Indoor 5G coverage applications are the main battlefield of 5G services. It is predicted that about 85% of service traffic in the 5G era will occur in indoor scenarios. The quality of indoor coverage is directly related to the experience of 5G indoor applications.
Today we will talk about indoor coverage in the 5G era (5G Antenna). Construction. Let’s start with the simplest one, such as covering simple residential buildings.
A base station is specially deployed in the house. May I? This method is certainly possible, but it is too wasteful of money!
Is there a way to save money?
Can an outdoor base station be used to cover this house? This way is more cost-effective and can also meet the needs of users.
In this way, outdoor base stations cover indoors. As the name suggests, outdoor base stations are used to provide indoor coverage. In the initial stage of 5G network construction, this solution was favored by operators due to the fast network construction and low investment cost.
For indoor coverage of high-rise buildings, can this method be used directly?
The passive antenna of the 4G macro station has only one beam, the horizontal lobe is very wide, and the vertical lobe is relatively narrow. The downtilt angle is used to meet the horizontal coverage, resulting in the poor signal of high-rise buildings and unable to meet the requirements of high-rise coverage.
5G introduces Massive MIMO technology, and macro stations have beamforming capabilities. Since operators generally use horizontal 7/8 beam configurations, although the horizontal coverage is optimal, the vertical coverage is limited, which still cannot meet the coverage requirements of high-rise buildings. In addition, the complex wall structure of high-rise buildings will weaken outdoor base station signals. In the 5G era, there are higher requirements for capacity, delay, and reliability. Outdoor base station coverage indoor solutions are incapable of meeting high-rise buildings.
Is the outdoor base station completely powerless for high-rise buildings?
Simple outdoor base station coverage is of course not enough.
In addition, do we have other coverage methods for large buildings?
A witty friend might think that since the signal is weakened by the wall, then we will introduce the signal, and the problem will not be solved.
How to bring it here? We know that wireless signals are sent and received by antennas. If we deploy antennas indoors, won’t the signals come in?
This is actually the idea of DAS (Distributed Antenna System). Passive devices such as couplers, power splitters, combiners, and other passive components are used to split and transmit RRU radio frequency signals, and the signals are distributed as evenly as possible to each antenna. So as to achieve uniform distribution coverage of indoor signals.
In fact, the DAS method has been widely used in 2G/3G, and the maturity of the technology is also high. However, in the 5G era, facing the 5G large-capacity demand, it seems a little stretched. Some people may disagree, thinking that increasing capacity is not just adding more antennas. Originally, one antenna was not enough, but now adding another antenna will solve the problem.
The actual construction cost of this kind of transformation is relatively high and difficult.
Is there a way to increase the network capacity without or with few changes to the existing DAS system?
The multi-channel joint transceiver solution utilizes different channels of one or more RRUs to combine multiple transceiver nodes of the DAS distributed system to build a more dimensional multi-antenna transceiver system to achieve more upstream/downstream MIMO transmission and improve the system capacity.
The previous antennas were used to independently send and receive data to users. Now, several antennas are combined to send and receive data to users.
This multi-channel joint transceiver solution does not need to change the traditional DAS system network architecture, avoids the problems of large workload, high cost, and difficult site resource coordination for DAS system transformation.
The performance of the traditional DAS network can be quickly achieved through the deployment of software versions. Improved and compatible with existing 5G terminals, there are no restrictions on terminals.
With the support of the multi-channel joint transceiver solution for the DAS system, can it perfectly solve all 5G indoor coverage problems?
In fact, there is still a difficulty. The passive components of the 4G DAS network can only support the sub-3G frequency band, and they are helpless in the face of 5G high-frequency networks (sub-6G, etc.).
Is there any other way to improve indoor 5G coverage?
The deployment of base stations for small buildings is obviously not high in input and output, but in some large-scale scenarios such as transportation hubs, stadiums, skyscrapers, etc., the balance of input and output has tilted. We can recall the previous ideas and consider deploying indoor base stations specifically for these large-scale scenarios. This is the active digital room sub-solution.
The active digital room adopts a three-level architecture of baseband unit (BBU), convergence unit (PBridge), and radiofrequency unit (Pico RRU). The difference from the outdoor macro station is that there are more aggregation units, and the RRU becomes a Pico RRU.
The Pico RRU is smaller in size, more convenient to deploy, large in capacity, and flexible in configuration. Therefore, the active room distribution solution has become the first choice for high-value areas with large capacity and excellent experience.
Active digital room distribution solutions have been widely used in the 4G era. In order to make a big difference in the 5G era, the active digital room distribution solutions face three major problems that need to be resolved.
Reduce costs
Cost is one of the important factors considered for indoor coverage construction. If the cost of an indoor coverage solution is too high, it will discourage operators.
Pico RRU is the main cost component of the active digital room. The more Pico RRU frequency bands and channels, the higher the cost. Therefore, the key to cost reduction is to reduce the cost of Pico RRU in the network.
Considering the large differences in the capacity requirements of different indoor coverage scenarios, resulting in large differences in the frequency band and channel requirements of Pico RRU, if a single product configuration is adopted, it is obviously not able to meet the needs of indoor coverage, so you can subdivide the scene and configure accordingly Products and solutions to achieve the most precise investment.
In addition to this, another idea is to build and share together. Multiple operators share the room distribution system, which can not only share the cost of 5G network construction, and reduce resource waste, but also increase spectrum bandwidth and improve user experience.
Efficient operation and maintenance
Due to the Pico RRU’s high integration, high transmit power, and a large number of features, the active digital room sub-solution is facing the test of operation and maintenance and equipment energy consumption management. In the 5G era, active digital room division solves this problem through visual management and intelligent energy saving.
Visual management is to directly display Pico RRU deployment location information by floor by generating a building model, and at the same time generate performance data with Pico RRU units as the granularity, and give targeted network optimization suggestions.
Intelligent energy saving is to use AI and big data technology to maximize the energy-saving effect and achieve the best balance of energy consumption and performance on the basis of ensuring network KPIs.
Expand new business
Operators hope that the active digital room subsystem can tap the network potential, open up network capabilities, and expand new services. What are the countermeasures for this active digital room subsystem? This requires combining MEC’s mobile edge computing capabilities to further optimize the business experience, enable value-added services, open network capabilities, and provide customized services.
Solving these three problems, the active digital room division solution is even more powerful, and it will shine in the 5G era.
Finally, we review that the existing indoor coverage schemes are mainly divided into three types: outdoor base stations cover indoor, traditional passive DAS, and active digital rooms.
For a 5G network, these three solutions have their own limitations and shortcomings. Based on traditional construction methods, C&T RF Antennas Inc optimizes and innovates, breaks through the original methods one by one, and brings more efficient, economical, and high-quality indoor coverage. 5G antennas help make the 5G indoor application experience better.
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