1 Indoor coverage: the biggest challenge faced by operators
For mobile communication networks, the indoor coverage level of signals has always been an important reflection of market competitiveness. In the 2G era, those "signal covered" signs in elevators illustrate this point well. In the 3G and 4G era, indoor coverage has become more important and strategic. To some extent, it can even be said that the quality of indoor coverage determines the success or failure of 4G.
The 4G era is the era of data, and data services mostly occur indoors. Research shows that 80% to 90% of mobile data services occur indoors, especially in public places such as schools, shopping malls, office buildings, and conference centers. Signal coverage in these high-business areas is a source of revenue for operators. If they cannot provide good network coverage in these areas and cannot effectively absorb business and meet demand, their network investments will inevitably be damaged.
The 4G era is also an era of experience, and global operators have begun to attach great importance to user experience. In 2013, at the Huawei User Conference, 43% of the 300 guests from 103 telecom operators and related organizations around the world believed that the most important issue for mobile broadband in the next two years is "user experience." 78.9% of the guests believed that "business experience" is the most important experience for users. To ensure the quality of user experience, indoor coverage in high traffic areas cannot be ignored. Another survey shows that 70% of user complaints also occur indoors. Therefore, in order to ensure that users get a better experience, operators must provide higher quality indoor continuous and deep coverage to prevent the phenomenon of being unable to access the Internet due to signal.
However, the deep coverage of mobile broadband is one of the biggest problems in current network construction.
First, the outside-in coverage method is unsustainable. As one of the traditional indoor coverage methods, the solution of directly "pushing" signals indoors through outdoor base stations is no longer effective in the 4G era. On the one hand, this is because when 4G uses high frequency bands, the signal penetration capability is poor and the loss is serious. If outdoor macro stations are used to solve indoor access problems, the number of macro stations will be greatly increased, which will not only greatly increase the cost of network construction, but also the site location. Difficulty in obtaining. Experiments have shown that if macro base stations want to penetrate more than two meters indoors, the number of macro base stations must increase by more than 60% accordingly. On the other hand, data services based on high-order modulation place higher requirements on signal strength and signal-to-noise ratio, and it is difficult to ensure a good user experience by relying on outdoor macro stations.
Second, traditional indoor coverage solutions are no longer adequate. In order to solve the indoor coverage problem of mobile networks, especially in large public places, the traditional solution is to use a distributed antenna system (DAS). This solution introduces network signals into the room through signal cables, and Assigned to different areas to achieve deep network coverage. However, in addition to various shortcomings such as complex network structure, cumbersome construction, and inability to smoothly upgrade to support LTE multi-antenna technology, this solution is unable to meet the capacity requirements of the 4G network, which has become an insurmountable shortcoming.
In the mobile broadband era, as the types of mobile terminal devices increase, the screen size increases, and the resolution improves, the bandwidth required is also increasing. In 2004, the screen resolution of mobile terminals was only 416×234, and the bandwidth was only less than 200kbps. By 2014, the resolution of mobile terminals had reached the high-definition standard of 1920×1080, and the required bandwidth had also risen to 8Mbps, which greatly promoted mobile bandwidth. Due to the increase in demand, the DAS system is completely unable to meet user capacity needs in densely populated indoor hotspot areas. This is also an important reason for the phenomenon of "being unable to access the Internet despite network coverage."
Third, simply introducing small base stations does not solve the problem. As a form of base station, Small Cell mainly plays an auxiliary role in "blind filling" and "heat filling" in the 2G and 3G eras. It has not yet been used on a large scale in indoor coverage. Surveys show that indoor small cells currently deployed by operators The number of base stations accounts for less than 10% of the total number of base stations. In the 4G era, small base stations are increasingly favored due to their advantages such as flexible deployment and have been considered a technology trend. Some organizations predict that the scale of small base stations around the world will explode this year, and in some areas it will be much higher than traditional macro stations.
However, the current small base station products of different forms are not suitable for simple large-scale indoor deep coverage. Simple introduction will bring about a series of problems including network coordination and base station management. To solve the problem of 4G deep coverage, operators are looking forward to a small base station solution that can achieve large capacity, large coverage, easy management, and short construction time.
2 Unique indoor small base station solution in the MBB era
In the mobile broadband era, it has become a trend for operators to build small base stations to improve hotspot capacity and provide deep indoor coverage. However, traditional However, the construction model is increasingly affected by difficulties such as difficulty in obtaining sites and transmission, and a single revenue model. The entry cost for operators is also getting higher and higher. How can we help operators speed up the deployment of small base stations? At the 2014 Mobile World Congress, Huawei released a solution called "Crowd-sourcing Small Cell" in an attempt to solve this problem.
"Crowdsourcing" is originally a form of production organization derived from the Internet, which is characterized by its ability to maximize the integration of participants' resources and capabilities. Through the "crowdsourcing small base station" method, Huawei creatively introduced a programmable new service network element - Service Anchor (service anchor) into the LampSite solution. The service anchor is based on an open architecture and has an open API that can communicate with enterprises. Business platform docking, thereby attracting public facility managers, large building owners, network integrators, enterprises, etc. to participate in the construction and operation of "small base stations". Operators can not only integrate enterprise applications, but also provide enterprise cloud services with the best experience for enterprises nearby, helping operators integrate the venue-centered resource advantages and application advantages of crowdsourcing partners to form a differentiated application platform. of the mass market into the corporate market.
Based on the LampSite network and business anchors, through the introduction of third-party application developers, it creates conditions for real-scene navigation, indoor maps and positioning, high-precision advertising push, big data support, and Internet of Things applications. . According to Zhou Yuefeng, president of Huawei's Small Cell product line, relying on Huawei's patented technology can achieve indoor navigation accurate to 3 meters, and can develop a variety of applications. Zhou Yuefeng said that Huawei encourages third-party developers to develop applications on business anchors to provide value-added services to venues and operators. Big data analysis and cloud services can also be introduced through this platform. Huawei has cooperated with many cloud service providers in the industry to achieve the integration of enterprise services and small base station solutions.
This business model can be summarized as follows: operators pay rent to site owners, owners pay relevant fees to third-party application developers, and third-party application developers pay information and traffic fees to operators. Form a virtuous cycle. From the operator's perspective, the introduction of third-party applications increases revenue, realizes value transfer, and improves the operator's return on investment.
Zhou Yuefeng believes that in the future, operators’ traditional return on investment (ROI) formula will be rewritten. It will shift from the traditional ratio of net revenue to total costs to the ratio of the sum of the operator's net revenue and value transfers to the sum of total costs and cost transfers.
Value transfer will include enterprise applications, advertising revenue, data analysis and other related services. Cost transfer will include cost sharing with site owners and operational cost reductions brought about by e-commerce and remote management. Zhou Yuefeng believes that in the mobile broadband era, if the problem of deep indoor coverage is not solved, consumer demand will be suppressed and operators' return on investment will be seriously affected.
Huawei LampSite will effectively solve the operator's indoor deep coverage problem and release user needs. At the same time, the "crowdsourcing small base station" solution can further reduce operators' deployment costs and increase revenue, which will inevitably lead to a significant improvement in return on investment. It can be said that Huawei LampSite is an indoor deep coverage solution that can bring about changes in business models.
4 Huawei LampSite: recognized by the market and continues to lead in commercial use
Deployed LampSite in the Evian Royal Hotel in France.
After the release of LampSite, its innovative network architecture and convenient deployment method attracted widespread attention from the global mobile communications industry, and its commercialization process also advanced rapidly.
On December 9, 2013, Huawei officially announced that the LampSite indoor coverage solution was successfully deployed on Vodafone's live network in the UK, kicking off the large-scale commercial use of LampSite.
In this commercial case, Huawei provided indoor 3G coverage for four floors of a Vodafone office building, totaling 12,000 square meters, providing high-speed mobile broadband services to nearly 1,100 employees and visitors, making the area mobile Even during busy office hours, users can enjoy data transmission speeds of no less than 10Mb/s and better voice call quality anytime and anywhere, with zero dropped calls. During the deployment process, the LampSite solution's high scalability, high flexibility, and ease of deployment and management were fully demonstrated.
Shortly thereafter, at the 2014 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, ??Norway's Telenor also announced that it had chosen Huawei's LampSite solution to improve indoor coverage quality and accelerate the LTE commercial process, thus becoming the world's first LTE LampSite commercial network. .
In Oslo, the capital of Norway, Telenor chose to be the first to deploy Huawei's LampSite solution in its six-story headquarters building. It only took 3 hours to complete the entire process of a pRRU from indoor area network planning, site survey to installation and commissioning. While enhancing network coverage, it also brought a new application experience to users. Field test users actually experienced The maximum downlink rate reaches 46Mbps. According to Lou Zhiqiang, Senior Marketing Director of Huawei's Wireless Network Marketing Engineering Department, so far, Huawei has deployed LampSite systems in Thailand, Northern Europe, London, UK, and Paris, France.
The commercial use of LampSite in China is also constantly advancing. Lou Zhiqiang said that Huawei has deployed hundreds of LampSite access points at Zhengzhou Railway Station. Statistics show that downlink data traffic has increased by more than 60% and uplink data traffic has increased by more than 50%, effectively releasing the data that originally relied on macro base stations and DAS systems. Suppressed user needs, user experience is also greatly improved. In addition, many airports across the country, including Chongqing Airport and Capital International Airport, have also begun to deploy LampSite. At the Capital International Airport, Huawei deployed thousands of LampSite access points, which is equivalent to dividing the airport into thousands of small cell areas. Each cell has a very high capacity and can fully meet the application needs of dense crowds, while improving user experience. , operators will also receive due returns. Lou Zhiqiang also said that Huawei LampSite has currently won more than 180 global operator contracts, including more than 120 commercial contracts, and has been highly recognized by global operators.
It should be said that LampSite’s market performance has exceeded people’s expectations. Its characteristics of large capacity, high speed, easy management and short construction time will undoubtedly be of great use when my country enters the 4G era and is expected to become The inevitable choice for operators committed to providing users with the best mobile broadband experience.
Looking to the future, when LampSite becomes popular on a large scale, people may no longer have the bad experience of "being unable to access the Internet even though there is a network signal"!
Author: Liu Chunhui