Mindspeed adds support for smart DAS into small cells
Until now, chips for small cells have been unable to support DAS but Mindspeed’s PC333 and PC3032 products have added specific support to deal with the delay characteristics of the long coaxial networks and the specific antenna technology associated with DAS. The PC333 and PC3032 are expressly designed for high-performance public access small cells that serve urban hot spots, city centers and dense in-building systems. They are the only small cell SoCs that support 3GPP Local Area Base Station (LABS) performance and soft handover (SHO) standards, important in areas which may be served by multiple antennas such as DAS.
“Just as people have found with Wi-Fi, small cells and DAS should be seen as complementary technologies rather than competitive,” said Doug Pulley, chief technology officer, wireless, at Mindspeed. “Combining small cells and DAS opens up new opportunities for both technologies and allows carriers to cost-effectively address both coverage and capacity in large buildings. Many retail complexes and offices have DAS systems installed which enable capacity upgrades and a migration path to 4G.”
“The combination of DAS and small cells make an extremely good fit, especially in medium sized buildings where there is existing fiber, coax or CAT5 cabling that distributes the RF signals. In many buildings, there is no reason to drive DAS using traditional three-sector macro base stations, but rather to use small cells to drive DAS, possibly on every floor,” says Aditya Kaul, practice director, mobile networks, at ABI Research.
Traditional DAS solutions channel radio frequencies and provide excellent coverage for large buildings, underground tunnels, shopping malls and areas difficult to penetrate using outdoor macro cells. Today the biggest challenge facing operators is enabling excellent coverage while maintaining the capacity to support ever-increasing amounts of data. This is where small cells can provide a solution.
Small cells are excellent at delivering capacity. Traditionally, small cells have served an area around a base station (perhaps 100 m in a city, up to 2 km in a rural area) — this is perfect for providing capacity in busy train stations or congested commercial intersections. It is, however, less suited to the complex network of corridors in a large building, risking that even with the use of small cells there may be coverage shadows or black spots.
By combining small cells with existing DAS installations, carriers can integrate a technology that generates capacity with a technology to channel this capacity effectively. This integration will solve problems for operator and building owners and extend the scope of small cells, while adding new opportunities and new value to companies currently providing traditional DAS solutions.
Support for smart DAS is now available on the Transcede® PC333 and PC3032 SoCs for HSPA+, and will be supported on the company’s dual-mode (HSPA+ and LTE) T2200 and T3300.
www.mindspeed.com
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