TECHNICAL BRIEF

THE LTE CAPACITY SHORTFALL: WHY SMALL CELL BACKHAUL

IS THE ANSWER

With exploding demand for mobile broadband services and emergence of new high-capacity mobile
devices and data-intensive applications, the world’s most advanced mobile networks will increasingly
struggle to deliver a high-quality consumer experience. As networks continuously evolve to meet
capacity and coverage demands with the latest technological capabilities (i.e., 3.5G, 4G), network costs
are exploding, network upgrade costs are passed on to the consumer via data caps and operators
struggle to maintain profitable businesses.

Although Long Term Evolution (LTE) promises two to three times capacity improvement over current
3G networks, this will be insufficient to address future expected capacity demands. Mobile data traffic
is forecast to double every year, growing 32 times by 20141.

Acquiring more LTE spectrum would help operators provide more capacity, but additional spectrum is
costly and in most cases not available. The latest enhancement to LTE, LTE-Advanced, will increase
spectral efficiency and new traffic management approaches such as caching and mobile offloading
(e.g., mobile gateways, femto-cells, Wi-Fi, etc) also offer promise of higher network capacities.
However, due to the vast amount of mobile data demand these solutions will be insufficient to address
the capacity shortfall. A new approach is required.

EMERGENCE OF SMALL CELLS

To meet these capacity challenges and address ever-present coverage
issues, new small cell network architectures are emerging based on a new
generation of low-power, small-cell (micro/pico/femto) mobile base
stations.

ABI Research estimates 4 million of these small base stations will be

shipped per year by 2015. Small cells can be deployed into an existing
network on lampposts, utility poles and building walls, to augment the
macro-cell network, providing capacity as well as coverage.

Because there are now many more sites in hard-to-reach locations, small
cells create a host of new challenges for the backhaul network. As a result,
backhaul will be the central challenge for enabling widespread adoption of
small cells.

SMALL CELL BACKHAUL: WIRED OR WIRELESS

When considering backhaul options, operators must first ponder the choice between wireline and
wireless backhaul. As there is generally no “one-size-fits-all” solution, we are likely to see a mix of
backhaul technologies deployed to meet the small cell backhaul challenge.

However, because of challenging utility pole and lamppost deployments, operators cannot rely on fixed
line options (such as fiber, cable, copper/DSL) being ubiquitously available and will instead
increasingly rely on wireless solutions for small cell backhaul.

1
Cisco VNI: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast 2010.

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TECHNICAL BRIEF

SMALL CELL BACKHAUL

SMALL CELL BACKHAUL: CHALLENGES

Operators and equipment vendors should consider the following key factors when selecting and
designing wireless backhaul solutions for small cells:

• Lower cost solutions needed. Smaller cells mean many more cell sites and thus more backhaul
links. To meet overall cost objectives, dramatically lower cost backhaul solutions are required.
Macro-cell backhaul CAPEX is typically on the order 50 percent of total base station CAPEX. A
lower ratio would be desired to ensure a cost-effective, acceptable solution.
• Space-optimized solutions required. Challenging lamppost and utility pole deployment locations
place restrictions on the physical attributes of any backhaul solution. Unlike traditional cell sites,
typical dish antennas will not be feasible for such deployments. In addition, because of space
constraints and operational costs, integrated backhaul and basestation hardware will be required.
• Line-of-Sight (LOS) not possible. Street level, metro area deployments mean line-of-sight to
backhaul hub locations is not always—in fact, rarely—possible. Directional dish antennas,
combined with lack of LOS characteristics, mean that traditional point-to-point wireless backhaul
will be unsuitable for most small cell backhaul applications.
• Interference must be carefully managed. When backhauling multiple sites simultaneously, the
close proximity of cell sites creates possible interference issues for the backhaul system. These
interference issues do not exist with licensed point-to-point microwave backhaul, although
careful attention for spectrum re-use will be needed because many more frequency pairs will be
needed.
• High capacity solutions required. Driven by increasing demand for mobile data, backhaul
requirements for small cells are expected to approach macro cell capacity requirements (50-100
Mbit/s per cell site) in next three years.

WIRELESS NLOS BACKHAUL FOR SMALL CELLS

To tackle the challenges posed by small cell backhaul, new non-line-of-sight (NLOS), point-to-multi-
point wireless backhaul solutions are emerging. These solutions involve deploying a central “hub”
node along with “end” nodes at the pico/micro cell sites. The end nodes would typically be all-outdoor
units deployed atop a pole alongside the pico-cell. The central hub would be located ideally at an
existing macro-cell tower or other site where high-speed backhaul is available.

These wireless solutions are easily deployed and will work well in dense urban areas where LOS
conditions are not always available.

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TECHNICAL BRIEF

SMALL CELL BACKHAUL

Low cost and ease-of-reach to lampposts or utility poles, where fiber or other wireline backhaul are
generally not present, make wireless a very attractive choice for small cell backhaul applications

Traditional NLOS solutions, such as WiMAX, Wi-Fi, etc., provide insufficient capacity for cellular
backhaul. Novel solutions will be required to deal with fading and interference, providing more
efficient utilization of available spectrum. These include efficient interference management, multiple-
input and multiple-output, (MIMO) antenna techniques and efficient scheduling and resource (e.g.,
rate, frequency) allocation algorithms.

Beam-forming techniques deploy multiple antennas to form highly directional beams to intended
recipients and null interference for others, minimizing interference among simultaneous
transmissions. Multiple antennas will also be deployed to send multiple data streams over the
wireless channel, achieving multi-fold capacity increases.

New NLOS solutions can enable lower OPEX—ensuring costs associated with smaller cells are
managed carefully. Particular attention must be paid to offline planning and system design including
site preparation, initial equipment testing, automated configuration creation and download, and
antenna alignment/adjustment for end node and hub sites.

INNOVATIVE WIRELESS BACKHAUL IS THE KEY

In summary, new small cell architectures are emerging to address the LTE capacity shortfall. As the
most significant challenge when using small cells, backhaul will require wireless solutions with new
innovations to deal with deployment issues, provide increased capacity, and manage interference.
These backhaul innovations will be critical to ensure small cell architectures become the answer to
LTE’s capacity woes.

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