Microwave Engineering Europe - September 2008 - (Page 18)

18 WIMAX/LTE FOCUS equipment and more cost-efﬁcient backhaul options are required. Further ‘4G’ network topologies will use underlay networks, to ensure indoor coverage and capacity, based on microcells and picocells in the short to medium term, with femtocells deploying at a later stage. In order for such underlay networks to be cost-effective, cost of backhaul, basestation and site rental need to be signiﬁcantly decreased from today’s levels. Joachim Hallwachs, VP Marketing at designArt comments, “With ARPU expected to remain relatively ﬂat for ‘4G’ services and operators having to deal with much higher data rates as well as indoor/outdoor coverage it becomes mission impossible in most cases.” “The only way out is deploy at a lower cost both in terms of capital and operating costs.” To this end DesignArt have developed ﬂexible SoC architecture that provides high-capacity on-chip backhaul, control and network processors and 4G access baseband. This integrated silicon solution for WiMAX, LTE and 802.16m will enable operators to deploy cost-effective and compact micro and pico basestations. Further the SoC supports any base station form factor and any backhaul topology, including high-capacity backhaul, zero-cost in-band backhaul, multi-hop relay and mesh, PtP long-haul capability, as well as licensed and unlicensed. More speciﬁcally, DesignArt Networks’ DAN2400 SoC is a silicon platform supporting the full scope of products required for the WiMAX network infrastructure. An open software-centric platform, it integrates a complete WiMAX base station design with high capacity wireless backhaul capability — on a single chip. Based on a single development platform, equipment vendors are able to design the full portfolio of indoor and outdoor WiMAX base stations, relays and mesh nodes, ranging from powerful outdoor base stations to low-cost indoor pico and femto cells. The chip is fully compliant with IEEE 802.16e-2005 wave 2 proﬁle and supports WiMAX Forum Release 1.5 Requirements. Integrated high capacity in-band backhaul capability signiﬁcantly reduces the cost and size of basestations, while multiple concurrent backhaul links enable integrated cluster and relay solutions. The SoC is software upgradeable to support future 802.16j MMR standards. Extensive MIMO and BF (Beam Forming) capabilities are available over an array of 6 RF channels. A 2/4/6-channel MIMO/BF module (2 streams over 6 Tx/Rx antennas) enables ﬂexible MIMO conﬁgurations of 2x2 or 2x4 or 2x6 MIMO-MMSE as well as support for UL Collaborative MIMO. MIMO Remote Radio Heads from Axis Network Technology are able to triple base-station efﬁciency. Other key performance parameters include spectral efﬁciency on backhaul links of greater than 10 bps/Hz, non-blocking Ethernet throughput of over 100 Mbps net, packet processing speed of more than 150K packets per second. According to Joachim Hallwachs the cost of deploying a traditional macro basestation can be cut by 5x using an In-Band Cluster cellular underlay instead. DesignArt’s network deployment model drastically lowers the total cost of ownership of the entire 4G radio access network infrastructure. The use of dense in-band clusters of compact base stations delivers factors of improvement in cost for coverage, and yet additional factors of improvement in terms of spectral efﬁciency for the required indoor service coverage. 3) Remote radio heads lower CAPEX and OPEX A family of MIMO Remote Radio Heads (RRH) from Axis Network Technology (AxisNT) for OEM deployment of WiMAX networks worldwide is available for both 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz networks, and can be customised to meet the speciﬁc interface and packaging requirements of the OEM. Designing WiMAX basestations using a distributed RRH approach with highly efﬁcient digital-to-RF conversion and ampliﬁcation considerably reduces both CAPEX and OPEX of the overall system as well as maintenance costs. The use of an RRH allows the radio to be located alongside the antennas and physically separate from the basestation (BTS), removing the losses associated with long cable runs by replacing them with an optical ﬁbre data interface. The AxisNT RRH presents ﬂexible multi-gigabit BTS connections, communicating via OBSAI, CPRI or custom OEM ﬁbre interfaces. RRH models are available for use in the 2.3 to 2.7 GHz and 3.3 to 3.8 GHz spectrum bands, and the comapny’s radios are conﬁgurable for frequencies between 400 MHz and 4 GHz. Each of the models offers dual channel operation for MIMO, to comply with WiMAX and IEEE 802.16 d/e standards. They are also capable of 4-channel MIMO operation using 2-channel units driven separately from OBSAI/CPRI or daisy chained. Channel bandwidth is variable between 3.5 MHz and 20 MHz for TDD or FDD air interfaces. Employing high efﬁciency advanced power ampliﬁer technologies, the RRH units are available in several options with downlink output power levels of up to 28 W. The advanced power ampliﬁer design features include PowerDPD™ Digital Pre-Distortion, digitally controlled Doherty ampliﬁers and ﬂexible wideband crest factor reduction (CFR). The RRH also feature automatic calibration of transmit, receive and PA bias control loops, and are ﬁtted with OBSAI RP3-01 or CPRI V2 digital baseband interfaces with either 1 or 2 optical connectors as required. They integrate an AxisIPR™ conﬁgurable IP radio processor, along with an AxisOS™ remote management and local craft interfaces. Support for Adaptive Antenna Systems (AAS) and AISG v2.0 antenna control is provided. Superior receiver performance of better than -98 dBm can be achieved with single channel operation, and better than -100 dBm using MIMO. A distributed BTS using 2channel RRH with 28 W downlink power is the equivalent of transmitting 56 W downlink power from a traditional ground based BTS (assuming 3 dB cable losses). Power consumption is reduced to a fraction of a traditional base station, thus reducing OPEX. “Using a distributed Remote Radio Head design triples basestation efﬁciency, which not only makes them around 60 percent cheaper to run but also makes them a greener option,” commented Simon Mellor, CEO of AxisNT. “The ﬂexibility in deployment that results from using ﬁbre optic cables rather than Microwave Engineering Europe ● September 2008 ● www.mwee.com 016-017-018-019_MWEE.indd 18 5/09/08 15:31:40 http://www.mwee.com

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Microwave Engineering Europe - September 2008 News Contents Comment Cover Feature: Uncovering Test and Measurement’s Role in Advancing LTE and Mobile WiMAX WiMax: WiMax and LTE Need to Address Issues of Backhaul, Cost and Efficiency for Successful Deployment WiMax: Manufacturing Communications Technology Products in India Test and Measurement Mobile Platforms Evolve to Meet Future Demands Products Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - September 2008

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