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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
2 ©2015 Comba Telecom. All Rights Reserved
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
3 ©2015 Comba Telecom. All Rights Reserved
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.
4 ©2015 Comba Telecom. All Rights Reserved
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)
5 ©2015 Comba Telecom. All Rights Reserved
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.
6 ©2015 Comba Telecom. All Rights Reserved
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.
7 ©2015 Comba Telecom. All Rights Reserved
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)
8 ©2015 Comba Telecom. All Rights Reserved
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
9 ©2015 Comba Telecom. All Rights Reserved
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
10 ©2015 Comba Telecom. All Rights Reserved
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.
11 ©2015 Comba Telecom. All Rights Reserved
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.