Bringing greater Quality-of-Service to small cells
Thanks to innovations like small cells, low-profile nodes that live just about anywhere at the edge of a network, and WiFi-offloading strategies, large carriers now have a way to alleviate the pressure of their core networks. Small cells have come a long way in recent years. According to Informa Telecoms and Media, 97.5 percent of mobile operator respondents believe that small cells are key for the future of mobile networks. Examples of small cells include outdoor metro cells deployed on utility poles or building facades, indoor picocells improving the coverage in areas such as public transport hubs, distributed antenna systems used in public venues like campuses and stadiums, and femtocells providing improved indoor mobile network experience in residences.
Initially used to expand the coverage of mobile networks in remote locations, small cells are now being utilized by service providers to alleviate network congestion in busy urban areas caused by ever increasing consumer data demands. Of note, in high-density cities, some studies indicate that 20% of the cell towers handle 80% of the mobile traffic, reducing network performance for the end user.
But, as it is said, with great power comes great responsibility. Throwing more nodes into the network fundamentally changes how operators must ensure their system is running according to plan and consumers are receiving the services for which they’ve paid. A carrier needs visibility into what’s going on with the new cells, which are being deployed in huge numbers at the edge of their networks. Doing this while keeping costs down and performance high will prove a challenge for mobile carriers in coming months and years. There are several ways to achieve this.
Roll-out planning
Operators can get the most out of small cell deployments through the surgical placement of small cells and mastering the interaction between the small cells and the traditional macro network. In addition, small cell site locations must be determined based on actual, localized data traffic demand.
Geo-locating customer experience is also key to reveal data hot spots and customer experience black holes to intelligently drive the process of planning small cells and data offload solutions. Efficient planning leads directly to a significant improvement in customer experience, and return on capital investment.
Remote testing
Small cells cost a fraction of what macro cells cost, providing the opportunity to scatter many more of these systems. But because there can be so many of them, deployed so widely, testing their effectiveness becomes a cost problem. It’s expensive to send out a field technician in a truck to troubleshoot each cell when there’s a problem, so remote testing strategies will not only make things easier, they’ll become a crucial part of small cell engineering. Software-Defined Networking, which shifts the brains of networking to central software systems from hardware, will also become more prominent for carriers as they work to reduce complexity and increase agility.
To dive deeper than the typical “green light means good; red light means bad,” providers must leverage new technologies to quickly and cost effectively solve more complicated service issues and keep customers happy. Since testing is becoming more software-based and allows providers to see much deeper into networks, content-aware testing is the next logical step. Location-based network awareness, which can give service providers a view of their networks down to the individual user, is also becoming more prominent. Carriers can now get a sense of exactly which systems (small or macro cells) are handling the heaviest load to inform automatic re-routing of traffic. Think of it like using a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer.
Ethernet backhaul
Not only is Ethernet scalable to handle the ever-increasing traffic, it can also lower backhaul costs to make small cells more financially viable. Ethernet allows for rapid activation of each small cell, better segmentation of backhaul networks, and the ability to simultaneously manage more cells in a network. Ethernet is ideally suited to transport the native IP services LTE requires, and it inherently supports more flexible traffic management and quality of service capabilities allowing the same backhaul network to be used for a variety of voice, video, and data services. However, this flexibility also increases the need for remote service testing and performance validation.
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