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RELEASE Four
scf.io/
DOCUMENT
074.04.01
Alternative enterprise
small cell extension solutions
December 2013
www.scf.io/
www.smallcellforum.org
RELEASE Four
Small Cell Forum supports the wide-scale deployment of small cells. Its mission
is to accelerate small cell adoption to change the shape of mobile networks and
maximise the potential of mobile services.
Small cells is an umbrella term for operator-controlled, low-powered radio access nodes,
including those that operate in licensed spectrum and unlicensed carrier-grade Wi-Fi. Small
cells typically have a range from 10 metres to several hundred metres. These contrast with
a typical mobile macrocell that might have a range of up to several tens of kilometres. The
term small cells covers residential femtocells, picocells, microcells and metrocells.
Small Cell Forum is a not-for-prot, international organisation. Its membership is open
to any legally established corporation, individual rm, partnership, academic institution,
governmental body or international organisation supporting the promotion and worldwide
deployment of small cell technologies. At the time of writing, Small Cell Forum has around
150 members, including 68 operators representing more than 3 billion mobile subscribers
46 per cent of the global total as well as telecoms hardware and software vendors,
content providers and innovative start-ups.
Small Cell Forum is technology-agnostic and independent. It is not a standards-setting
body, but works with standards organisations and regulators worldwide to provide an
aggregated view of the small cell market.
This document forms part of Small Cell Forums Release Four: Urban. Urban small cells
are at an earlier stage in their commercial development than their more mature residential
and enterprise counterparts. As such, the present Release focuses on establishing the need,
evaluating the business case and identifying key barriers to commercial deployment. It
offers shared deployment learnings from leading operators and vendors, further renement
of our technical works and reporting progress on our activities to strengthen the ecosystem
through improved multivendor interoperability.
Release Four also contains works clarifying market needs and addressing barriers to
deployment of residential, enterprise and rural small cells.
Small Cell Forum Release website can be found here: www.scf.io and an overview of all the
material in Release Four: Urban can be found here: www.scf.io/doc/104
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Scope
In the development of the Small Cell Forums Release Two: Enterprise, the question of
what is an enterprise? has had plenty of airtime. As with most definitions, there are
multiple answers to the question, depending on the viewpoint of the questioner.
This document describes small cell technologies that can be deployed in enterprises in
addition to or alongside the traditional small cell solutions such as picocells,
metrocells, nanocells, femtocells, etc.
Not all such applications of this document are fully developed at this version. In
common with the Small Cell Forum itself, this document is driven by member
contributions and as such, any new application space for this document is welcomed
for future editions.
Executive summary
This document describes solutions that expand the ability of small cells to help mobile
operators address in a cost effective way the coverage and capacity needs of their
subscribers in a variety of indoor configurations.
The two architectures described are:
Smart signal booster that provides rich indoor coverage for enterprises that
dont have access to usable backhaul (suburban areas very often have
inconsistent fiber-optic coverage). The existing macro-network is used as
signal source in this small cell approach.
The small cell enterprise RAN that leverages conventional RNC/NodeB
functional decomposition enabling management of many indoor small cells as
one system and looks to the core as a single Iuh connection.
Contents
1.
2.
2.1
2.2
3.
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.3.1
3.3.2
3.3.3
4.
Figures
Figure 2-1
Figure 2-2
Figure 3-1
Figure 3-2
Figure 3-3
Figure 3-4
Figure 3-5
Figure 2-1
E-SCC architecture
2.1
Architecture
The architecture, shown in the Figure 2-2 below, is built upon a local, enterprisebased, small cell radio controller to address the main requirements of deploying a
scalable small cell network inside an enterprise.
Figure 2-2
Small cells
Enterprise small cell radio controller
Each small cell acts as a single sector (e)NB and can support 3G and/or LTE air
interfaces. Small cells are connected to the enterprise small cell radio controller
through an Ethernet LAN. The radio controller acts as a self-organizing network (SON)
manager, an optional cellular-enterprise integration gateway, and in the case of a 3G
deployment as a radio network controller (RNC). It aggregates all the small cells and
appears as a single multi-sector (e)NB to the core network. The radio controller
connects to the 3G core network using an Iuh interface. and to the LTE EPC using S1.
It can also connect to neighboring macro eNBs using X2 and to macro RNCs using Iur.
The system relies on enterprise LAN to provide connectivity between the radio
controller and the small cell - e.g., using the options described in [SCF068] [4] small
cells and radio controller form a self-managed IP network, and all user and signaling
traffic between them is carried inside an IPSec tunnel.
As with the E-SCC approach described in [3], this architecture enables all UE sessions
to be anchored on premise, in this alternative at the enterprise radio controller. As a
result, a UEs session does not have to be relocated when it moves within the small
cell network. The centralized radio controller also manages interference between small
cells. The radio controller architecture can simultaneously send voice traffic through
multiple small cells, rapidly select the best serving cell for HSDPA, and combine
signals on the uplink. All these methods for managing inter-cell interference have
been proven in macro-cellular network, and can be further optimized for operation
inside buildings.
As with the E-SCC approach described in [3], this architecture supports soft handover
between 3G small cells, allowing all small cells in the deployment to operate on the
same channel. Soft handover improves coverage, eliminates interference between
small cells, and ensures that users can move from one small cell to another without
dropping calls. However, in contrast to the architecture presented in [3], the radio
controller acts as a radio network controller for small cells connected to it and uses
3GPP standards-based mechanisms for handovers. This can be contrasted with the
Iurh based soft handover as described in [3] that requires the small cell acting as
source HNB to anchor session state and forward traffic to the small cell acting as
target HNB while UEs are in soft handover.
Note, enterprise femtocell deployment guidelines described in [SCF032] [5] has
investigated the usefulness of soft handover from an RF perspective and concluded
that the benefits of SHO will depend on office type.
In addition to acting as the RNC, the radio controller also implements a SON manager.
It is responsible for auto configuring, optimizing and managing the enterprise small
cells. When a new enterprise small cell is added to the network, it discovers the radio
controller. From that point on, the radio controller takes responsibility for providing
the small cell with its radio configuration. If an enterprise small cell goes out of
service, the controller can adjust the configuration of neighboring nodes to fill the
coverage hole. All the complexity of configuring, managing and optimizing scores of
small cells stays hidden from the mobile operators core network.
In its role as a cellular-enterprise integration gateway, the radio controller can
optionally include enterprise small cell gateway functionality, including interfacing to
an enterprise AAA server to authorize enterprise users and, based on policies, locally
switch traffic from enterprise users to the Intranet. Refer to the Small Cell Forums
Enterprise small cell networks architectures [3] for a definition of an enterprise small
cell gateway and its role in the support of local IP access (LIPA) and selective IP traffic
offload (SIPTO).
2.2
Benefits
In addition to the benefits delivered by an ESCC, and optionally an ESCG, which are
presented in [3], this architecture provides the following benefits:
1.
2.
3.
SSBs implement features to protect the (e)Node B uplink (and hence the
uplink capacity of the cell) from noise introduced by the booster.
This is typically created when the noise floor at the uplink receiver of the booster is
amplified towards the base station. The base station can be protected using a number
of different schemes, including:
Turning off the uplink transmission if no mobile devices are active (so
zero noise at the base station receiver generated in this case).
By adaptively controlling the gain of the SSB to ensure that the noise
floor of the Node B is not affected by the transmissions from the SSB.
The classic signal booster problem is that the noise floor at the
uplink receiver of the booster is amplified towards the base station,
in addition to the uplink signal form the active mobile(s).
This noise component is diminished by the path-loss between the
booster uplink transmitter and the (e)Node B uplink receiver. If the
noise component is sufficiently small compared to the path-loss,
then it is insignificant however, if the noise component is too large
compared to the path-loss then it will contribute to the noise floor at
the (e)Node B receiver and affect uplink performance.
An SSB knows (a) the path-loss to the serving (and nearest) cell and
(b) the likely footprint of the cell, based on pilot transmit power. It
can use this knowledge to control the ratio of uplink noise it
introduces to the pathloss. This can be descried as a localized SON
as the self-configuration is done in the device itself.
An SSB should typically be configured such that at least 100 SSBs
can be deployed in a macro cell sector without affecting the uplink
noise floor of the macro cell and at least 5 SSBs can be deployed in
a very small cell (defined as pilot power <= 13 dBm) without
affecting the uplink noise floor.
SSBs self-organise:
3.1
SSB will automatically sense the environment and adapt its operating
parameters to adjust to the small cell network, the macro network as
5
well as other SSBs that are used to extend coverage in the same area.
Regulatory context
Some regulatory authorities recognise the concept of the smart signal booster and
allow customer self-installation within the terms of mobile network operators licenses:
Ofcom in the UK use the term smart repeater to describe such devices, that operate
under the same regulatory umbrella as femtocells [6].
FCC in the USA use the term provider specific consumer booster; within this context,
the FCC regulations [7] allow devices implementing smart signal booster advanced
features greater flexibility of deployment and higher performance.
ACMA in the Australia use the term smart repeater to describe such devices; they
operate under the control of the network operators, but can be self-installed by endusers [8].
3.2
SSB architecture
Donor
Ant
Ant
SSB
Implements 3GPP TS25.106
Plus additional smart features
Legend
1 Donor UMTS/LTE signal
2 Donor Ant SSB Link
3 Relayed UMTS/LTE signal
Donor Ant Antenna system that communicates with the cell
SSB Smart signal booster service unit that relays the signal from/to the cell
Figure 3-1
SSB architecture
Donor ant: this is the antenna that picks up the donor signal from the small
cell.
I.e. setting specific pre-agreed values in SIB parameters on the mobile network broadcast channel to
control the SSBs.
5
SSBs introduce a time-delay, measured in microseconds, between the incoming donor signal and the
boosted signal re-transmitted by the SSB. Therefore SSBs incorporate echo-canceller technology to prevent
problems related to feedback loops. This echo-canceller technology is the enabler to detect other SSBs in
the vicinity by their effect (e.g. where there is a 10 micro-second delay, and an echo is seen at 10 microseconds and 20 microseconds then there are 2 SSBs in the path of the signal and the SSBs can configure
themselves accordingly).
Report title: Alternative enterprise small cell solutions
Issue date: 03 December 2013
Version: 074.04.01
SSB: This is the part of the smart signal booster that provides the additional
coverage; in repeater parlance this would be the service antenna.
The connection between the donor antenna and SSB can be via a variety of media,
wireless or wired.
Regardless of how the connection is achieved, the amount of boost that the system
can add to the signal received at the donor antenna to the signal relayed by the SSB
(and thus the SSBs footprint) is directly related to the RF isolation between the donor
antenna and SSB. The measuring of this isolation and therefore the sizing of the SSB
footprint must be fully automatic and require no user input, other than repositioning
the donor ant and/or SSB.
3.3
Backhaul can be a limiting factor, preventing small cell deployment in some cases, for
instance:
In the same way that mobile-only households exist, without a fixed phone line or
fixed broadband connection, in certain countries and within certain demographics
mobile-only enterprises are a reality. If such a (typically small) enterprise is located
in a building with poor indoor coverage their only option to receive mobile service of
sufficient quality, may be to deploy an SSB.
Another factor in some places can be poor quality rural broadband. In rural areas, in
both well-developed and less developed countries, fixed broadband connections can be
relatively slow (0.5 1.0 Mbps in the downlink and 128 kBps or even less in the
uplink). At these sorts of rates, running a small cell over the broadband link may be
challenging, but if a reasonable rural 3G or 4G macro cell signal is available, an SSB
can solve an indoor coverage issue for the rural enterprise.
Finally some enterprises may have IT policies that prevent connection of a small cell to
the corporate LAN (e.g. a satellite office of a corporation whose LAN is connected
directly via a permanent VPN link to another country, where the Internet gateway
lives). In that case an SSB can provide indoor coverage where a conventional small
cell cannot be deployed.
3.3.2
Small cells provide coverage, capacity and additional value-added services in areas
that require it. Some scenarios are more capacity driven and some are more
coverage driven. In scenarios where coverage is the driving factor there is a
cost/complexity trade-off where it can be quicker and easier to extend the coverage of
an existing small cell with a SSB rather than installing more small cells.
By extending the coverage of an existing small cell, services, such as, for example
PBX integration, are preserved.
Small cell
SSB
Figure 3-2
Ant
The following sections list some common small cell deployment scenarios with
coverage challenges that can potentially be aided with a smart signal booster.
Warehouses
Warehouses are characterised as being large buildings with relatively few people in
them (low capacity requirement); they are classic locations that suffer mobile network
coverage problems, as they are typically metal-skinned.
A typical warehouse design is to have an office area at the front of the building, a
large area behind it and loading docks at the back or on the side.
SSB
Figure 3-3
Ant
A small cell would typically be installed in the office area at the front of the
warehouse, but its coverage might not reach all the way to the back of the
warehouse; an SSB could be used to extend the coverage to the back of the
warehouse.
Small and medium-sized factories and industrial units
Construction and layout of small and medium industrial units used for manufacturing
and other industries such as vehicle maintenance are very similar to warehouses
described above and suffer similar coverage problems that can be solved by extending
a small cells coverage using SSBs. (Capacity is generally not an issue as the numbers
of people are small, relative to the area covered.)
Basement areas
Basement areas of many industrial and commercial buildings are not occupied, they
do typically contain ancillary equipment such as central heating boilers, patch panels
for building wiring, gas, electricity and water meters, etc..
The requirements in such areas for mobile network coverage are twofold:
Because the bandwidth requirements are so small, it may often be easier to extend
the small cell coverage from the ground floor into the basement using a smart signal
booster.
Ant
SSB
Figure 3-4
Typical causes of the additional delay to the signal propagation between serving cell and the mobile are
the transmission link between ant and SSB units, and delays due to signal processing, such as echocancellation.
7
This is easiest done based on knowledge in the SSB about particular broadcast parameters that indicate a
femtocell, e.g. pilot TX power below a certain threshold, or primary scrambling codes within a certain range
or cell IDs within a certain range.
Report title: Alternative enterprise small cell solutions
Issue date: 03 December 2013
Version: 074.04.01
10
SSB
2000 ft (185 m )
Small Enterprise
deployment characteristic
~5 to 10 permanent
employees + transient
employee and courier traffic
2000 ft (185 m )
Small Enterprise
deployment characteristic
~5 to 10 permanent
employees + transient
employee and courier traffic
SSB
Location
Figure 3-5
11
3.3.3
Deployment Scenario
Suitable available
Internet connection
available
No suitable available
Internet connection
available
Enterprise small cell
supports effective cell
radius >2km
Enterprise small cell
does not support
effective cell radius
>2km
Legend:
Enterprise Profile
0-10 active
10-25 active
users in area
users in area
>25 active
users in area
12
13
References
1
14