Massive growth for wireless backhaul

10/11/2011 12:04 PM EDT

This makes sense...who can pull fiber to a streetlight? Please publish more on this topic or get Mobile Experts www.mobile-experts.net to write an article

10/11/2011 9:08 PM EDT

This is an interesting topic that keeps popping up in different articles, with one emphasis or another, depending on the article.

I have believed for some time that idea that femtocells are for private ownership, and use the owner's IP broadband link for backhaul, is only a transitional phenomenon. Femtocells are the natural progression of cellular architectures, whose cells have been getting smaller and smaller ever since the beginning. As far as I can tell, femtocells are the only way to get enough spectrum re-use to manage the sharply increasing demand in wireless broadband. There will be a mix of larger cells and femtocells, depending on what is expected of wireless broadband users in that general area. But varying cell sizes have always been the case, so this is really nothing new.

In general, seems to me inescapable that the carriers will be deploying their own femtocells, soon enough. Otherwise, some of the higher performance features of their cell phones would be too reliant on WiFi hotspots. Why would a carrier agree to that?

And, of course, cellular wireless only works because it is layered over a fancy, routed, backhaul network. That's key. The "wireless" part of cellular only covers the very shortest distances, at the outer edges. The heavy lifting is done in the backhaul. So naturally, more cells means more backhaul.

10/12/2011 3:24 AM EDT

Femtos are a long way off - they are expensive little base stations, that have to coordinate with the existing macro network. No demand for them now.

10/12/2011 7:03 AM EDT

sounds interesting need to study more about it..

10/12/2011 10:49 AM EDT

The unintended benefit of wireless backhaul is the fact that it may tend to reduce the likely hood of disasters taking a node off-line. Of course, hardened underground connections would be even more robust, but they might cost a lot more.

10/12/2011 2:27 PM EDT

is the back haul discussed in here is specific to femto cells are to the general base stations. I do nt agree with the idea of femto as they increase cost of infrastructure very high.

10/12/2011 7:12 PM EDT

Kiran, my buddies at Mobile Experts say that the report has case studies with comprehensive details on the total cost of ownership

They say that the total cost is still reasonable with NLOS solutions. If this is true, the femto idea does not work (coverage solutions compete with WiFi) but a picocell/metrofemtocell can work at about half a watt to boost capacity.

10/18/2011 6:13 PM EDT

The PHS wireless phone system has a service area of about 100 meters from the base station. Standing on the street in Tokyo it is easy to see 2 or 3 NTT base station antennas. They are mounted on top of the NTT pay phones. Backhaul is through wired ISDN lines. These base stations are very cost effective.

12/4/2011 1:34 AM EST

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