The Power of Antenna Embedded Radios

One of the major advantages of the antenna embedded radio architecture is its high level of integration and simplicity. AERs eliminate all other RF discrete components and associated installation/site upgrade costs. Explicitly, no remote radio heads, masthead amps, RETs, advanced tilt systems, or coax cables are required. The integrated AER system replaces all of these functions.

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In addition to the dramatic reduction in equipment and installation costs, significant reductions in the cost of operation can be expected where AER systems are deployed. This is due to the lower power consumption, reduced leasing costs, and reduced site repair and maintenance costs related to the higher effective mean time between failures (MTBF).

In fact, reliability is one of the key strengths of the AER architecture and is a result of a number of its unique features. First, the power devices within the AER operate at a lower temperature than typical basestation power amplifiers because they handle a fraction of the total system power and are distributed across the backplane of the passive antenna, which acts as a heatsink for thermal dissipation. The lower temperature increases the MTBF of each component m-radio.

Additionally, AER is a system with built-in redundancy. If any of the m-radios should fail, the phase and amplitude of the remaining transceivers can be adjusted in response, and in most cases, the site can continue to operate indefinitely until regularly scheduled maintenance is performed. This “self healing” or “graceful degradation” is only possible due to the distributed architecture of the AER system.

Finally, from an environmental point of view, the lower carbon footprint and reduced visual clutter of sites that incorporate antenna embedded radios will be significant benefits to operators. Due to the recent spike in global fuel costs, the desire to minimize fuel consumption isn’t just an issue of social responsibility, it’s an economic business necessity.

Similarly, increasing “not in my neighborhood” community resistance to the placement of basestation equipment anywhere it can be seen is driving up the cost and reducing the availability of equipment sites. AER systems, with their unparalleled integration level, will let operators avoid much of the hassle and expense of securing licenses and leases compared to legacy analog RF basestation equipment.

In Summary

Antenna embedded radios are one example of new creative solutions that are required to provide the benefits of active antenna systems without the associated drawbacks. As flat-rate, broadband tariff schemes become increasingly more prevalent and operators accelerate competition on data service, the need persists for ever lower costs.

This competitive pressure at the operator level will continue to drive the infrastructure segment to find more creative solutions to satisfy consumer hunger for ever increasing data at attractive prices. To meet this challenge, more “revolution” than evolution is needed to continue the neverending race toward higher levels of service (capacity and coverage) while maintaining the trend of lower cost per bit.

Kent Heath has more than 20 years of semiconductor and wireless experience and is currently VP of marketing and business development for Ubidyne, creator of the world’s first digital, antenna-embedded radio for wireless telecommunications. He has also been an active member of the Semiconductor Industry Association in Japan (SIAJ) and Society of Mechanical Engineers (SME) of the IEEE for more than 20 years.