Small Cells Market Update 2016

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Official Supporting Publication of SCWS World, 2016

/// SMALL CELLS MAY 2016

SMALL CELLS

COME IN PEACE TO UNLICENSED WORLD

INSIDE /// VIRTUALISATION /// ENTERPRISE /// NEW ENTRANTS /// REAL WORLD DEPLOYMENTS ///

LTE UNLICENSED

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OPERATING WITHOUT LICENCE Of all the changes to cellular network specifications contained within 3GPP R13, frozen in March 2016, few attracted more attention from the industry than the codification of the operation of LTE in unlicensed spectrum. For those interested in small cell developments, it’s not hard to understand why.

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he most important starting point for understanding how LTE in unlicensed affects small cells is to grasp that they have an utterly symbiotic relationship.

In either of its flavours - 3GPP’s more polite LAA or the more in-the-raw LTE-U - LTE in unlicensed needs dense deployments of small cells to work.

That is to say - it needs the “anchor points” of licensed spectrum small cells in sufficient number to operate effectively. LTE in unlicensed needs small cells because small cells are by their nature very close to users, enabling channel selection and scheduling decisions in a split-second time frame.

In fact, there’s evidence that the more small cells there are then the greater the gain in LAA, given that more sensitivity can be displayed towards the WiFi access points also working in the same spectrum.

Conversely, anything that enhances the business case for small cells will be welcomed by the small cell ecosystem, and access to unlicensed spectrum from a small cell gives a major boost to the economic rationale of deploying small cells. Until now, operators looking to provide a WiFi plus LTE user experience have had to deploy dual mode cells, or even separate WiFi and small cells, with handover managed by the device or by policy pushed from

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LTE UNLICENSED

the core.

That’s been unwieldy.

So, small cells benefit from LTE Unlicensed, and LTE Unlicensed needs small cells. IT seems like small cells do come in peace to unlicensed spectrum. But not everyone is convinced that this is a win-win especially those who stand outside of this seemingly virtuous circle.

Exactly a year ago, a major chip maker with (to be fair) some small cell vendor customers but a lot more WiFi customers was, in private, utterly disparaging of Qualcomm’s efforts to promote LTE in unlicensed bands. The chip maker is of course a rival to Qualcomm, and portrayed Qualcomm’s efforts to set up the LTE-U Forum as somewhat laughable. The view was that there was no advantage to operating LTE in unlicensed spectrum, and there was no momentum beyond one operator in the Forum, this maker said.

Well, it’s now a year later and the 3GPP has frozen specifications for Licensed Assisted Access, a more WiFi-friendly version of LTE-U within its Release 13, and the industry is aligning behind the technology.

And that chip vendor is still trying to protect its strong position in WiFi, although as it now promotes its own version of LTE in unlicensed, it appears to be merely accepting the inevitable.

Look at the recent small

cell momentum in LTE-U. Ericsson has said that its indoor distributed antenna Radio Dot System is one of the products, along with its 6402 picocell, to which it it is adding LAA support.

Already by November 2015 Vodafone, Ericsson and Qualcomm said they had a trialled LAA on the picocell product.

Some think the Radio Dot System, relying as it does on a central RF source, may make

SO, SMALL CELLS BENEFIT FROM LTE UNLICENSED, AND LTE UNLICENSED NEEDS SMALL CELLS. the LBT and channel selection scheduling more problematical in latency terms. Of the major NEPs, Huawei and Nokia too have already committed to LAA. Huawei makes it a key part of its 4.5G radio marketing, for example, while Nokia sees it FlexiZone cells as ideal candidates as unlicensed “anchors”.

Further LAA market momentum has come from Chinese manufacturer Baicells, who has released what it is claiming is the first LAA small cell onto the market.

The company built the product around Intel’s Transcede SoC, as it did with an LTE-U product it

had previously launched.

Other products from the company - such as the Elf cell, a tiny small cell, have used Qualcomm’s FS90xx chips.

The company claims to already have deployments of its LTE small cells in the pipeline with China Mobile.

Whether Baicells has the first “LAA” capable small cell available to market may be a moot point in fairly short order.

Dedicated small cell players are also on the case. SpiderCloud is one such that has announced that it will have LTE-U small cells, based on Qualcomm’s SoC, available in 2016, with LAA versions to follow in early 2017. The SpiderCloud LTE-U node includes a Qualcomm baseband processor and WiFi chip that senses the use of the unlicensed channel, giving the cell its “listening” capability.

Verizon wants to deploy SpiderCloud’s LTE-U capable cells within its large enterprise deployments and SpiderCloud’s CMO Amit Jain has said previously to TMN that LTE-U and LAA support in small cells will

become a “must-have”.

There’s no doubt that market momentum, and operator desire, is increasingly aligning behind LTE in unlicensed, and that small cells are the key facilitator.

There is even heavy vendor support for the standalone version of LTE in unlicensed - MuLTEFire.

Although at present this mode has not been adopted by 3GPP, its potential to support private LTE networks without the requirement for a mobile operator license has many vendors from both the WiFi and cellular camps excited.

That said, doubts persist. Many WiFi vendors remain suspicious of how operators will deploy LTE in unlicensed, especially in its LTE-U form, and even though LAA looks

to have encoded listen before talk and careful channel selection and timing methodologies, the work has progressed so quickly that co-existence testing and the nailing down of certain use case parameters are still outstanding. The IEEE and WiFi Alliance still continue to liaise with 3GPP, for instance, requesting neutral testing and a path to certification.

So although small cell vendors and mobile operators claim to come in peace, there are still issues to overcome before trust can be established and earth dwellers and aliens alike can peacefully share the same spectrum.

WE COME IN PEACE

MARKET UPDATE TMN 5

REAL WORLD DEPLOYMENTS

GETTING REAL

Deploying small cells in the real world means overcoming real world problems - such as obstructive land and building owners, technical constraints and labour laws. The possible answers are, in turn, commercial, technical and process-driven.

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etting small cells on the ground is still proving a challenge. Despite the positive noises coming from within the industry about automated workflow processes and self-coordinating access points and backhaul, one of the biggest barriers to small cell deployments is still identifying available sites and negotiating access at price points that make small cells feasible.

There are exceptions.

Roger Entner of Recon Analytics says that Verizon has a strong lead in its deployment model of small cells because it has struck key deals with municipal authorities for access. He said that this has given it a “strong lead� in getting

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REAL WORLD DEPLOYMENTS

hold of sites, giving Verizon a seven or eight to one lead over its next competitor.

The chief advantage, Entner says, of working to sign MSAs with municipal authorities rather than private landowners is that sites can be acquired cheaper. Entner tells SCMU that by going through the municipality Verizon has been able to pay $200-300 per month per small cell site, which he said is a lot less than the $2,000 per site per month that private landlords have been asking for.

Also you can get to the buildings you actually want to - which has allowed Verizon to cherry pick the best sites. Approaches using street furniture have been less successful.

“There’s been quite a bit in the space on lamposts and such but the example of what Sprint has been trying to do shows that it’s not that impactful and successful.

Sprint tried with lamposts, based on SoftBank’s Japanese experience and it has not been v successful.

So Verizon has a much better and more sustainable approach.”

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This economic reality is a reason why AT&T and T-Mobile have both “pivoted” to DAS deployments, says Entner, and is why we have not yet seen a huge rollout in small cells that “everybody was predicting”.

Although it’s an estimate, Entner says that even Verizon’s deployment so far encompsasses only a few hundred sites, at max a thousand or so. However, the overall numbers are still small. Despite the often-quoted, and now seemingly near-legendary commitments to roll out tens of thousands of public access indoor and outdoor small cells, actual deployments have been much less.

The sheer logistical difficulty of deploying at large scale has prompted the industry to look not just for market-driven answers (such as the Verizon/ municipality approach) but also for technical solutions.

At the enterprise level, where deployments must be as low-touch as possible, one example is the plug and play vision evidenced

by SpiderCloud and Cisco’s integration of a cellular small cell as a module that can clip onto Cisco’s USC 8718 and Cisco USC 8818 WiFi access points.

Outdoors, other approaches have included Kathrein’s “under the road!” antenna, which buries

THE SHEER LOGISTICAL DIFFICULTY OF DEPLOYING AT LARGE SCALE HAS PROMPTED THE INDUSTRY TO LOOK NOT JUST FOR MARKETDRIVEN ANSWERS BUT ALSO FOR TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS specially-designed antennas in the road surface or pavement, linked by cable to a small cell sitting some distance away (if need be) under a manhole cover.

Existing underground ducting can be used for the cable or fibre connectivity to the cells, and from the cells to the antennas.

The antennas are specially designed to withstand being driven over by vehicles. The solution is co-designed with Ericsson A further, more commercially advanced solution, includes AlcatelLucent (now Nokia) and Huawei’s integration of small cells and antennas into bus shelters and digital advertising signs.

These are all technical solutions designed to get around an issue that is still a key barrier to large scale small cell deployments getting real world access at an affordable price to physical locations, and then being able to run backhaul or fronthaul to those sites.

Even if you have the sites, as in an enterprise setting, there is still the sheer scale issue of carrying out and documenting thousands of site surveys and deployments. A presentation from iBwave’s Peter Thalmeir at a recent Cambridge Wireless event, showed how hard it is going to be to get deployments done even using the most modern and streamlined of tools, available right now.

Thalmeir’s presentation was intended to show that deployment of large numbers of enterprise small cells, based on verified RF designs carried out by professionals, is possible in a short period of time - although it also showed just how much hard work is involved.

The target here was to survey and produce designs for small cell deployments in mid-sized and large enterprise buildings. Working with an un-named operator, iBwave equipped field engineers with tablet-based apps via which they inputted plans of buildings, scanned locations for RF data and produced deployment designs.

This documentation was uploaded to a cloud repository, and accessed by 25 dedicated RF engineers whose role it was to verify the designs. In less difficult cases, or in less important customer circumstances, this second tier check of the design would not be necessary. Working like this,

the operator and iBwave managed to get 2,886 site designs deployed in 250 days = that’s roughly one design completed every 3 working days per engineer.

Thalmeir said that the normal time allowed per design would be two weeks.

Although this is undoubtedly an impressive effort, the work involved was intense with the engineers involved working long hours. How sustainable such an approach would be in the long term, in a more unionised labour market, might be questionable.

From the slowdown in the US market, to iBwave’s intense efforts to unlock the enteprise small cell opportunity, there’s still evidence that it is the real world of concrete, glass, aluminium and steel, not to mention red tape, that presents an obstacle to market growth.

SMALL CELLS MARKET UPDATE TMN 7

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SEVEN THINGS I KNOW ABOUT...

HOW SMALL CELLS WILL DEVELOP THROUGH 4.5G AND 5G

Conversely LAA is a major boost to the economic rationale of deploying small cells, because by deploying cellular small cells that are LAA-equipped operators can aggregate spectrum bands to increase throughputs without having to deploy a dual WiFi-LTE infrastructure. The addition of MulteFire – the standalone brand of LTE in unlicensed that does not require an operator to own licensed spectrum - only extends this further, opening up new enterprise markets for small cell vendors to address.

HET NET

Renuka Bhalerao of Radisys on how Small Cells are going to change, and be changed by, the evolving industry landscape.

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heading

Start where you are to understand where we are

To understand the future of small cells, we need to understand their past and present. To date, small cells have been deployed to improve coverage or capacity in a targeted manner. Outside of residential femtocells, rollouts have mostly been indoors in large office and enterprise buildings, with some limited public access rollouts outdoors.

Most small cell deployments to date have been single carrier, in 3G or in the FDD or TDD variants of LTE, with some on-board SON (Self Organising Network) features for provisioning and interference mitigation. I believe all that is changing, and changing fast, in the following ways.

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SMART CITIES

Small Cells are good for LTE in unlicensed bands

For the first time mobile network specifications now include formal provision for the operation of LTE in unlicensed spectrum bands.

3GPP Release 13, frozen in March 2016, adopted specifications for Licensed Assisted Access (LAA), adding a standardised version to sit alongside the existing technology known as LTE-U. LAA, with its promise of greatly enhancing user throughputs, is going to have a major impact on the small cell market as small cells are the key underlying enabler of LAA. Stringent timing requirements to ensure correct channel selection and avoid interference mean that you cannot meet LAA specifications from a macrocell, or from a DAS architecture, or from a distant pooled baseband deployment. Therefore, the utilisation of LTE within unlicensed spectrum requires the deployment of small cells to operate effectively.

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‌ and LTE in unlicensed is good for small cells

5G - THE AUTOMATION GENERATION WITH SMALL CELLS AT ITS HEART

CRITICAL SYSTEMS ALERTS

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SENSORS

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4.5G and 5G will see increasing deployment of virtualisation in the network, with a move to the Cloud RAN. There will be multiple flavours of cloud RAN architecture, with some RAN features based in a centralised cloud environment and some being kept as close as possible to the access point.

This architectural split will be driven by a host of differing considerations, from fibre, backhaul and site availability, to the end deployment use cases operators are trying to fulfil. For instance, an operator requiring the

tight coordination and configuration of small cells can exploit centralisation to provide a common point of resource and mobility management. But latency sensitive features will require a presence closer to the edge, perhaps right at the cell itself.

Wherever the split between the dedicated and the shared resource, between the virtual and the physical, lies, it will have a direct impact on small cell designs. Developers must be equipped to be able to produce technology stacks that can be flexibly adapted to market demands.

REMOTE ROBOTICS MANUFACTURING

VIRTUAL REALITY

AUTONOMOUS CARS

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Mobile Edge Computing and the intelligent edge requires small cells

The goal of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), being driven now within standards body ETSI, is to use computing resources collocated with cell sites to enable use cases such as proactive caching, backhaul optimisation, and highly localised application delivery. That also requires the distribution of core network capabilities, such as policy and analytics, to the edge of the network so that they can be enriched with radio-network information.

In the case of the delivery of applications that require very low latencies, that will mandate the deployment of small cells that themselves act as hosts for these edge clouds, or cloudlets. MEC is a key enabling technology for 5G, and small cells are a key enabler for MEC.

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Moving to cloud architecture is promising for the RAN – but there’s no one way to do it

We are seeing the emergence of an “IoT small cell”

Many of the use cases for the cellular IoT applications rest on the sort of capabilities that small cells will be uniquely well-placed to deliver. Very high bandwidth solutions will benefit from the spectral reuse that densely deployed small cells can offer. Very low latency use cases, such as Augmented and Virtual Reality and smart or self-driving vehicles, healthcare, public safety and industrial automation will require a highly responsive network that can react in near real time to a service request, with very little signalling flow to and from the core network. We are already seeing the development of small cells optimised for IoT performance – prioritising responsiveness, reliability and 100% availability over throughput and support for voice quality metrics.

From the aggregation of new spectrum bands, to the adoption of new architectures, to the relentless progress of network innovation through 4.5G and 5G, small cells will move from their current role as an important tactical tool to forming the strategic heart of the network.

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LTE-A PRO features will tax small cell software systems

Although 5G development is already imminent, LTE innovation will not stop.

3GPP has adopted the term LTE-Advanced PRO for all its releases from R13 onwards, giving a formal marker to what is more loosely known as 4.5G. These 4.5 features will only see faster throughputs, tighter scheduling and coordination requirements, smarter algorithms and so on.

This will result in increased throughputs and data rates and the demands made on system software will scale accordingly, requiring software to be more efficient to match up to the enhanced data rates that they pull through. System and small cell designers will need to be aware of the innovation path as 4.5 capabilities move forward.

FREE EBOOK For more on how small cells will develop within 4.5G and 5G networks, scan here to pre-register for delivery of an exclusive, upcoming eBook from Radisys and TMN.

SMALL CELLS MARKET UPDATE TMN 9

VIRTUALISATION

THE VIRTUAL PATH TO 5G? O

n one level the idea of virtualising small cells seems surprising. After all, small cells are highly distributed access points, discreet radio units with what looks like a necessary physical presence. A virtualised small cell, which features some aspects the cell design taken back into a point in the network where use can be made of shared, virtual, resources, seems like an odd ambition.

Or at least, once you have a shared virtualised baseband resource, say, and a lot of distributed remote units, don’t you actually have a C-RAN? Is there anything identifiably “small cell” about the virtual small cell?

Well, yes, say some.

Small cell virtualisation is about using a small cell as a centralised small cell, serving multiple remote small cells. Gradually more functions are moved from the remote small cell to a central small cell resource: in effect the small cell is

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split. This split is the subject of much discussion right now. Where should the split occur, how should it be architected - should we see virtualised RRC, PDCP, RLC, MAC and/or PHY layers?

But let’s start at the beginning ask, why virtualise small cells? After all, are not small cells meant already to be low cost, easily optimised and self-organising? A recent Small Cell Forum study concluded that small cell virtualisation can build on these features to include a range of further performance benefits.

With 5G and NFV massive industry topics, the SCF feels it has something to add to industry discussions

about RAN architecture not least because it has worked out a fair few of the interface and control/ coordination issues already. Its list of benefits include: • Small cell function accelerators can be scaled based on average utilisation across all cells, rather than peak utilisation • Processors, DSPs and accelerators can be scaled down to reduce power consumption

VIRTUALISATION

• Enhanced mobility across

remote nodes under the same central small cell without the need for inter small cell data forwarding or signalling • Synchronised coordination, interference management and control of multiple cells in the same cloud, with a single cloud SON entity Because of these benefits there is a hope from some small cell players that RAN virtualisation will initially be deployed in small cells, as operators look for more flexible ways to support denser, and often indoor, deployments.

Additionally, virtualisation of small cell architectures is very much in line with

two other major technology themes - NFV and Mobile Edge Computing and the phased move towards 5G. Davide Cherubini, Network Virtualisation and SDN Architect, Vodafone Group, says, “We initially looked at how virtualisation could enhance the performance of our core network and we’ve made good progress. We are now exploring how we can use the technology in other parts of the network, such as the macro and small cell RAN networks, to give us more control over network performance and reduce the time and costs associated with deploying new services.”

Certainly there has been vendor momentum in early 2016 exploring how RAN and small cell virtualisation might proceed. One company driving a lot of the early work on small cell virtualisation has been Cisco. Cisco demonstrated a virtualised RAN architecture in February 2016, presenting a three

tier architecture that had a physical network function at MWC in Barcelona, a local radio aggregator Virtual Network Function and a remote cluster controller VNF operating over 700 miles away in the UK.

“WE ARE NOW EXPLORING HOW WE CAN USE VIRTUALISATION IN OTHER PARTS OF THE NETWORK, SUCH AS THE SMALL CELL RAN.” DAVIDE CHERUBINI, VODAFONE

Another virtual small cell development comes from Argela and Cavium, collaborating on Argela’s Prog RAN. Prog RAN stands for a programmable RAN architecture that creates RAN slices and programmatically invokes use case specific optimisation for each slice. This “SDN for the radio” manages scheduling, handoff and SON management from a centralised controller.

A further approach to virtualisation is to use the gateway element in a network to allow sharing of resources for multioperator deployments. The ip.access Viper platform

integrates Access Points with its SUMO (Super Multi-Operator) technology on virtualised gateways that can be hosted in a third-party data centre if required.

There’s another intriguing aspect to the virtualisation of small cells and 5G, and that is the view that small cells, deployed within a 5G HetNet, can enable certain 5G IoT use cases.

Camillo Carlini, Wireless Devices Innovation Project Manager, TIM, says reduced power consumption afforded by being close to small cells may be a key factor.

“Many IoT use cases place challenging requirements on user equipment (UE), such as very long battery life in smart meters.

Densification of cells, for example in a LTE NB-IoT Mobile Network and related evolutions, can offer the possibility to reduce UE transmit power, boosting battery life.”

NFV, the IoT and the race to 5G are now unstoppable industry megatrends. Small cells sit at the heart of many of these trends: at the heart of 5G because of its throughput and latency requirements, at the heart of IoT because of performance and power requirements, and with an increasing presence in NFV because of the way small cells align with MEC. So instead of asking “Why a virtual small cell?” Ask “Why not?”

SMALL CELLS MARKET UPDATE TMN 11

ENTERPRISE

BUSINESS MATTERS

The enterprise market has always looked the most likely for the small cell model to take off - but are new business and deployment models required?

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he enterprise market. Roughly speaking you can break the challenges down into three key areas. First, there is the technology architecture required.

Secondly, there is challenges of actually deploying the technology.

Lastly, and very much impacted by the first, there is the service environment that the deployment is intended to enable.

The first of these issues is now widely addressed, by standalone small cells (a host of providers), DAS-light (Zinwave, CommsCope, Cobham Wireless) and DASlike solutions (Huawei,

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Ericsson), mini C-RANs (Commscope) and by clustered small cells under an onsite controller (SpiderCloud, Nokia).

All of these technology models now exist, and their deployment is really a question of building size, logistical issues and commercial models in terms of who owns the deployment – enterprise, building owner or mobile operator.

In recent times, the focus has slipped to the second and third problems - rolling out at scale and defining small cell specific enterprise services.

It’s one thing for an operator to choose a preferred small cell partner for enterprise

deployments, but moving to scale deployments involves a combination of process and of technical integration. For example, Verizon and SpiderCloud Wireless have worked together to develop a template to deploy SpiderCloud’s “E-RAN” technology in any one of Verizon’s 21 markets in an identical manner – independent of the core network suppliers in those markets. The aim is to replicate as easily as possible the same process across all markets, keeping bespoke integration to a minimum.

In India, Reliance Jio has plans for an initial deployment of 50,000 of Airspan’s

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enterprise small cells using the Airspan AirVelocity indoor small cells.

Interestingly, Reliance Jio published SON test cases jointly with Qualcomm, provider of the chipset inside the AirVelocity last year, and says it has been driving the standardisation of SON features to create a framework that others can directly leverage in their SON deployment for multivendor small cells.

The third pillar on which the enterprise small cell market will stand is the ability of small cells to support specific services.

A vision of localised services, enriched by user location and local radio information, is still in early development, as Mobile Edge Computing. Mobile Edge Computing offers the possibility of deploying Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) to support services that benefit from being highly localised, or from visibility into radio parameters, or from an edge core presence.

SpiderCloud is one company that is exploring the use of its Services Node – the network element that controls clusters of small cells deployed on site, as a “host” for enterprisefocussed MEC services.

CMO Amit Jain says, “The ideal insertion point for

MEC Services is in the Services Node or between the Services Node and the Security Gateway at edge of the mobile core. This allows all mobility events in the building to happen in front of the MEC application.”

Why is this important?

Well, it enables a single MEC processor and application(s) to be shared across all radios in the building. “In competing architectures,” Jain says, “each radio has to have a processor. The business case for MEC is improved when a building needs a processor instead of every small cell in that building.

This allows the operator to plan for buying MEC capacity for a building instead of each small cell.”

It’s not that MEC will be the sole way to open up enterprise services market – more that solutions that can adapt or align with MEC, which can be thought of as the network NFV extension to the edge of the network, give operators greater opportunity to build future services and revenues. That’s why Small Cell Forum work on both enterprise deployments and its work on virtualisation and MEC will be well worth following over the coming months.

SMALL CELLS MARKET UPDATE TMN 13

THE CHALLENGERS

THE NEWEST NAMES IN SMALL CELLS Despite small cells’ status as a future technology, many of the names in the ecosystem seem very familiar by now. But virtualisation and the advent of 5G requirements have brought in some fresh faces. Here’s a few of the companies that could challenge the better-known names in the small cell space.

LUMINATE

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his is a company that only came out of stealth mode early in 2016. Its focus is on “cloud-enabled mobile networks” for enterprises, developing a solution that will enable “contextual and personalised” services for mobile access by mirroring datacentre architecture..

Early publicity from the company has talked of a Cloud Controller, supporting virtualised network functions such as Serving Gateway, HeNB Gateway and Security Way as well as X2GateWay. Access layer connectivity is initially achieved viA strange one for “newcomer” as the technology a Luminate Enterprise Access Point, described as a “cloud activated access point” that is services ready out the box. Access points are shipped as self-configuring, Power-over-Ethernet nodes that can self configure. Founded in 2013, investors include Sequoia, Google Ventures, NEA and Qualcomm, and the company is stating it has trials ongoing on “three continents”.

ASOCS

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nother company inspired by taking virtualisation into the RAN, trumpeting “complete RAN virtualisation: every layer,

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all functions. It is doing that via a platform that enables the virtualisation and software abstraction of processing elements required for L1 PHY acceleration. Its vBS (virtual Base Station) technology is aimed at realising NFV at scale, and also name checks Mobile Edge Computing as one of the architectures it will enable. The vBS solution includes L1, L” and L3 running as virtual functions, with SON, OAM and RRM also virtualised in the platform. The Israel-based company was founded in 2013, announcing partnerships with Radisys for its CellEngine plafform and Xilinx for L1 hardware acceleration in February 2015, and confirming validation on HP Enterprise’s OpenNFV platform in February 2016.

PARALLEL WIRELESS

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etter known now than a year ago, for sure, and heading to the Small Cells Forum Awards 2016 with four shortlist nominations under its belt, this is probably the last year Parallel could be labelled a genuine newcomer. The company’s aim is to make building cellular networks as cheap and easy as building WiFi networks has become - by designing radio and gateway orchestration elements on Intelbased hardware, and incorporating virtualised

SON and network management functions.

Deployment examples have included a rural trial with EE, where meshed small cells were backhauled in-band over LTE to macro cells, and a public safety network put up in record time at the most recent Super Bowl. The company is also targetting the enterprise space as a key segment, but in time would love to be a part of wider 5G build-outs.

ALTIOSTAR

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lthough not purely aimed at the small cell market, Altiostar’s virtuailsed C-RAN solution includes a micro, small cell remote radio head (RRH) as part of its portfolio, with the product designed for installation on poles, lamposts or walls as street level. The architecture connects what Altiostar calls intelligent RRHs (iRRHs) with virtualised controllers over any backhaul, which Altiostar says means operators do not have to restrict C-RAN deployments to limited parts of the network. Telecom Italia Mobile is one operator currently testing the tech, with that annoucement coming roughly 18 months after the company launched in November 2014.

The vRAN solution has been on general availability since December 2014.

THE DIRECTORY

Access Points

Backhaul

Accelleran - small cell software platform with strong background in TDD LTE

(not including E2E NEPs)

Airspan - markets AirRAN indoor and outdoor pico and micro base stations

BridgeWave - point to point solutions at 60GHz and 80GHz

Argela - small cells provider that recently introduced a programmable RAN concept: ProgRAN Casa Systems - provider of multi standard small cell Comba - Hong-Kong based provider of a range of small cell access points Commscope - recent acquisition of Airvana adds small cells to existing DAS capability Contela - well-known South Korean manufacturer or 3G and LTE small cells Ericsson - 6402 picocell and Radio Dot System make it major presence in market Fujistu - key player in small cell R&D from femtocells to more recent developments

Airspan - mmWave band product iBridge

Cambium Networks - provider of sub 6GHz solutions Cambridge Broadband Networks P2MP provider that is moving up into 39GHz solution CCS - company with large Chinese customer whose USP is its selforganising backhaul unit Ceragon - Targets its FibeAir IP-20 at small cell applications DragonWave - continues to innovate in a range of bands and form factors Intracom - large range of street-level and small cell solutions, including mmWave bands Radwin - NLOS backhaul offered via its RADWIN 5000 JET SCB product

Huawei - dedicated small cells, plus its Lampsite large indoor distributed solution

Siklu - one of the early providers of product in the mmWave bands with EtherHaul brand Tarana Wireless - a big splash on 2013 launch, member of Nokia and Cisco ecosystem

Ip.access - original small cells player showing ability to adapt to changing market

Gateway and network elements

Luminate Wireless - brand new player with cloud network vision, including enterprise access point NEC - long-time provider of small cells. In partnership with SpiderCloud for enterprise product Nokia - kept hold of AlcatelLucent’s small cell product line after acquisition. Adds to FlexiZone line Parallel Wireless - 4G and 5G developments, with products hitting commercial markets in 2015-16 SpiderCloud Wireless - Its Enterprise RAN architecture, now established, was one of the first architectural innovations in in-building wireless

(not including the major end-to-end NEPs)

Casa Systems - focus on enabling security, core functions and small cells as a service Ip.access - long-standing gateway provider now with virtualised Viper, multi-operator product Parallel Wireless - HetNet Gateway with NFV support a key element of its vision

SMALL CELL LANDSCAPE Planning, optimisation and management

Node-H - licenses its software to a range of vendors, integrating SON, timing etc on SoC platforms

Airhop - offers a portfolio of SON solutions that can be deployed centrally or distributed

Radisys - platforms for small cells that integrate advanced functionality for small cells

Amdocs - built up a design and optimisation portfolio to automate small cell deployment processes

Quortus - Its edge core technology lead market for a while, now heading into MEC use cases

Cisco - its Cisco SON Suite combines a C-SON capabilitiy with D-SON orchestration

Chip providers

iBwAVE - network planning and design software designed to make planning as easy as possible Keima - data visualisation techniques that can be found “inside” one or two larger projects

Platform, technology stack providers Aricent - produces wide range of small cell related software from frameworks to C-RAN functions ASOCS - provides software for the virtualisation of RAN elements, enabling MEC and NFV

Broadcom - provides foundational chip level technology to a host of small cell manufacturers Cavium - its Octeon Fusion family is designed for small cells. Also a player in vRAN developments Intel - growth of NFV in small cells could see Intel platforms extend reach. Acquired Mindspeed (PicoChip) Qualcomm - massive provider to the market with small and , now pushing hard on LTE Unlicensed Texas Instrument - another SoC manufacture addressing market with TCI6630 SoC design

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