Nokia-Siemens unveils antennas for Liquid Radio

By Ry Crozier on Mar 22, 2011 1:21 PM
Filed under Networking

Base station deconstruction heats up.

Nokia-Siemens Networks has unveiled the first antenna system developed under its Liquid Radio project, revealing the hardware will be ready to deploy this year.

The launch at the CTIA Wireless show in Florida came only a month after rival Alcatel-Lucent made waves at Barcelona with lightRadio, which operated on a similar premise.

The competing architectures broke traditional base station hardware into smaller components that could be located closer to end users, while pushing some of the network control elements up to the 'cloud'.

Alcatel-Lucent plans commercial trials "over the next two years".

That meant Nokia-Siemens Networks would be first to market with its Liquid Radio antenna system. Connected Planet reported last month that the hardware could be in commercial trials as early as June.

Today it said its Flexi Multiradio Antenna System combined "antenna and radio part[s] in one functional enclosure, built with dedicated power amplifiers for each antenna element".

"The active antenna allows beamforming – focusing a particular radio connection and directing it to a specific user – as well as handling of multiple technologies in one unit," the vendor noted.

"Together with other layers of coverage provided by macro, pico and micro site configurations, beamforming allows capacity to be directed exactly where the user requires it, delivering up to 65 percent capacity gain."

And it emphasised Liquid Radio's ability to use "baseband pooling" – an approach it says enables "sharing and redistribution [of baseband] capacity based on user demand".

"This approach centralises the resources needed to undertake processing functions common to every base station in a given area," Nokia-Siemens Networks said.

ITNews was waiting on a response from Nokia-Siemens Networks on when Liquid Radio would be available here.

Alcatel-Lucent Australia said last month it hoped to "get on the priority list" for trial lightRadio kit to be shipped here.

Nokia-Siemens unveils antennas for Liquid Radio

3 comments in this discussion

"@Merari, Senator Conroy and Mike Quigley are huge fans of wireless, in fact they will be delivering wireless broadband to a million Australian premises and want to make damned sure it will deliver ..."

By umbria

Tags

nsn, nokia, siemens, networks, base, station, liquid, radio, lightradio, alcatel, lucent

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Comments: 3

MerariSchroeder Mar 22, 2011 7:31 PM	A good example of progression in wireless. With beam forming you need to think of wireless signals as more like a directional signal, which works to improve spatial spectral efficiency. Spatial spectral efficiency is the next frontier for faster and more reliable wireless communication. Those who believe wireless has little future (such as Quigley and Conroy), have much to learn. Just because they don't want a competing medium, it won't stop research continuing beyond their limited and biased understanding of wireless technology.
singo79 Mar 22, 2011 8:33 PM	@MerariSchroeder - Yawn! Of course you will look for any article which vaguely promotes the benefits of wireless. You are clearly an NBN nay-sayer and you have no impartiality on this topic. Whilst this news is encouraging in the wireless arena and it is good to see things moving forward, everyone knows that wireless will only compliment fixed services for the next several decades. Without fibre you effectively have no wireless in the first place, therefore the wireless vs. fixed services is more like the chicken and the egg. I love wireless, I love the freedom of being connected whilst out and about, however I would be absolutely lost without my fixed service at home. My wireless activity is purely for emails and some internet access away from the home, whereas my main surfing, data intensive, low latency, highly reliable fixed connection is where my main usage lies. The NBN is the here, now and future of broadband in Australia. I look forward to wireless getting better for my wireless connectivity away from the home, but I look more eagerly towards my NBN connection when it arrives.
umbria Mar 22, 2011 10:53 PM	@Merari, Senator Conroy and Mike Quigley are huge fans of wireless, in fact they will be delivering wireless broadband to a million Australian premises and want to make damned sure it will deliver 12 Mbps to each one of them, minimising the intrinsic wireless deficiencies of dropouts, contention, latency and expensive bandwidth. They are working closely with a multitude of established and cutting-edge hardware manufacturers, no doubt including Siemens, Alcatel and also CSIRO with its Ngara trials for extreme low density services. They are wedded to no single wireless technology, instead seeking the optimal solution in each local case, including upgrades to fibre beyond the 93% mandate where customers can identify a funding source to cover the gap. I don't know what you are selling, but if it is some wireless product then you must surely realise that the best way to sell wireless that works is to lay fibre to premises to unburden the airwaves of heavy data usage. Wireless without fibre will always suffer from the same issues it has today, especially as data demand skyrockets. This would leave a lot of people hating wireless, not good for your business. So stop trying to beat the NBN when your best prospect is to join it.