Managing the data growth

BANGALORE, INDIA: Today’s mobile networks continue to face tremendous growth in wireless data traffic driven largely by smartphones thanks to the ever growing enhanced capabilities, user-friendly applications, convenient internet access, frequent synchronization between applications and network servers, and high bandwidth requirements of some applications such as video.

End users expect that their applications will run without degradation of performance while operators face another dimension of network complexity: How do you perform traffic distribution dynamically? Even in 2G systems with a low capacity demand per user, traffic distribution changes are significant over a day or a week. With increasing high data rate traffic demands for both 3G and 4G, variance in wireless traffic distribution will increase exponentially. Applications such as mobile music and video downloads will drive the need for greater capacity.

Intelligence and Adaptive
The fluctuation in traffic distribution often forces wireless operators to overbuild their networks in order to handle peak traffic. However, simply adding more sites or more radios to accommodate peak traffic during the day in a business area adds to inefficiency during the off-peak times. Such networks are static, providing the same capacity per sector at all times of the day, which is an inefficient use of expensive radio capacity. Subscribers are mobile, and unless subscriber movements are taken into account, there is misalignment between capacity and demand.

In order to handle changing traffic demand without overbuilding their 3G/4G networks to satisfy peak capacity demand, operators need intelligent RF technologies that can help adapt the network and balance the load. Better load balancing can delay the need to add more channels, radios, and cell sites to meet increasing demand.

Real Time Capacity Changes
In the mobile network, subscriber movements are not chaotic, but predictable. During the work week, the majority of traffic usually moves in the morning from residential areas to business areas, stays there during the day, and moves back to residential areas for the late afternoon and evening. Typical traffic patterns can easily be captured from the switch, and new radio plans can be generated.

Reconfigurable beam antennas are capable of making real-time adjustments to changing traffic patterns. Reconfigurable beam antennas can dynamically load balance capacity across all sectors of a site cluster by tilting the beam, changing the horizontal azimuth direction of the beam by +/-30° and also changing the width of the beam from 35° to 105°, all at the same time. These three degrees of freedom also change the gain of the antenna, which means that a reconfigurable antenna can change its performance from a 105° antenna with 14dBi of gain to a 65° antenna with 18dBi of gain or to a 35° antenna with 20dBi of gain, which helps increase the signal power in areas with high interference and the signal-to-noise ratio.

Load balancing can be done with the click of a mouse as advanced reconfigurable beam antennas can be managed over a network connection. That means no expensive site visits and the ability to execute different radio plans throughout the day and night. Overloaded sectors can be aided by under-utilized ones for even distribution of traffic across site sectors. The addition of more radios or more sites can be delayed or even prevented, saving on CapEx and reducing the need to acquire more channels, which are difficult to obtain and very expensive.

Another key advantage of reconfigurable beam antennas is the ability to limit interference for optimal performance. For example, 3G and 4G technology standards such as UMTS, WiMAX and LTE are much more sensitive to interference than 2G systems. In data networks, interference has a huge impact not only on network quality but also on the service area, capacity, and data rate. Higher interference actually reduces the service area in 3G and 4G networks, whereas reducing interference will increase the service area. A key objective when planning 3G and 4G networks is to optimize and reduce interference.

Reconfiguring Beams for Better Service
A reconfigurable beam antenna with three degrees of freedom utilizes a multi-column design that generates superior pattern shaping and more enhanced roll-off than a standard 90° antenna. Set to 90° horizontal beamwidth, a reconfigurable beam antenna essentially combines the advantages of both a 65° and 90° antenna into one superior pattern. It has the wide coverage of a 90° antenna with the roll-off of a 65° antenna. The result is less interference, wider coverage area, improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), better network quality, and higher data rates, even when the three-way reconfigurable beam antenna is used statically. When combined with the agility to change the tilt, azimuth direction and beamwidth in a matter of a few minutes with no costs, three-way reconfigurable beam antennas are the key solution for superior, cost efficient data networks.

In practice, load balancing offers the highest capacity efficiency and can reduce CapEx by delaying or preventing the addition of new sites or radios. Reconfigurable antennas also reduce the OpEx by eliminating site visits for optimization, which instead can be executed from the office. With improved performance, better roll-off and better shape, three-way reconfigurable antennas also provide better signal-to-noise ratio even when used statically. This means less interference, wider coverage area, and better network performance.

(The author is Director of Global Product Line Management for BSA products, CommScope)