Nokia Siemens Networks is looking to solve the increasing problem of overloaded city-centre base stations with the announcement of its new "Liquid Radio" product.
The device, which shares many characteristics with Alca-Lu's recently launched lightRadio product, uses distributed antennae and virtualised baseband processing to provide a highly distributed architecture built around small cells and miniature base station designs.
NSN's head of global radio access, Tommi Uitto, told Connected Planet that some elements--notably the remote radio head with integrated antenna and amplifier--will be available before Alca-Lu's lightRadio modules.
Uitto said that the Alca-Lu design was a similar concept to what NSN had already produced. "Technically it is sound. We just want to go beyond it."
While the notion of adding small cells to help overcome network bottlenecks is not revolutionary, this new approach by NSN is being judged less radical than Alca-Lu's given that the Franco-U.S. company aims to do most of the baseband processing in the cloud and remove it from the local site. The purpose of the Liquid Radio approach is to keep the majority of the processing at the cell site by integrating more technology into the radio head.
For more:
- see this Connected Planet article
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