HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.
Capacity Boost Technology Challenges As wireless communication came into the "Big Data" era, the mobility and connectivity have become consumers' major demands. The forecast shows that capacity requirements will increase by 1,000 times beyond 2020, and therefore all technologies are expected to focus on how to provide higherspeed networks and improve customer experience. As one of the important parts of the wireless network, mobile cellular network antennas also require a number of cutting-edge strategies and technologies to maximize the performance of the wireless network.
Huawei Technology Overview and Values Figure 1 MIMO
Many technologies, such as multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) and dual-beam, have been developed, facilitating capacity enhancing of mobile cellular network antennas.
High Order MIMO Capabilities MIMO uses multiple antennas on both the transmitter and receiver
As shown in figure 1, to enhance the antenna capacity, MIMO enables
ends to improve communications performance. It significantly
the same total transmit power over antennas to achieve an array gain
increases data throughput without additional bandwidth and
that improves the spectral efficiency. In addition, MIMO achieves a
transmit power, which attracts much attention in the LTE industry.
diversity gain that improves the link reliability (reduced fading).
Capacity Boost Technology
HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.
At the very beginning of the cellular network, antennas with only
Since the capacity becomes a major challenge in the mobile
one vertical-polarized dipole column are applied to support 1T1R
broadband (MBB) era, MIMO enables multiple antennas to
(1 transmitting and 1 receiving) when the wireless environment
transmit and receive signals on both the uplink and downlink.
is not complex. With the development of urban informatization,
Generally, at least 2 x 2 MIMO antennas are required for LTE
antennas supporting cross-polarized dipole columns (1T2R) are
and 4 x 4 MIMO antennas are required for LTE-Advanced. Table
developed to deal with the multi-path effect of buildings and
1 lists the network capacities on both the uplink and downlink
vehicles (see figure 2).
supported by MIMO.
Figure 2 Antenna diversity evolution to support MIMO
Table 1 Capacity improvement with MIMO in uplink and downlink Capacity Gain Uplink
4R VS 2R
Cell Average
Cell Edge
30%-65%
50%-170%
Capacity Gain Downlink
1T1R 1 V-pol column
1T2R 1 X-pol column
2T4R or 4T4R 2 X-pol column
Cell Average
Cell Edge
4 x 2 MIMO VS 2 x 2 MIMO
10-15%
10-40%
4 x 4 MIMO VS 2 x 2 MIMO
40-90%
40-100%
Dual-Beam Antenna Solution Generally, the 2G network had been designed for voice services
Figure 2 Antenna diversity evolution to support MIMO
only, while the 3G network, such as UMTS, was first to combine circuit-switched voice services and packed-based data services, and therefore becomes the most developed network all around the world. However, some 3G networks are quite overloaded due to limited spectrum resources of each operator. In this situation, 6-sector solutions can be adopted to meet the capacity expansion requirements (see figure 3).
3-sector cellular network
For a 6-sector cellular network, a well-designed dual-beam antenna can be adopted to enhance the network performance and simplify antenna deployment and installation compared with traditional 33o horizontal beamwidth antenna in the following aspects: Less overlapping areas between sectors enable easy control of the soft handover (SHO) ratio. The patterns are designed to be more isolated to reduce interference between the two sectors. Only one mounting space is required to reduce the labor cost.
Capacity Boost Technology
6-sector cellular network
HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.
Besides, Huawei also adopts radiation pattern optimization designs
As a result of cell splitting, capacity of 6-sector cellular networks
for dual-beam antennas to reduce the horizontal side lobe further
is greatly improved compared with that of 3-sector cellular
more than traditional dual-beam antenna design (see figure 4).
networks, Table 2 describes the comparison.
Figure 4 Comparison of dual-beam antenna designs
Table 2 Comparison of dual-beam antenna designs
Dense Urban
Urban
72%
49% 39% 19%
Traditional dual-beam antenna with high horizontal side lobe
Huawei dual-beam antenna with horizontal side lobe optimization
6-sector (normal 33deg ant.)
6-sector (dual-beam)
Huawei Antenna Portfolio with Capacity Boost Technology
Dual-beam antenna Band (MHz): 2 x 1710-2690 Size (mm): 1500 x 349 x 166
Band (MHz): 2 x 1710-2170/ 2 x 2490-2690
Band (MHz): 1710-2690/1710-2170/ 2490-2690
Beamwidth (o): 33
Length (m): 1.5
Length (m): 1.5
Gain (dBi): 20.5
Small size (W x D): 299 mm x 109 mm
Small size (W x D): 299 mm x 109 mm
MIMO: 2 x 2/2 x 4/4 x 4
MIMO: 2 x 2/2 x 4/4 x 4
Copyright © Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. 2014. All rights reserved. THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATION PURPOSE ONLY, AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE ANY KIND OF WARRANTIES.
