Broadband equipment vendor Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) on Wednesday announced its new Flexi Zone LTE microcell and picocell base stations.
These new base stations pack up to 5W of output power in an install-anywhere 5 kg/5 liter box. NSN said base stations will be available in early 2014.
NSN claims that these new LTE microcell base stations are the smallest and the industry’s only small cell solution with the same features and capacity as macro base stations.
This is critical for integration into high-capacity Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets). To complement the base stations, NSN is enhancing its expert Services for HetNets with the use of a new multi-layer hot spot analysis and planning tool to help operators match their network deployments to business objectives, said NSN in a statement.
NSN says software and feature parity between macro and micro/pico cells is one of the critical steps needed in the small cell market maturation. It will help create tighter integration between the two network layers, which can lead to improved HetNet performance.
“Along with integration, mobile operators need to have a strategy with how to manage their small cell networks as they scale and traffic hotspots expand,” said Daryl Schoolar, principal analyst for Network Infrastructure at Ovum.
Initially expected to be used to provide hot spot capacity, the microcell and picocell base station software can when needed be remotely upgraded to create denser and larger hot zones as part of Flexi Zone architecture, according to NSN.
Telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, SK Telecom, will benefit from macrocell features, such as software upgrade to LTE-Advanced, support of NSN NetAct Operations Support System (OSS), intelligent Self-Organizing Networks (iSON) automation as well as Smart Scheduler and interference mitigation for superior subscriber performance in dense urban areas.
“Small cells have been cut down versions of macro base stations with reduced performance. In contrast, Flexi Zone microcell and picocell base stations use the latest System on a Chip technology to deliver the same processing power as a macro base station. As traffic demand rises, they can be upgraded to a full Flexi Zone deployment to build seamless multi-layer, high-density, future-proof HetNets,” said Randy Cox, head of Small Cells product management at NSN.
pix source: NSN
