Vodafone Turkey has selected NEC to deploy small cells to key venues and business premises to boost its indoor LTE performance in the country.
NEC will make use of an enterprise radio access network (E-RAN) platform from SpiderCloud Wireless, as part of the deal.
The E-RAN platform features carrier aggregation, enabled on dual-carrier LTE Radio Nodes to provide wider channel for maximum mobile performance.
It also includes a centralised services node, hosted in a Vodafone data centre, which enables up to 100 radio nodes to be placed in multiple locations, and single radio node deployments at small venues, without requiring on-site service nodes.
The SpiderCloud platform features ‘zero-touch’ configuration, with the radio node activated as soon as it is plugged into the IP network.
NEC said the platform’s flexible architecture will enable Vodafone Turkey to deliver superior a 4G performance at any indoor space, including smaller buildings, and sites featuring hard-to-penetrate materials like stone.
Mallikarjun Rao, Chief Technology Officer at Vodafone Turkey, said: “Vodafone’s all-LTE rollout is targeted at rapid delivery of excellent performance and capacity to any location. E-RAN assures indoor VoLTE quality and provides a platform for LTE-LAA and future unlicensed services.”
Costa Tsourkas, Head of Business Development for small cells at NEC Europe, added: “Business, industrial and social applications are increasingly reliant on robust and ubiquitous wireless networks that can deliver both high-throughput and low latency – not only outdoors, but increasingly inside commercial and public spaces and homes – with small cells.”
Increasing support for unlicensed spectrum technologies, including LTE-LAA and Wi-Fi, will help the global indoor small cell market achieve revenues of $1.8 billion in 2021, according to ABI Research.
Meanwhile, NEC has launched a wireless transport solution that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to overcome bottlenecks in 5G mobile backhaul networks.
The solution, called Smart Wireless Transport Network, combines NEC’s ultra-compact radio system, which claims 10Gbps capacity in the E-band range, with an NEC backhaul SDN controller, and the company’s own AI technology, called ‘NEC the WISE’.
The idea is to use AI to assist operators in their deployment of small cells and expansion of backhaul capacity, as they also maintain their legacy macro cells.
NEC said the new AI-based solution enables operators to be more flexible in their network construction, and to respond to changeable environmental and behavioural scenarios.
Earlier this week, NEC unveiled new technology that uses artificial intelligence to analyse customer data from a range of input sources, including equipment logs, measurement probes, and deep packet inspection equipment.