Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Multi-sectorised sites and Small Cells help O2 UK handle Capacity in Busy Areas

Sunday, 10 October 2021

Multi-sectorised sites and Small Cells help O2 UK handle Capacity in Busy Areas

Radio planning becomes essential in dense urban areas where operators don't only have to serve the highly mobile users but also slow moving pedestrians and users indoors. One some location in London, UK, is O2 UK's highest capacity Nokia site with six-sector low-band LTE in 800 and 900MHz in addition to high-band 4T4R L18/L21, 8T8R L23 as well as standard n78 8T8R 5G.

The site also features numerous high-end Commscope antennas with dual-beam panels that are needed to create six-sector LTE 800 and 900 MHz and then 24 port antennas that carry all the other including 8T8R 2300 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz as well as n78 8T8R.

O2 UK (Virgin Media/O2) Capacity Approaches 2021 - the key strategies deployed in the UK's busiest places:
-Nokia sites featuring six sector low band in addition to higher order MIMO on high bands
-Six Sector 4T4R Huawei high band
-Magnificent small cell and microcell grids pic.twitter.com/wqby01zW6b
— Peter Clarke (@PedroClarke1) July 27, 2021

In addition, O2 has multitude of Nokia Small cells sprinkled across the City of London. While these come in all different shape and configurations. In many locations there are ones with directional antennas while there are others with omni-directional antennas as well.

The small cells are located on their own poles, rather than lamp posts and many of these also feature Wi-Fi access points as additional means to alleviate the capacity crunch. In fact they can also be mounted on-top of phone boxes, shops, side of buildings, etc.

If this is an area of interest and you enjoyed reading the post above, you will no doubt enjoy watching this short video from Peter Clarke who has a great collection of infrastructure from UK and Ireland on his website here. Video as follows: