As the number of mobile internet users and smart devices continues to grow dramatically, advanced services such as video streaming, multimedia-rich social networks, and VoIP calls continue to inflate traffic volumes. Typically, adding conventional macro cellular base stations to meet this challenge is time-consuming and often prohibitively expensive. For this reason, mobile network operators (MNOs) are increasingly seeking cost-effective solutions and more flexible approaches using small cells to alleviate pressure on their existing infrastructure.
By integrating Ruckus technology into Nokia Networks' Zona Flexi solutions, service providers now have a cost-effective and flexible solution for small cells. This solution is specifically designed for service providers looking to offload traffic from the main network to an underlying network in a street or indoors, serving both individual subscribers and businesses.
Smart cells offer full functionality, with short-range, low-power wireless base stations used to complement the mobile phone service of large macrocell towers. Small cell solutions can be used for both indoor and outdoor applications with a transmission range (TX) suited to user capacity and power requirements. Furthermore, smart cells provide a cost-effective solution for coverage and data capacity and have been developed for 3G and 4G radio technologies.
This is a cost-effective way to expand limited coverage deployments to meet explosive capacity demands. Nokia Flexi Zone base stations combine LTE or 3G and Wi-Fi in self-configurable units that provide coverage and underpinning network capacity, both indoors and outdoors.
The Ruckus/Nokia Networks combined Small Cell solution will be commercially available from Nokia Networks in the first half of 2015. It brings together, for the first time, best-in-class cellular and Wi-Fi technology to enable interested operators to integrate Small Cells into their macro networks and create more efficient heterogeneous network services that allow for faster, easier scalability and coverage as needed.
Great things are expected from small cells
Adding additional radio frequency (RF) capacity and improving spectral efficiency yields two highly attractive strategies for mobile network operators worldwide. The use of intelligent wireless systems, which allows operators to more easily inject wireless capacity into their service infrastructure, and improved optimization of Wi-Fi traffic flow across the unlicensed spectrum to offload data from macro cellular networks has increased significantly and is expected to continue.
According to a recent advanced research report by Dell'Oro (January 2015), the total small cell market is expected to multiply tenfold to over $5 million USD in 2019, accounting for more than ten percent of combined macro and small cell spending.
