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Mobile World Congress 2013 Base Station Antenna Summary March 2013
Entire contents 2013 EJL Wireless Research LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is strictly forbidden and will be prosecuted to the fully extent of US and International laws. The transfer of this publication in either paper or electronic form to unlicensed third parties is strictly forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources EJL Wireless Research LLC deems reliable. EJL Wireless Research disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. EJL Wireless Research LLC shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for the interpretation thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EVENT RESEARCH BRIEF MWC2013
Summary...................................................................................................... 3 Amphenol Antennas ....................................................................................... 4 Communication Components Inc./TenXc Wireless ............................................... 4 CellMaxb Technologies .................................................................................... 4 Comba Telecom ............................................................................................. 4 Commscope .................................................................................................. 4 Ericsson........................................................................................................ 5 Huawei Technologies/Vodafone ........................................................................ 5 Kathrein Werke KG......................................................................................... 8 Kavveri......................................................................................................... 9 Nihon Dengyo Kosaku Co. Ltd/NTT DoCoMo ....................................................... 9 Nokia Siemens Networks................................................................................10 Powerwave Technologies................................................................................10 Radio Frequency Systems ..............................................................................10 Socowave ....................................................................................................11 Tongyu Communication .................................................................................11 Ubidyne GmbH .............................................................................................12
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EXHIBITS
Exhibit Exhibit Exhibit Exhibit Exhibit Exhibit Exhibit Exhibit Exhibit Exhibit Exhibit 1: Amphenol Antenna Booth ................................................................................................. 4 2: Ericsson AIR32 Antenna ................................................................................................... 5 3: Huawei Distributed Active Antenna Configuration ................................................................ 5 4: Vodafone Active Antenna Benefits ..................................................................................... 6 5: Huawei Semi-Active Antenna ............................................................................................ 7 6: Huawei Fully Active Antenna ............................................................................................. 7 7: Dengyo B19 Active Antenna.............................................................................................. 9 8: NSN Flexi Multiradio Antenna at MWC Booth ..................................................................... 10 9: NSN Flexi Multiradoi Antenna .......................................................................................... 10 10: Tongyu Hexaband/Pentaband LTE Antennas .................................................................... 11 11: Ubidyne Small Cell Concept........................................................................................... 12
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Amphenol Antennas
Amphenol's booth was in the UK pavilion at MWC this year. There was a display with baseplates of antennas, most notably a 10 port-unit (second from left). The company discontinued its multi-band products that had antenna ports halfway up the back and has re-introduced them with all ports now on the bottom. There had been a remote radio unit product via a 3rd party supplier that they have stopped promoting and claim to be working on a fully active antenna system. We are unsure if their is an OEM partner for this development. Exhibit 1: Amphenol Antenna Booth
CellMax Technologies
CellMax recently re-appointed Torbjrn Kmpe as CEO of the company. The company remains focused on its low loss, high efficiency and high gain antennas products.
Comba Telecom
Comba Telecom showcased its next gen multi-system, multi-band antennas for LTE at MWC2013 and its new hexaband product. Within this portfolio are antennas supporting low band (790-960MHz) as well as high band (1710-2690MHz) with multi-band antennas supporting up to six bands from 700MHz up to 2700MHz.
Commscope
Commscope had an offsite location, similar to last year, which offered customers a chance to learn about sector sculpting and see its 18-beam antenna product.
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Ericsson
Ericsson launched the second generation of its AIR product, named the AIR32, which is going to be commercially available in 1H2014. The AIR32 has 8 power amplifiers using a 4x4 MIMO for each of two active frequency bands as compared with only one active frequency band for the AIR21 series. Each active band supports a 4x30W transmit configuration or 120W of RF power per band. The first product due out is a single band active and single band passive version, then followed by a dual band active version. Exhibit 2: Ericsson AIR32 Antenna
Huawei Technologies/Vodafone
We believe Huawei stole the show with its semi-active antenna being live above the Vodafone booth and a distributed active antenna mock up displayed prominently in the booth. The distributed active antenna will have two active high bands (2100MHz and 2600MHz) and six ports for passive low/high band. Each pair of ports supports XPOL MIMO. We say distributed active instead of fully active because each amplifier feeds a pair of dipole elements and not a single dipole element. We spoke with the Vodafone engineer at the booth about why there was only a Huawei antenna and nothing from the other major OEMs and he indicated that none of the other OEMs had a similar product that was ready for commercial launch. Ericsson has its AIR21 product that is a semi-active antenna but does not allow for beam forming, however the AIR32 is a 4x4 MIMO system. As seen in the below exhibits, the active antenna has two CPRI ports for the two active bands and passive support for 800/900MHz, 1800MHz and 1800/2100/2600MHz. There are eight power amplifiers, four per active band. Each power amplifier feeds into a pair of XPOL elements with 8 XPOL pairs per frequency band. We believe that each amplifier is 15W and a combination of four amplifiers equals a single band supporting 60W of RF power. The antenna is standard with four way diversity receive and can be equipped with an additional 2 way receive unit to enable 6 way diversity receive. Exhibit 3: Huawei Distributed Active Antenna Configuration
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Vodafone indicated that besides the benefits of an integrated RRU+antenna, the beam forming capabilities with 4 or 6 way diversity receive can increase throughput substantially while the independent tilt on the uplink can also add throughput efficiency along with the vertical 4x2 and 4x4 MIMO as shown in the exhibit below. Exhibit 4: Vodafone Active Antenna Benefits
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Huawei also announced EasyRET, the antenna industry's first plug and play RET solution. It integrates multiple band antennas and traditional RET components reducing cabling and external connectors. The electrical tilt components and antenna are matched and configuration data is preloaded and calibrated. Huawei is using electronic tags to automatically report the RCU bar code to the O&M center where it is saved and matched to the specific port and frequency band
Kathrein Werke KG
Kathrein had in its booth the following new products: Pentaband Antenna 1x698-960MHz and 4x1710-2690MHz in a 2.7m radome Multi-Array Antenna 3x1710-2690MHz in a 1.4m radome Tripleband Antenna 1x698-960MHz and 2x1710-2690MHz in a 1.4m radome Xpol Omni Slimpole with 5dBi Ericsson AIR32 We believe that Kathrein is well positioned within the semi-active antenna market given the success of Ericssons AIR21 product and with the newly launched AIR32 product. Exhibit 7: Kathrein Penta Band Antenna
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Kavveri
We did not see any new antenna products displayed in the booth. The company remains focused on its quad, penta and hexaband products.
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Powerwave Technologies
Given the Ch. 11 filing by Powerwave Technologies, we did not expect to see them at the show and they did not have a booth there.
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Socowave
Socowave is developing a true active antenna system platform; one that is based upon a per-element transceiver architecture. In 2012, Socowave secured a tier 1 infrastructure partner and developed a Band 7 (UMTS 2600MHz) active antenna system with full baseband unit interoperability. In Q3 2012, the company shipped trial units with programmable diversity (Active Diversity) to its infrastructure partner and set out to quantify the new capacity gains possible using Active Diversity. The test results confirmed the existence of superior cell capacity solely related to the intelligent placement of uplink focused beams. The trial compared traditional 2-way diversity and traditional 4-way diversity with Socowaves active 4-way diversity. Measurements show that Active Diversity increases cell capacity by more than 150% over traditional 2-way and 50% extra capacity over 4-way diversity. Socowave has commenced a Beta 2.6GHz LTE active antenna system development program and intends to deliver demonstrator units in Q4 2013 to its customer.
Tongyu Communication
Tongyu displayed 2 base plates in the booth addressing the 4G LTE market. One had 12 ports (4x Low Band 698-960MHz) + (8x High Band 1710-2690MHz) grouped as a 4x3 with each group as a L+H+H (lower base plate in exhibit). The gain was 17dBi with a 65 degree beamwidth and 6 RET ports. The other had 10 ports (2x Low Band 698-960MHz) + (8x High Band 1710-2690MHz) grouped as a 2x3 (L+H+H) + 2x2 (H+H) (upper base plate in exhibit). The upper unit has a narrower body even though the base plates shown are the same size. Tongyu stated that they were selling to Telefonica Spain and qualifying into Telefonica O2 Germany. Exhibit 11: Tongyu Hexaband/Pentaband LTE Antennas
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Ubidyne GmbH
Ubidyne made two key announcements at MWC this year. The first was a partnership with Dengyo in Japan to develop a B19 LTE active antenna solution which is now in field trials for NTT DoCoMo. The second was a partnership with NEC Corporation to develop small cells using Ubidyne's active antenna architecture. Exhibit 12: Ubidyne Small Cell Concept
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