Nortel improves GSM/UMTS coverage
February 8, 2006
Nortel has announced new wireless solutions aimed at helping operators improve GSM, UMTS and HSDPA broadband mobile coverage in buildings, towns and remote areas. In addition, Nortel is introducing solutions designed to improve flexibility for deploying mobile broadband base transceiver stations (BTS) in space-constrained locations.
These solutions are expected to be showcased at 3GSM World Congress 2006, Barcelona, Spain.
"Consumers want the feature-rich services offered by UMTS and HSDPA such as mobile TV, video calling and data communication to be available wherever they are, in particular indoors," says Jean-Luc Jezouin, vice president GSM&UMTS Products, Nortel. "This is why we are announcing new approaches to improved coverage, including providing new in-building base stations and driving the use of 900MHz spectrum." Nortel is introducing new Pico BTS, Micro BTS, Remote Radio Head (RRH) with companion digital BTS, and compact Macro BTS for UMTS and HSDPA networks.
These solutions are designed to allow operators to increase their coverage and traffic to meet subscriber demand for wireless; and only require a software upgrade to support HSUPA in the beginning of 2007, continuing with Nortel's unmatched track-record of software upgradeable base stations.
Nortel's new UMTS Pico BTS 1010 is a lightweight and compact indoor solution created to enable mobile phone users to experience the same service indoors as outdoors. The new Pico BTS, with ATM or IP backhaul, has enough capacity for corporate use and is cost-effective for providing public coverage in moderate traffic areas.
Nortel is also enriching its GSM portfolio with a Pico BTS for indoor applications. Both GSM and UMTS Pico BTS are ideal for reliable and quick in-building coverage enhancement.
Nortel's new UMTS Micro BTS 1120 is a small "zero footprint" BTS which can address the demands of capacity hot spots or filling macro coverage holes.
This Micro BTS can easily be deployed in areas where space for a Macro BTS is more difficult to find, and satisfies a need for higher numbers of base stations to cope with increasing network usage.
The new Nortel RRH (Remote Radio Head) solution provides operators with a means of overcoming site constraints and speeding network deployment, as well as dense indoor coverage such as malls, conference centres, or campuses. This solution, supporting a Common Public Radio Interface architecture, uses optical fibre to connect the RRH with a digital BTS located elsewhere - typically in-building. In order to meet a wide range of deployment and capacity scenarios the digital BTS can be standalone, outdoor or indoor, or housed inside the user space of a legacy BTS. The RRH outdoor solution helps protect existing site investment and ensure the cost-effective deployment of new sites. Nortel estimates a typical 80 per cent saving in site civil works and up to a 50 per cent annual OPEX reduction for each RRH site deployed. The RRH, used with indoor distributed antenna systems, can also provide indoor coverage.
Nortel's new BTS 6000 is the most compact Macro BTS designed for reducing cost of site ownership without compromising radio performance. Using highly integrated technology modules, already successfully deployed in the Nortel GSM/UMTS Combo BTS 18000, the unit accommodates six GSM or three UMTS/HSDPA full power multicarrier radios in a compact indoor or outdoor cabinet.
This offering complements Nortel's first to market GSM/UMTS Combo BTS 18000, which has already proven its ability to speed up UMTS roll-out for operators with legacy GSM networks. Thousands of BTS 18000's have been deployed worldwide.
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