Non-ideal backhaul for Small Cells

Recently I came across this Linkedin discussion on What is "non-ideal backhaul" so I thought it may be worth adding it to the blog. The simplest of explanation can be seen from the picture above that is extracted from 3GPP TR 36.932.

An ideal backhaul is defined as latency less than 2.5 microseconds and a throughput of upto 10Gbps. All other types of backhaul is non-ideal.

Another way of putting this is: If you look at the Release 12 study and technical report on Small Cell Enhancements, it is regarded as a backhaul that cannot carry a RRH to eNodeB link, which in turn has been interpreted as not meeting CPRI round trip and bandwidth requirements (via Kit Kilgour)

If you know anything additional, please feel free to add it in comments.

In-building Wireless Solutions Webinar

Last month, David Chambers from ThinkSmallCell held a webinar exploring available In-building solutions and comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each solution, also looking at the approach taken by different vendors. Worth a look. The presentation and Youtube video are both embedded below.

Small Cells Equipment Magic Quadrant, by Gartner

This post has been removed on request by Gartner.

Small Cells: Interoperability and Plugfests for Multi-vendor HetNet's

Our recent Small Cells SIG in Cambridge Wireless was another full house with the topic under discussion being Small Cells Deployment: Whats the hold-up. One of the areas being tackled by Small Cell Forum is to have plugfests to identify the issues that are causing hold ups and fix them. There were two interesting presentations with interesting take on this topic. The first was by Neeraj Gupta and Kreso Bilan of NEC who are both very active in this interoperability and plugfests. Their presentation which doesnt need any explanation is embedded below:

Multi Vendor HetNet: Interoperability, Plugfests from Zahid Ghadialy

The other presentation was by Nick Johnson of IP.Access who listed the problems and the source of the problems that gave rise to the interoperability issues and also gave a quick summary of what the plugfests achieved (see picture above). His slides are embedded below:

Small Cell Interoperability in the RAN from Zahid Ghadialy

The conclusion of the event was that there are no issues or reasons for these hold-ups. The operators have been over cautious and preferred to play a waiting game but are now getting confidence and starting to deploy small cells. Some minor issues in interoperability revolves around X2 interface and SON but they should get ironed out in the couple plugfests planned for next year (see NEC slides).