comba telecom white paper: das vs small cells vs wi fi 10-2015

1 ©2015 Comba Telecom. All Rights Reserved

DAS VS SMALL CELLS VS WI-FI:

HANDLING INCREASED WIRELESS

TRAFFIC IN AREAS OF LARGE DEMAND

October 2015

A Comba Telecom White Paper


TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .................................................................................................... 3

WIRELESS DATA GROWTH .............................................................................................. 4

SOLUTION SCENARIOS .................................................................................................... 5

Home, Small & Medium Venues/Enterprises: Small Cells & Wi-Fi Offload ................................. 5

High Street, Downtown & Large Enterprise: Small Cells & Outdoor DAS ................................... 6

Large Venues: DAS & Wi-Fi ......................................................................................................... 7

THE DAS PROPOSITION .................................................................................................. 8

DAS Deployments ........................................................................................................................ 9

CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................ 10

ABOUT COMBA TELECOM ............................................................................................. 11


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

High voice and data traffic is already an overwhelming trend and presents

challenges on mobile network capacity. Cisco estimates that data usage will

grow at a rate of 57% CAGR from 2014 to 2019.

Generally, there are three areas identified as high density areas with high

traffic demands on wireless networks:

1. Home, small and medium enterprises and venues

2. High Streets, downtown areas and large enterprises

3. Large venues such as shopping centers, stadiums, airports and high

rise buildings

There is no longer a “One size fits all” solution to voice and traffic demands for

the various scenarios. Besides densifying the macro network, other solutions

can be deployed to cope with the localized traffic demands:

Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS)

Small Cells

Wi-Fi offload

This white paper examines the suitability and the optimal combination of

these solutions for the different types of high density areas. Heterogeneous

networks is becoming the norm.


WIRELESS DATA GROWTH

Data capacity requirements and demands are not expected to level off and

Cisco predicts mobile data traffic to grow rapidly from an average of 2.5

Exabyte per month in 2014 to hit over 24 Exabyte per month in 2018 (see

Figure 3). Mobile operators are being overwhelmed by the demands on its

networks. Operators are reporting traffic increasing in multiples in the space

of one year and even months!

FIGURE 1: TOTAL DATA CARRIED ON WIRELESS NETWORKS PER MONTH (SOURCE: CISCO)

The traffic growth is not equally distributed across the macro network but it

tends to aggregate in areas of high user density. As a broad categorization,

these areas are:

Home, small and medium venues/enterprises

High street, downtown and large enterprises

Large venues

2.5 EB /

Month

24.2 EB /

Month CAGR 57% (2014-2019)


SOLUTION SCENARIOS

HOME, SMALL & MEDIUM VENUES/ENTERPRISES: SMALL

CELLS & WI-FI OFFLOAD

Small cells have been the focus of much industry and media coverage in recent

years. With all of its advantages and ease of deployment, small cells are not

necessarily a panacea for coverage and capacity issues. As with any wireless

solution, deployment of small cells needs to be carefully planned and thought

out.

On the face of it, high density areas such as residential and SME venues

justifies small cell deployment. While the majority of deployments are

residential femtocells, this situation is forecasted to change rapidly (see Figure

10) with small cells within enterprises and public areas expected to be strong

growth drivers.

FIGURE 3: MAJORITY OF SMALL CELL DEPLOYMENTS REMAINS RESIDENTIAL, BUT WILL

CHANGE RAPIDLY

When a large amount of small cells are deployed, interference issues arise,

ergo; interference reduces capacity and coverage of the macro network. In

addition, small cells alone cannot offload traffic from the wireless network.

Therefore, it is important that Wi-Fi is a key part of the solution package to

offload traffic and effectively address capacity issues. Furthermore, Wi-Fi

needs to be an integral part of the solution with auto authentication for a

seamless experience.


HIGH STREET, DOWNTOWN & LARGE ENTERPRISE: SMALL -

CELLS & OUTDOOR DAS

In high street and downtown areas, ubiquitous wireless coverage and capacity

is expected and is the norm. However, operators face potentially huge hurdles

in meeting the expectations, primarily in the form of site acquisition for cell

sites. Urban zoning requirements and resident opposition (“not in my back

yard” mentality) to base station towers are often barriers to implementing

macro level network coverage and capacity.

The result is possibly a long, drawn out process to overcome these factors (if

they can be overcome in some circumstances). During the time taken to do

this, operators will be facing increased customer dissatisfaction and churn

associated with a lower QoS.

FIGURE 4: COMBA TELECOM'S SMALL CELL PRODUCT SERIES

For single operator solutions in scenarios such as large enterprises, LTE small

cells are a direct and effective solution to capacity and coverage requirements

and circumvent the site acquisition issues. Small cell equipment is relatively

inconspicuous and easily mounted on existing street furniture, therefore

allowing for a rapid deployment time.

For heterogeneous networks involving multiple operators, technologies and

bands, such as in high streets and downtown areas, outdoor DAS is the ideal

solution which also circumvents site acquisition issues as well as CAPEX and

OPEX costs for the following reasons:

Consolidated equipment space and power supply: Base Station

Hotels for base station sites

Ease of installation/site acquisition: Mounting on light poles, roof

tops, electrical poles which eliminate the need for towers

Scalability and future proofing: Modular designs of DAS can allow for

expansion or upgrades according to requirements.


Small cell architecture should also be considered in downtown and high street

scenarios for signal black spots and holes to ensure ubiquitous coverage and

capacity.

FIGURE 5: INSTALLATION OF OUTDOOR DAS (HIGH POWER REMOTE UNITS) ON POLE IN

DOWNTOWN JAKARTA, INDONESIA (SOURCE: COMBA TELECOM)

LARGE VENUES: DAS & WI-FI

Large venues such as airports and major shopping malls are areas with high

density and high traffic demands that present network challenges to mobile

operators. The network demands are perhaps at the most extreme in large

venues such as sports stadiums hosting major events with large spikes in traffic.

Under these circumstances, an indoor DAS servicing the stadium interiors and

outdoor DAS for the surrounding infrastructures such as car parks and stadium

exteriors are often the optimal solutions to install a heterogeneous network.

Integrated Wi-Fi is frequently built into the system to offload data traffic.

FIGURE 6: ILLUSTRATION OF INDOOR AND OUTDOOR DAS COMBINATION (SOURCE: COMBA

TELECOM)


THE DAS PROPOSITION In addition to the advantages listed previously for downtown/high street areas,

the push factors for operators and neutral hosts to use DAS are manifold.

Generally, the requirement from the stadium owner is a single shared

architecture with 1 to 2 antennas per point. Only DAS can offer this for multi-

band, multi-protocol, multi-operator wireless networks.

High data capacity and speed requirements have a corresponding high SINR

and thus, the following considerations.

Need antennas at perimeter to provide dominant and uniform signal

with high SINR

o Need future-proof, maintenance-free, passive products in

private areas

Need good out of band rejection to avoid interference from other

wireless networks

o Active remotes have weak or zero in-band rejection. Only

custom-built POI provides rejection and isolation between

input ports.

Need to avoid inter-cell interference

o Simulcast increases trunking efficiency and avoid inter-cell

interference

Finally, the cost-effectiveness in CAPEX and OPEX provides a compelling

proposition. These include, but are not limited to:

o Reuse and redeployment of existing and legacy DAS

o Reduction of base stations required

o Base station hotels aggregates backhaul requirements

o Multi-band, multi-system nature reduces fiber and

equipment

o Maintenance and servicing costs are optimized due to

centralized base station hotel


DAS DEPLOYMENTS

2014 BRAZIL SOCCER TOURNAMENT STADIUMS

FIGURE 7: IN-BUILDING SYSTEMS FOR SOCCER STADIUMS (SOURCE: SINDITELEBRASIL 2014)

Comba Telecom designed and supplied a turnkey multi-system, multi-operator

DAS solution for eight of the twelve stadiums hosting the 2014 soccer

tournament in Brazil. Integrated Wi-Fi system was included in four of the

stadiums.

EXAMPLE: ARENA DE SAO PAULO

62,000 crowd capacity

Comba Equipment Deployed

o 18 sectors

o Complete DAS comprising:

o 32 Master Units

o 50 Remote Units

o 12 Point of Interconnect (POI)

o 400 Indoor Antennas

o Accessories including fiber, network monitoring

system etc.

BTS Hotel facility

24/7 on-site support and standby

Match statistics:

135,000 voice calls

1,000,000+ data connections

550,000Mb+ data carried over the network

26% of total data traffic on LTE


FIGURE 8: EQUIPMENT DEPLOYED AT ARENA DE SAO PAULO (SOURCE: COMBA TELECOM)

CONCLUSIONS There are a number of solutions available to meet traffic demands in high

density areas with the best fits as detailed below:

In short, there is no “one size fits all” solution in meeting high traffic demands

in high density areas. The final proposition is: in order to provide a network

capable of handling the voice and data traffic efficiently and cost-effectively,

network owners need to consider the deployment of a “converged solution” –

namely combining and integrating DAS, Small Cell and Wi-Fi systems according

to different scenarios.


ABOUT COMBA TELECOM Comba Telecom is a leading supplier of infrastructure and wireless

enhancement solutions to mobile operators and enterprises to enhance and

extend their wireless communications networks. With over 50,000 system

deployments around the world including turnkey in-building systems,

urban/rural wireless systems, and transport wireless networks, Comba

Telecom’s end-to-end network solutions include consultation, network design,

optimization and commissioning.

Comba Telecom’s product portfolio includes DAS, small cells, tower mounted

systems, antennas, subsystems, passive accessories, Wi-Fi systems and digital

microwave links.

Listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Comba Telecom is headquartered in

Hong Kong and has operations throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East,

Africa and Asia Pacific. To learn more, visit www.comba-telecom.com and

follow Comba Telecom on LinkedIn for regular updates.

www.comba-telecom.com [email protected]

© 2015 Comba Telecom. All rights reserved. Comba Telecom reserves the right to change, modify, transfer, or otherwise revise this publication

and the product specifications without notice. While Comba Telecom uses commercially reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy of the

specifications contained in this document, Comba Telecom and its affiliated companies will assume no responsibility for any errors or omissions.

Nothing in this publication forms any part of any contract.

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comba telecom white paper: das vs small cells vs wi fi 10-2015

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