Showing posts with label DAS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DAS. Show all posts

Friday, December 1, 2017

Macrocells, Small Cells & Hetnets Tutorial


I blogged about it on the Small Cells blog but cross posting here, just in case you missed it. I am making some videos sharing basic information about mobile technology. Its on YouTube here.

Recently I made some videos looking at all kinds of cellular infrastructure; playlist is embedded below. If you need slides, get it from 3G4G slideshare channel here.

Monday, March 11, 2013

DAS or 'Small Cells' and What is DAS anyway?

Its been a while I posted something on DAS (a.k.a. Distributed Antenna System). The articles I have posted have been mainly from AT&T and are here, here and here.

Picture source: The IET

Recently I read something interesting from IDG here:
According to Rob Bruce, Chief Operating Officer at distributed antenna system (DAS) vendor Axell Networks, a building is an asset, and that asset wants to deliver all the services it can in the simplest and most economical way.
"You wouldn't put five separate lighting systems into a building because there are five separate tenants in that building. You would put one in, and it becomes a utility for that building," Bruce told Techworld.
"Our view of life is it's the same for cellular coverage. You put one system in which covers the building. That is then a utility for the building, and operators can then connect into that infrastructure - that's how a DAS system works."
Bruce said that small cells are very good for single operator environments, when a single operator wants to add some capability into a particular area. But if they want to put multiple technologies into that environment then they have to put in multiple small cells.
So if a company in the UK wants to put GSM, UMTS and LTE into an office block, it has to install three small cells. If it wants to make that truly operator agnostic, it will probably have to put in 12 units, because each of the four operators uses at least three spectrum bands.
Axell Wireless recently installed a multi-operator DAS in The Shard in London, using 20 remote units to cover the whole building. Bruce claimed that, if the same thing had been done using small cells, it would involve over 100 units.
"So the building owner is saying I've got 100 lumps of intelligent electronics gadgetry that is scattered all over my building, and there's 4 different operators wanting access to all those different things in private flats, hotels and offices - it's just an operational nightmare," said Bruce.
Complete article is available here.

This is an interesting point because the Small Cells are still not evolved enough so that a single one can serve multiple operators, etc. Note that I am differentiating the closed residential femtocells from the public access small cells. Maybe a service such as FaaS or 'Femto as a Service' can help solve this problem. Based on my previous sentences, some of you may say that it should be called Small Cell as a Service (SCaaS) rather than FaaS but unfortunately that term has come to mean something else as can be seen here.

While initially the in-building solutions were mainly for coverage reasons, this may no longer be the only reason. Capacity is also an issue, especially in-building. Small cells can certainly help in the capacity area much more than DAS. Fortunately as most new phones are coming with inbuilt Wi-Fi chipsets and WiFi is available indoors in plenty, the capacity issue may no longer be a problem indoors. Again this is an area where we can have lots of discussions and each party with a vested interest can argue their case.

Here are couple of interesting videos from youtube that explain DAS:




There is also an interesting presentation by NEC in the Small Cell Americas event, embedded below:



Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Technologies from Mobile World Congress 2013 (#MWC13)

If you liked the Gadgets roundup from yesterday then you would like this one as well:



You can read more about this topic here.



You can read more about this here.











You can read more about this here.


Finally:

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Small Cells 'Terminology' and 'Comparison'


Here is AT&T's attempt in comparing the small cells. The above comparison is probably based on the assumption that LTE Small cells are not yet widely available. Once they are, then LTE can be put in for most columns in the Technology part.

See also:



Wednesday, December 14, 2011

AT&T on Distributed Antenna System (DAS)


From the 4th LTE North America Conference, 8 - 9 November 2011, Dallas, Texas, USA

More about DAS on Wikipedia here.