SECURING EXCELLENT MOBILE BROADBAND USER EXPERIENCE, EVERYWHERE Expectations of mobile broadband grow daily, as more people use smartphones and tablets to stay constantly connected via apps and cloud-based services. To deliver an excellent mobile broadband user experience everywhere and address value-added service opportunities, operators need to both improve and densify their existing macro networks and, where necessary, add complementary, integrated small cells – and get them to work together seamlessly in a heterogeneous network. ericsson White paper Uen 284 23-3165 Rev B | September 2014 Heterogeneous Networks
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White Paper: Heterogeneous networks - securing excellent mobile broadband user experience, everywhere
In the Networked Society, mobile broadband traffic and user expectations are growing exponentially. Operators need to provide sufficient radio network capacity and coverage to ensure that they can secure future competitiveness by delivering a consistent, high-quality experience that builds customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. With excellent ‘baseline’ mobile broadband coverage and capacity, particularly indoors, operators can also address value-added opportunities in cloud-, IMS- and packet core-based services, especially for enterprises.
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SECURING EXCELLENT MOBILE BROADBAND USER EXPERIENCE, EVERYWHERE
Expectations of mobile broadband grow daily, as more people use smartphones and
tablets to stay constantly connected via apps and cloud-based services. To deliver an
excellent mobile broadband user experience everywhere and address value-added
service opportunities, operators need to both improve and densify their existing macro
networks and, where necessary, add complementary, integrated small cells – and get
them to work together seamlessly in a heterogeneous network.
ericsson White paperUen 284 23-3165 Rev B | September 2014
Heterogeneous Networks
HETEROGENEOUS NETWORKS • INTRODUCTION 2
IntroductionMobile broadband traffic is growing rapidly, driven by the increasing popularity of connected
devices, predominantly mobile broadband-enabled smartphones and tablets. What is more, user
expectations for mobile broadband are on the rise as people rely more and more on mobile
applications, video content, cloud-based services and staying connected anywhere, anytime.
Consumers have come to expect a consistent, high-quality and seamless mobile broadband
experience wherever they are, including indoors.
Meeting these expectations is a key priority for operators looking to differentiate themselves in
the Networked Society, in which everything that can benefit from a connection will be connected.
To provide the right mobile broadband experience, build customer satisfaction and brand
loyalty, and create a platform for new value-added services, especially for enterprise customers,
networks need sufficient capacity and coverage to deliver high data throughput with very low
latency. One approach is to deploy a heterogeneous network.
A heterogeneous network involves a mix of radio technologies and cell types working together
seamlessly to deliver the additional capacity, coverage and speed needed to secure excellent
user experience.
To prepare networks for surging traffic demand, operators need to improve and densify their
existing mobile broadband networks and add integrated small cells in an optimal way. How, when
and where operators migrate to heterogeneous networks will be dictated by their existing
networks, their mobile broadband strategies and broader market, technical and economic
considerations. One size does not fit all, and flexibility is needed to ensure that subscriber
expectations are met in the most cost-effective, spectrum-efficient and future-proof way.
HETEROGENEOUS NETWORKS • THE MOBILE BROADBAND CHALLENGE 3
The mobile broadband challengeWith the tremendous success of mobile broadband and smartphones, mobile operators and
vendors need to keep up with the increasing pace of change among:
> device and application providers, who continually find innovative ways to benefit from mobile
broadband connectivity
> consumers, who expect seamless connectivity with ever-increasing data rates
> competing operators, who continually improve network performance, which is a key
differentiator as services go over-the-top.
TRAFFIC GROWTH
Mobile broadband traffic is growing like never before, thanks to the increasing popularity of
data-hungry devices and rising data consumption per user. As the June 2014 Ericsson Mobility
Report [1] shows, mobile data traffic is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of around
45 percent between 2013 and 2019, resulting in a tenfold increase in mobile data volumes. The
rising number of smartphone subscriptions is the main driver of this mobile data traffic growth,
with users consuming more data per subscription, driven mainly by video.
The mobile broadband traffic challenge is most pronounced in densely populated cities, where
subscriber penetration is already high.
APPLICATION COVERAGE AND EXPECTED DATA RATES
With the high pace of innovation in the device and application industry, consumer expectations
of data rates and coverage continue to grow. Today’s mobile broadband users expect widespread
coverage with download speeds of at least 1Mbps, and typically 10Mbps.
URBANIZATION
By 2018, more than 30 percent of the world’s population is expected to live in metro and urban
areas. Although these areas represent less than 1 percent of the planet’s land area, they will
generate 60 percent of mobile traffic by 2018.
Mobile users everywhere are increasingly aware of the connection speed, data rate, coverage
and availability of their mobile broadband services. To ensure that subscribers remain satisfied,
operators need to deliver a consistent, high-quality and seamless mobile broadband experience
that meets or exceeds rising user expectations. Achieving subscriber satisfaction will require
improved data performance overall and at cell edges, especially indoors, where about 70 percent
of today’s data traffic is generated.
HETEROGENEOUS NETWORKS • MAKING THE RIGHT HETEROGENEOUS NETWORK CHOICES 4
Making the right heterogeneous network choices Mobile broadband is all about providing a seamless experience for the growing number of
smartphone, tablet and laptop users – whether on the move, in the office or at home. To meet
rising user demands and intensifying competition, operators need to improve network performance
by expanding capacity and coverage in a smooth, cost-effective way.
This will require a combination of improving and densifying the macro cellular layer for general
coverage and capacity, and adding integrated small cells in strategic locations.
Improving existing macro cell sites
involves deploying more spectrum,
advanced antennas, higher-order diversity
on the receiver or transmitter (or both), and
greater baseband processing capacity
within and between nodes. Continued
evolution of WCDMA/HSPA and LTE
technology will improve macro network
efficiency through specialized features,
such as higher-order modulation, higher
sectorization, multi-carrier and multi-
antenna solutions, as well as spectrum
refarming using hybrid radio solutions.
Increasing capacity and data rates in this
way minimizes the need for new sites.
Densifying the macro network involves the
targeted addition of strategically located
(smaller) macro cells to improve capacity and data rates, particularly when it is no longer feasible
to continue improving the macro network alone to meet demand. This approach keeps the total
number of sites relatively low, while network performance becomes less sensitive to traffic
location.
Adding small cells involves complementing macro cells with micro cells, pico cells and integrated
Wi-Fi, as well as dedicated indoor solutions. This delivers high per-user capacity and rate coverage
in high-traffic areas, with the potential to improve performance in the macro network by offloading
traffic generated in hotspots. Overall network performance will depend on the degree of integration
and coordination that can be achieved throughout the heterogeneous network.
How and when to use each approach depends on the existing networks (macro site density),
the availability of backhaul (whether owned or leased), the availability of spectrum (whether
licensed or unlicensed), estimated traffic volumes, and required data rates, as well as the technical
and economic feasibility of each individual approach.
The network as a whole needs different solutions to meet varying capacity demand.
In rural, less populated areas, the challenge is to provide cost-efficient coverage for mobile
broadband services, while maintaining good consumer experience. Improving the macro layer
is by far the most cost-efficient way to address this challenge.
In suburban and low-rise urban areas, operators need to improve and densify the macro
network, especially to meet increasing demand for higher data rates. The large coverage area of