Ubidyne has signed a deal with an un-named "major Asia Pacific-based manufacturer of telecommunications equipment" to develop an LTE active antenna for the 800MHz frequency range. The agreement follows network trials of Ubidyne’s 700MHz active antenna solution in the USA. UIbidyen said that it expects to sign a series of new contracts in the next 12 months with Tier 1 operators and OEMs and that the new 800MHz active antenna will be deployed with a major regional network operator in 2013.
In the US trials, Ubidyne’s Antenna Embedded Radio technology with flexible beam forming and tilting capabilities, delivered double throughput at the cell edge and an increase of over 40% cell capacity with the same output power. In addition to the uB700™ that supports 4G (LTE) for broadband mobile networks in the US, Ubidyne’s uB900™ supports GSM, UMTS and LTE in the 900MHz frequency band to address mobile networks in Europe, Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Middle East. This latest announcement will further extend this range with the development of an LTE 800MHz solution, while Ubidyne is also looking at high-band antenna up to 2.6GHz as well as multi-band solutions.
“With the Ubidyne technology proven to exceed our theoretical performance predictions and demonstrate excellent reliability in independent trials, we are now getting a lot of real interest from operators and OEMs who need to meet the exploding demand for wireless data,” said Michael Fränkle, CEO of Ubidyne. “This was reflected at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While there was a lot of discussion about the move to small cells, this represents a major investment in time and money; whereas visitors to our stand increasingly see active antenna technology as a way to maximise coverage and capacity from their existing macrocells. In addition to the deal announced today, we are in advanced discussions with further companies in Asia Pacific and other regions around the world.”
By removing the need for bulky coaxial feeder cables, remote electrical tilt assemblies and additional amplifiers on antenna towers and masts, Ubidyne’s patented active antenna technology significantly reduces installation costs and energy consumption while improving radio performance, deployment flexibility, coverage and network capacity. OPEX costs and outages are further reduced by Ubidyne’s Self-Healing mechanism that secures antenna coverage in the unlikely event of a system failure.
Unlike other approaches to active antenna systems (AAS), Ubidyne’s LTE 700MHz, 800MHz and 900MHz AAS technology uses one transceiver or M-Radio per antenna radiator. This means that an antenna with 16 radiators – or eight cross polar radiators – will also have 16 transceivers. Results from the US trials demonstrated that only a full AAS can meet critical upper sidelobe suppression requirements with margin, while simultaneously providing the highest possible antenna gain over an electrical tilt range of more than 10 degrees. And because of the Self-Healing feature, Ubidyne AAS still delivers this performance with up to four transceivers out of 16 being switched off.