services, providing not just coverage and capacity, but also increased performance. “Especially with the millimeter (mmWave) wave rollout around the corner, small cells are a better choice compared to macro cells, given the propagation characteristics of mmWaves,” Basavaraju said.
Small cells are a growing component of private networks run by enterprises in various vertical industries, aided by the FCC’s allocation of spectrum in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service. New players that will provide private networks include system integrators, equipment vendors and neutral hosts. The market size for private networks is projected to be around $3.5 billion and is estimated to grow at a rate of 18 percent until 2026.
“Small cells and macro cells have to complement each other to provide a service according to the different customer use cases,” Basavaraju said. “Some of the use cases are smart cities, health care, oil and gas, stadiums, airports, smart factories, logistics and seaports. So, here, we have at least 200 players from the different verticals, having licenses to operate their own private networks.”
Basavaraju showed a chart from the Small Cell Forum that showed small cell deployments using sub-6 GHz spectrum, known as frequency range 1 (FR1) versus the deployment of small cells using mmWave spectrum (FR2) from 2019 to 2026. FR1 small cell deployments far outpaced FR2 in 2019, but by the year 2026, caught up and slightly exceeded FR1. Every vertical will use a balance of cumulated FR1 and FR2 spectrum during the same time period, according to the Small Cell Forum.
“There is no clear winner between the FR1 and FR2 spectrum,” Basavaraju said. “They both play an equal role when it comes to vertical industries and private networks.”
Basavaraju showed a diagram of how a small cell works and a list of the typical specifications of a small cell. He then discussed the industry’s movement toward open, standardized interfaces through functional splits between centralized and distributed units.
“Objective split architecture provides scalability and also cost-effective solutions for networks, and also split architecture is favorable for performance optimization,” Basavaraju said. “Load management also facilitates network function virtualization and software defined networks.”
The network can include disaggregated units and all-in-one integrated units as well as macro towers, but architecture should also be flexible to meet the end requirements. “No one architecture can fulfill all the different deployment scenarios, as required by different use cases,” Basavaraju said. “So, always, we need to use flexible network architectures to meet the end customer requirements, which could be latency, capacity, quality of service and security, etc.”
Basavaraju said the 5G network evolution includes open, standardized interfaces, which lead to disaggregation. In additional virtualization — which pulls disaggregated units, centralized units and RAN intelligent controllers into the cloud — allows for efficient resource management and network automation.
Watch the webinar on-demand here.
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