BANGALORE, INDIA: Networking company Ericsson had recently announced its Antenna-Integrated Radio (AIR), a single tower-mounted unit, at The Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain.

Ulf Ewaldsson, vice president and head, Product Area Radio, Ericsson shares the details over an e-mail interaction. Excerpts:

CIOL: Ericsson has always been an advocate of large cells, macro base stations and 'one standard at a time' concept. So what prompted the company to embrace the 'small cell trend' now?

Ulf Ewaldsson: We at Ericsson are experiencing a tremendous take off in mobile broadband. The demands on the networks are rising because of user expectations on speed and coverage. In order to cope with the future capacity demands, we have a clearly defined small cell strategy.

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Small units in base stations make site acquisition easier and the close proximity of radio units and antennas eliminates feeder loss, which helps in reducing power consumption.

AIR architecture is our first stepping stone towards a heterogeneous network. We are positive that it will help to continue and strengthen our technology leadership and expand our business further into antennas.

AIR is developed in Sweden together with Katheriin-Werke KG who developed antenna part in Germany.

CIOL: What is Ericsson's 'HetNet' strategy?

Ewaldsson: ‘HetNet’, or Heterogeneous network means that different types of base stations (macro, micro, pico, relay) are used together in a complete harmonized way to build coverage and capacity.

This is opposite to ‘homogeneous’ networks, which are built using one type of base stations, often macro.

HetNet is an innovative solution that merges the traditional radio and antenna into an easy-to-deploy self-contained unit.

This launch will be followed by other products of the same type that will enable more advanced radio networks.

CIOL: What is the kind of demand that you see in the market for such micro cell sites?

Ewaldsson: This solution can be deployed in any network, but we see two typical applications for this:
* Introduction of 4G (or 3G, ie. new technology) or/ new frequencies on existing sites
* Cost and energy efficient area coverage.

CIOL: What does 'radio integrated antenna' mean, from both a technology perspective and consumption perspective? What has been the traditional model and why do you think that won't meet the market needs?

Ewaldsson: The Antenna-Integrated Radio (AIR) is a single tower-mounted unit that can replace the antenna/s and radio for one sector. The height and width are the same as for a passive antenna with similar characteristics.

The depth is increased to house the radios’ electronics. Digital Units (DUs) from Ericsson’s RBS 6000 family provide the baseband function and support GSM, WCDMA and LTE.
 
The compact, multi-standard solution ensures highly efficient and smooth introduction of new technologies, both 3G and 4G. We can easily introduce a new standard or a new frequency band by simply adding AIR and swapping the existing antenna.

Since AIR has fewer units and fewer interconnections compared to traditional site solutions, this offers benefits of reduced costs and shorter installation time to mobile operators. Field trials in customer networks proved a reduction of integration and installation time of up to 30 per cent. The field trial also demonstrated that the solution provides reduced power consumption of up to 42 per cent, mainly due to reduced feeder loss and simplified cooling.

CIOL: Does Ericsson have plans wherein the cell site's baseband processing will be done in the cloud similar to that in Alcatel Lucent's lightRadio? When?

Ewaldsson: We are of course studying solutions for future networking constructions. We communicate when the solution becomes more concrete. AIR will be available this year itself.

CIOL: When will this be launched for Indian market? Are you in talks with any India service providers?

Ewaldsson: Anytime after the commercial launch in second half of 2011 based on customers’ interest. We don’t comment about on-going discussions with any customer.

CIOL: What is Ericsson's total investment for the new micro cell site products and its HetNet strategy?

Ewaldsson: We do not disclose investment details.