A TMN PUBLICATION IN ASSOCIATION WITH

The Mobile Network // www.the-mobile-network.com

TMN eBOOKS
/// SMALL CELLS EVOLUTION
JULY 2016

HOW SMALL
CELLS WILL
EVOLVE IN
4.5G AND 5G SMALL CELL
INCLUDES
SMALL CELL
EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION
INFOGRAPHIC
SMALL CELL EVOLUTION SMALL CELL EVOLUTION

CURRENT SMALL CELL physical factors like reduced form factor,

SITUATION
1 To date small cells have
aesthetic appearance and security. It
may also require feature parity with the
been deployed in mobile macrocells the operator has already
networks as point deployed.

EVOLUTION IN
solutions to meet specific deployment
scenarios. So for example where indoor
coverage has been poor in a residential
or enterprise setting, the small cell has
been a tactical tool for the operator to
Additionally, small cells have mostly to
date been deployed in single frequency
spectrum bands, enough to meet the
use cases of extending voice coverage
and providing enhanced capacity for

SMALL CELLS
extend coverage. Or where a public area
like a mall, stadium or transport hub
has a capacity crunch, small cells can
be deployed to add extra capacity with
pinpoint accuracy. Although
the trend has been towards
more enterprise and public
access small cells, according
to figures from industry
The future mobile network will body The Small Cell Forum,
be enabled by 4.5G and 5G small in the final quarter of 2015,
cells featuring new technology and it was still the case that 60%
some mobile broadband and data
applications. Dual mode small cells that
incorporate both WiFi and cellular access
in the same box are indeed common,
but they serve users who
are in one mode or the
other, they do not operate
in multiple spectrum bands
simultaneously.
THE TECHNOLOGY STACK The technology stack
WITHIN A SMALL CELL IS SET within a small cell however,
TO CHANGE RADICALLY, is set to change radically,

existing in an evolved architecture.

INTRODUCTION
To understand the future of the
5G network is, to some extent, to
understand the future of small cells.
Future mobile networks will need
to meet an increasing and diverse
number of use cases, from narrowband
low-power IoT to Virtual Reality apps
and automated cars, to very high
throughput mobile broadband services.
To do that they will need to deploy
technology that is capable of meeting
very low end-to-end latencies, the
highest throughputs, be ultra-reliable,
provide ubiquitous coverage, meet low
power and narrow band connectivity,
and also be flexible in spectrum
utilisation. All this must be capable
of being dynamically controlled and
flexible in its usage of resources.
These trends will impact directly
upon small cells because it is small
cells, deployed within a 4G-4.5G-5G
Het Net, that will increasingly become
the enablers of many of these network
capabilities.
This eBook outlines how small cells
will incorporate these new technologies
and standards, and will adapt to and
be deployed within new network
architectures. But not only that, it
describes how small cells will evolve
from their current role as an important
tactical tool to forming the strategic
heart of the 5G network.
Renuka Bhalerao, Radisys
Director, Product Marketing - CellEngine
of all small cells shipped
were indoor.
These deployment
scenarios have meant
that small cells have
been developed with the
technology required to
match these defined requirements.
So a residential small cell must be as
near plug and play as possible, auto-
provision itself on the network, establish
a connection to the operator core, and
carry out some limited interference
management with respect to the macro
environment. As several enterprise
small cells may be deployed in one
location, these cells tend to have more
sophisticated SON (Self Organising
Network) features on board, as they are
required to coordinate with other small
cells deployed in the same location,
as well as cope with any outside-in
interference from the macro network.
The public access small cell deployed in
dense urban spaces will have the same
requirements, perhaps with some added
DRIVEN BY TWO KEY AND driven by two key and
COMPLEMENTARY TRENDS. complementary trends; the
requirement for operators
to meet an ever growing
number of use cases
and the developments in
network architecture and
mobile standards that are under way to
address those challenges. These trends
will see small cells move from being
niche technology within a network to
being an integral and strategic part of
network planning and design.
4.5G FEATURES
2 Although 4.5G has
not been adopted by
standards bodies as
an official definition of
technology, it is a common term in the
industry. Technology features widely
known as 4.5G equate to 3GPP releases
from R13 onwards. The 3GPP gave
these standards the name LTE-A PRO,
to reflect their evolution from LTE-A
(Advanced) specifications.

2 TMN TMN 3
SMALL CELL EVOLUTION SMALL CELL EVOLUTION

CURRENT SMALL CELL physical factors like reduced form factor,

SITUATION
1 To date small cells have
aesthetic appearance and security. It
may also require feature parity with the
been deployed in mobile macrocells the operator has already
networks as point deployed.

EVOLUTION IN
solutions to meet specific deployment
scenarios. So for example where indoor
coverage has been poor in a residential
or enterprise setting, the small cell has
been a tactical tool for the operator to
Additionally, small cells have mostly to
date been deployed in single frequency
spectrum bands, enough to meet the
use cases of extending voice coverage
and providing enhanced capacity for

SMALL CELLS
extend coverage. Or where a public area
like a mall, stadium or transport hub
has a capacity crunch, small cells can
be deployed to add extra capacity with
pinpoint accuracy. Although
the trend has been towards
more enterprise and public
access small cells, according
to figures from industry
The future mobile network will body The Small Cell Forum,
be enabled by 4.5G and 5G small in the final quarter of 2015,
cells featuring new technology and it was still the case that 60%
some mobile broadband and data
applications. Dual mode small cells that
incorporate both WiFi and cellular access
in the same box are indeed common,
but they serve users who
are in one mode or the
other, they do not operate
in multiple spectrum bands
simultaneously.
THE TECHNOLOGY STACK The technology stack
WITHIN A SMALL CELL IS SET within a small cell however,
TO CHANGE RADICALLY, is set to change radically,

existing in an evolved architecture.

INTRODUCTION
To understand the future of the
5G network is, to some extent, to
understand the future of small cells.
Future mobile networks will need
to meet an increasing and diverse
number of use cases, from narrowband
low-power IoT to Virtual Reality apps
and automated cars, to very high
throughput mobile broadband services.
To do that they will need to deploy
technology that is capable of meeting
very low end-to-end latencies, the
highest throughputs, be ultra-reliable,
provide ubiquitous coverage, meet low
power and narrow band connectivity,
and also be flexible in spectrum
utilisation. All this must be capable
of being dynamically controlled and
flexible in its usage of resources.
These trends will impact directly
upon small cells because it is small
cells, deployed within a 4G-4.5G-5G
Het Net, that will increasingly become
the enablers of many of these network
capabilities.
This eBook outlines how small cells
will incorporate these new technologies
and standards, and will adapt to and
be deployed within new network
architectures. But not only that, it
describes how small cells will evolve
from their current role as an important
tactical tool to forming the strategic
heart of the 5G network.
Renuka Bhalerao, Radisys
Director, Product Marketing - CellEngine
of all small cells shipped
were indoor.
These deployment
scenarios have meant
that small cells have
been developed with the
technology required to
match these defined requirements.
So a residential small cell must be as
near plug and play as possible, auto-
provision itself on the network, establish
a connection to the operator core, and
carry out some limited interference
management with respect to the macro
environment. As several enterprise
small cells may be deployed in one
location, these cells tend to have more
sophisticated SON (Self Organising
Network) features on board, as they are
required to coordinate with other small
cells deployed in the same location,
as well as cope with any outside-in
interference from the macro network.
The public access small cell deployed in
dense urban spaces will have the same
requirements, perhaps with some added
DRIVEN BY TWO KEY AND driven by two key and
COMPLEMENTARY TRENDS. complementary trends; the
requirement for operators
to meet an ever growing
number of use cases
and the developments in
network architecture and
mobile standards that are under way to
address those challenges. These trends
will see small cells move from being
niche technology within a network to
being an integral and strategic part of
network planning and design.
4.5G FEATURES
2 Although 4.5G has
not been adopted by
standards bodies as
an official definition of
technology, it is a common term in the
industry. Technology features widely
known as 4.5G equate to 3GPP releases
from R13 onwards. The 3GPP gave
these standards the name LTE-A PRO,
to reflect their evolution from LTE-A
(Advanced) specifications.

2 TMN TMN 3
SMALL CELL EVOLUTION
CARRIER AGGREGATION
One of the principal features of the
technology that comes under the LTE-A
umbrella has been the increasing
expansion of carrier aggregation. Carrier
aggregation increases the available
bandwidth to a cell by enabling cells to
combine an operator’s various spectrum
holdings into one. LTE-A has moved from
two to up to five component carriers,
while 4.5G moves carrier aggregation
beyond five component carriers to a
target of up to 32 component carriers. The
driver for this is the need for operators to
provide increased throughputs to users
for mobile broadband use cases, driven
mostly by the delivery of higher bit rate
video codecs across the network, and the
increasing consumption of mobile video.
Just as an example, three Component
Carrier Aggregation – which enables the
aggregation of 60 MHz of LTE spectrum,
allied with 256 Quadrature Amplitude
Modulation (QAM) and 4x4 Multiple Input
Multiple Output (MIMO) – which doubles
the number of unique data streams being
transmitted to the user’s smartphone
- can support a LTE peak data rate of 1
Gbps over the downlink. The number
of commercial LTE-Advanced (LTE-A)
carrier aggregation launches continues
to increase. Operators are evolving their
LTE-A networks with Category (Cat) 4,
6, 9 and 11 implementations and Cat
16 devices, which support 1 Gbps data
speeds, are expected in the second half
of 2016.
LTE UNLICENSED
Related to carrier aggregation is the ability
to add carriers from within unlicensed
spectrum - known as Licensed Assisted
Access (LAA). LAA enables licensed
spectrum small cells to take advantage
of spectrum opportunities of unlicensed
spectrum in the 5GHz band. WLAN
operating in the 5GHz band nowadays
already supports 80MHz in the field and
4 TMN
160MHz is to follow in Wave 2 deployment
of IEEE 802.11ac. There are also other
frequency bands, such as 3.5 GHz, where
aggregation of more than one carrier on
the same band is possible, in addition to
the bands already widely in use for LTE.
This drive to take advantage of
unlicensed spectrum bands is directly
relevant for small cells designers
because small cells will be necessary
for the efficient operation of LAA. The
tight scheduling required for LAA, which
involves very fast channel selection
decisions to be made so that there is no
interference between WiFi and cellular
access points, will mandate the presence
of small cells very close to the user. As
small cells underpin LAA, it seems very
likely that small cells will be required to
support increasing combinations of carrier
aggregation, in unlicensed and licensed
bands.
NEW IOT STANDARDS (NB-IOT, EC-GSM)
One of the most strategically important
additions to the LTE-A standards has
been the adoption of standards to
enable low power Machine-to-Machine
and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity
on cellular networks. This work was
actually accelerated in response to
the commercialisation of a number of
non-cellular based network technologies
designed to provide connectivity for
lower power devices. These LPWA rivals,
such as SigFox, LoRa, Weightless and
Ingenu (OnRAMp) are proprietary rivals
to the cellular networks. As such 3GPP
contributors accelerated specification
of technology that would allow low
power operation of machine-type
communications within cellular networks.
As operators look to introduce
technology to support a number of IoT
use cases, the role of small cells may not
be immediately obvious, but there are
two main areas where small cells will be
critical enablers. These are where very low
latencies are required, and where support
is required for very high device densities.
Indeed, it’s possible that a class of small
cell may be developed specifically to meet
IoT requirements.
SPECTRAL EFFICIENCY ENHANCEMENTS
Other enhancements within R13 include
increasing interference (eICIC) CoMP etc.
These technologies take advantage of a
shift in network architecture to enable
a centralised function - presiding as a
controller over a number of small cells - to
control interference management and
coordination across a cluster of small cells.
Higher order modulation (256 QAM) and
MIMO (4x4 MIMO) that allows for multiple
simultaneous channels to connect to and
from a device, will also impact on small cell
designs.
TOWARDS 5G
3 While 4.5 introduces to
small cells a range of
technologies that are
intended to increase
throughputs, and to introduce some
support for low power IoT use cases, it is
with 5G that the real flowering of small cell
capabilities will be seen.
Although there is a lot of debate about
what 5G really means, 5G use cases can
really be defined as any use case that
cannot be met by technologies on the
LTE-A progression path. These include
providing high throughputs up to 10-
20Gbps per user, as well as applications
that require very low latencies - such
as virtual reality, self driving cars and
industrial remote robotics. To meet these
requirements, 5G introduces a range of
capabilities to the network;
Extreme throughput
 Very low latencies
Support for high device density per km2
 Ubiquitous coverage
 The ability to adapt network QoS to
different “vertical” use cases
To achieve these goals, 5G networks will
be designed very differently to current LTE
networks. There will be a new air interface,
or even air interfaces, based on a different
waveform to LTE’s ODFM interface. The
architecture of the network will leverage
Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV)
and Software Defined Networks (SDN)
technologies to construct control
capabilities that can provide “slices” of
service parameters across the network.
This leveraging of virtualisation will spread
to the Radio Access Network, where
baseband capacity will be virtualised
in both a centralised and edge-based
architecture.
Note too that small cells will be critical
to meeting 5G’s use case diversity and
technical requirements. In each instance
the inherent advantages of small cells
- proximity to the end user or device,
ability to enable spectrum re-use, ease of
deployment, self-organising capabilities -
are a great match.
However, the small cell itself starts to
look different in 5G as operators adopt not
just new technologies within the small cell
itself but new architectures within which
to deploy those small cells. Virtualisation
of the RAN will go hand in hand with
adoption of Cloud-RAN architectures,
where network functions are decomposed
and sited where most appropriate - either
in core or edge nodes, or even on the
small cell itself at the extreme edge of
the network. One iteration of this edge-
based intelligence, with functions running
as virtual instances on COTS hardware
platforms, is known as Mobile Edge
Computing. Mobile Edge Computing, by
its very function, is designed to support
very low latency applications, and will
require small cells with the capability to
act as “hosts” for service and application
logic and network functions. This will be
critical for applications that require sub-
ms system latency, as it eliminates the
round trip distance over fibre connections
back to core networks that introduce
the latencies currently present in LTE
networks.
This diversity in the choices of network
architecture available to operators will
require small cell platforms that can
support different implementations of
virtualisation. These are known as virtual/
physical “splits”, with different “splits”
proposals currently existing for MAC/
PHY, L2 and L3 splits, depending on
the use case the operator is trying to
meet. Different splits lend themselves
to different latencies and downlink
and uplink bandwidths. For example a
MAC-PHY split can achieve 2-6ms one
way latency, while a PDC-RLC split will
be more like 30ms. The import of these
splits is where they place features like
mobility management, enhanced SON,
RF coordination, security and policy
enforcement in the network. Supporting
this sort of functions decomposition in the
network will require vendors to support
an interface in the network based on the
current nFAPI interface that the Small Cell
Forum has outlined.
Small cells in 5G networks will also be
required to fit into a 5G Het Net and
Network Slicing that combines licensed
spectrum small and macro cells, as well
as cells harnessing unlicensed spectrum,
and even mmWave access cells to create
various virtual networks catering to
different 5G use cases. That will require
SMALL CELL EVOLUTION
small cells to sit within a new Het Net
management capability in the network
- itself a virtualised function that can be
dynamically and flexibly deployed.
So although there is little doubt that
“5G starts to look a lot like small cells”
as a senior Vodafone network strategy
architect told the Small Cells World
Summit in June, there is also no doubt
that small cells developers will need to be
able to support a variety of different form
factors, virtualised “splits” and deployment
options within the network.
CONCLUSION
Small cells are on a journey through the
network from their current status as
“special project” solutions meeting tightly
defined use cases, through the adoption
of 4.5G features as operators look to
increase throughputs by enhancing
spectral efficiency, harnessing new
spectrum and supporting new MTC
applications. That will be followed by small
cells being absolutely critical to meeting
the vastly diverse demands imposed on
networks by 5G use cases. In this stage of
development, small cells move from being
a niche technology to being absolutely
integral to the fabric of the 5G network.
TMN 5
SMALL CELL EVOLUTION
CARRIER AGGREGATION
One of the principal features of the
technology that comes under the LTE-A
umbrella has been the increasing
expansion of carrier aggregation. Carrier
aggregation increases the available
bandwidth to a cell by enabling cells to
combine an operator’s various spectrum
holdings into one. LTE-A has moved from
two to up to five component carriers,
while 4.5G moves carrier aggregation
beyond five component carriers to a
target of up to 32 component carriers. The
driver for this is the need for operators to
provide increased throughputs to users
for mobile broadband use cases, driven
mostly by the delivery of higher bit rate
video codecs across the network, and the
increasing consumption of mobile video.
Just as an example, three Component
Carrier Aggregation – which enables the
aggregation of 60 MHz of LTE spectrum,
allied with 256 Quadrature Amplitude
Modulation (QAM) and 4x4 Multiple Input
Multiple Output (MIMO) – which doubles
the number of unique data streams being
transmitted to the user’s smartphone
- can support a LTE peak data rate of 1
Gbps over the downlink. The number
of commercial LTE-Advanced (LTE-A)
carrier aggregation launches continues
to increase. Operators are evolving their
LTE-A networks with Category (Cat) 4,
6, 9 and 11 implementations and Cat
16 devices, which support 1 Gbps data
speeds, are expected in the second half
of 2016.
LTE UNLICENSED
Related to carrier aggregation is the ability
to add carriers from within unlicensed
spectrum - known as Licensed Assisted
Access (LAA). LAA enables licensed
spectrum small cells to take advantage
of spectrum opportunities of unlicensed
spectrum in the 5GHz band. WLAN
operating in the 5GHz band nowadays
already supports 80MHz in the field and
4 TMN
160MHz is to follow in Wave 2 deployment
of IEEE 802.11ac. There are also other
frequency bands, such as 3.5 GHz, where
aggregation of more than one carrier on
the same band is possible, in addition to
the bands already widely in use for LTE.
This drive to take advantage of
unlicensed spectrum bands is directly
relevant for small cells designers
because small cells will be necessary
for the efficient operation of LAA. The
tight scheduling required for LAA, which
involves very fast channel selection
decisions to be made so that there is no
interference between WiFi and cellular
access points, will mandate the presence
of small cells very close to the user. As
small cells underpin LAA, it seems very
likely that small cells will be required to
support increasing combinations of carrier
aggregation, in unlicensed and licensed
bands.
NEW IOT STANDARDS (NB-IOT, EC-GSM)
One of the most strategically important
additions to the LTE-A standards has
been the adoption of standards to
enable low power Machine-to-Machine
and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity
on cellular networks. This work was
actually accelerated in response to
the commercialisation of a number of
non-cellular based network technologies
designed to provide connectivity for
lower power devices. These LPWA rivals,
such as SigFox, LoRa, Weightless and
Ingenu (OnRAMp) are proprietary rivals
to the cellular networks. As such 3GPP
contributors accelerated specification
of technology that would allow low
power operation of machine-type
communications within cellular networks.
As operators look to introduce
technology to support a number of IoT
use cases, the role of small cells may not
be immediately obvious, but there are
two main areas where small cells will be
critical enablers. These are where very low
latencies are required, and where support
is required for very high device densities.
Indeed, it’s possible that a class of small
cell may be developed specifically to meet
IoT requirements.
SPECTRAL EFFICIENCY ENHANCEMENTS
Other enhancements within R13 include
increasing interference (eICIC) CoMP etc.
These technologies take advantage of a
shift in network architecture to enable
a centralised function - presiding as a
controller over a number of small cells - to
control interference management and
coordination across a cluster of small cells.
Higher order modulation (256 QAM) and
MIMO (4x4 MIMO) that allows for multiple
simultaneous channels to connect to and
from a device, will also impact on small cell
designs.
TOWARDS 5G
3 While 4.5 introduces to
small cells a range of
technologies that are
intended to increase
throughputs, and to introduce some
support for low power IoT use cases, it is
with 5G that the real flowering of small cell
capabilities will be seen.
Although there is a lot of debate about
what 5G really means, 5G use cases can
really be defined as any use case that
cannot be met by technologies on the
LTE-A progression path. These include
providing high throughputs up to 10-
20Gbps per user, as well as applications
that require very low latencies - such
as virtual reality, self driving cars and
industrial remote robotics. To meet these
requirements, 5G introduces a range of
capabilities to the network;
Extreme throughput
 Very low latencies
Support for high device density per km2
 Ubiquitous coverage
 The ability to adapt network QoS to
different “vertical” use cases
To achieve these goals, 5G networks will
be designed very differently to current LTE
networks. There will be a new air interface,
or even air interfaces, based on a different
waveform to LTE’s ODFM interface. The
architecture of the network will leverage
Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV)
and Software Defined Networks (SDN)
technologies to construct control
capabilities that can provide “slices” of
service parameters across the network.
This leveraging of virtualisation will spread
to the Radio Access Network, where
baseband capacity will be virtualised
in both a centralised and edge-based
architecture.
Note too that small cells will be critical
to meeting 5G’s use case diversity and
technical requirements. In each instance
the inherent advantages of small cells
- proximity to the end user or device,
ability to enable spectrum re-use, ease of
deployment, self-organising capabilities -
are a great match.
However, the small cell itself starts to
look different in 5G as operators adopt not
just new technologies within the small cell
itself but new architectures within which
to deploy those small cells. Virtualisation
of the RAN will go hand in hand with
adoption of Cloud-RAN architectures,
where network functions are decomposed
and sited where most appropriate - either
in core or edge nodes, or even on the
small cell itself at the extreme edge of
the network. One iteration of this edge-
based intelligence, with functions running
as virtual instances on COTS hardware
platforms, is known as Mobile Edge
Computing. Mobile Edge Computing, by
its very function, is designed to support
very low latency applications, and will
require small cells with the capability to
act as “hosts” for service and application
logic and network functions. This will be
critical for applications that require sub-
ms system latency, as it eliminates the
round trip distance over fibre connections
back to core networks that introduce
the latencies currently present in LTE
networks.
This diversity in the choices of network
architecture available to operators will
require small cell platforms that can
support different implementations of
virtualisation. These are known as virtual/
physical “splits”, with different “splits”
proposals currently existing for MAC/
PHY, L2 and L3 splits, depending on
the use case the operator is trying to
meet. Different splits lend themselves
to different latencies and downlink
and uplink bandwidths. For example a
MAC-PHY split can achieve 2-6ms one
way latency, while a PDC-RLC split will
be more like 30ms. The import of these
splits is where they place features like
mobility management, enhanced SON,
RF coordination, security and policy
enforcement in the network. Supporting
this sort of functions decomposition in the
network will require vendors to support
an interface in the network based on the
current nFAPI interface that the Small Cell
Forum has outlined.
Small cells in 5G networks will also be
required to fit into a 5G Het Net and
Network Slicing that combines licensed
spectrum small and macro cells, as well
as cells harnessing unlicensed spectrum,
and even mmWave access cells to create
various virtual networks catering to
different 5G use cases. That will require
SMALL CELL EVOLUTION
small cells to sit within a new Het Net
management capability in the network
- itself a virtualised function that can be
dynamically and flexibly deployed.
So although there is little doubt that
“5G starts to look a lot like small cells”
as a senior Vodafone network strategy
architect told the Small Cells World
Summit in June, there is also no doubt
that small cells developers will need to be
able to support a variety of different form
factors, virtualised “splits” and deployment
options within the network.
CONCLUSION
Small cells are on a journey through the
network from their current status as
“special project” solutions meeting tightly
defined use cases, through the adoption
of 4.5G features as operators look to
increase throughputs by enhancing
spectral efficiency, harnessing new
spectrum and supporting new MTC
applications. That will be followed by small
cells being absolutely critical to meeting
the vastly diverse demands imposed on
networks by 5G use cases. In this stage of
development, small cells move from being
a niche technology to being absolutely
integral to the fabric of the 5G network.
TMN 5
 SMALL CELL EVOLUTION SMALL CELL EVOLUTION

SMALL CELL EVOLUTION

As the range and diversity of use cases that can be enabled by small
cells expands, the underlying enabling technology is also evolving.
We track how use case diversity can be enabled by small cell technology.

4G 4.5G 5G
UPGRADE
DENSE HEALTH TACTILE UBIQUITOUS
HD URBAN MONITORING CONNECTED CARS INTERNET COVERAGE
HD VOICE DENSE URBAN
USE CASES

PROGRESS

VOICE LOW RATE VIDEO M2M LARGE INDOOR FASTER VIDEO INTERNET
OF THINGS INDUSTRIAL ULTRA ULTRA CRITICAL
WEARABLES SMART CITY
AUTOMATION HI DEF VIDEO BROADBAND COMMUNICATIONS

PAST
PRESENT
FUTURE
SMALL CELL TECHNOLOGY ENABLERS

SINGLE FREQUENCY CARRIER AGGREGATION EVOLVED ARCHITECTURE:

CLOUD-RAN, VIRTUAL-RAN
SINGLE CARRIER UNLICENSED BANDS
(LAA/LWA/LTE-U) MOBILE EDGE COMPUTING
BASIC SON
ENHANCED SON VERY WIDE FREQUENCY BAND SUPPORT
CELL CO-ORDINATION VERY WIDE CHANNEL BANDWIDTHS
SMALL CELL CLUSTER MASSIVE MIMO
ARCHITECTURE FOR INDOOR

6 TMN TMN 7
 SMALL CELL EVOLUTION SMALL CELL EVOLUTION

SMALL CELL EVOLUTION

As the range and diversity of use cases that can be enabled by small
cells expands, the underlying enabling technology is also evolving.
We track how use case diversity can be enabled by small cell technology.

4G 4.5G 5G
UPGRADE
DENSE HEALTH TACTILE UBIQUITOUS
HD URBAN MONITORING CONNECTED CARS INTERNET COVERAGE
HD VOICE DENSE URBAN
USE CASES

PROGRESS

VOICE LOW RATE VIDEO M2M LARGE INDOOR FASTER VIDEO INTERNET
OF THINGS INDUSTRIAL ULTRA ULTRA CRITICAL
WEARABLES SMART CITY
AUTOMATION HI DEF VIDEO BROADBAND COMMUNICATIONS

PAST
PRESENT
FUTURE
SMALL CELL TECHNOLOGY ENABLERS

SINGLE FREQUENCY CARRIER AGGREGATION EVOLVED ARCHITECTURE:

CLOUD-RAN, VIRTUAL-RAN
SINGLE CARRIER UNLICENSED BANDS
(LAA/LWA/LTE-U) MOBILE EDGE COMPUTING
BASIC SON
ENHANCED SON VERY WIDE FREQUENCY BAND SUPPORT
CELL CO-ORDINATION VERY WIDE CHANNEL BANDWIDTHS
SMALL CELL CLUSTER MASSIVE MIMO
ARCHITECTURE FOR INDOOR

6 TMN TMN 7