The challenges of the current mobile telephony

Mobile telephony is continuously growing; mobile users are becoming more numerous and demanding day by day more advanced services. Currently users, whether individuals or companies want to have mobility and carry devices that give them access to broadband mobile: e-mail, music, TV, chat, Internet or connect to different networks and computers to send information.

The 3G technology can provide all these services for mobile devices, but it takes operators to deploy an infrastructure of antennas not without difficulties:

• Social rejection of mobile phone antennas
• Difficulty in obtaining or renewing sites
• High installation costs
• High visual impact by multiplying the number of antennas at each site
• Risk of deterioration in the company image
• Regulations and installation licenses regulated by each municipality
• Need to share sites with other operators

Sharing sites: co-siting

The co-siting or sharing of infrastructure provides a good solution for operators, and that solves several of the above difficulties, while representing a cost savings. The first step towards co-siting has been sharing site, so that where a base station and antenna, is a second and sometimes third antenna, along with the hardware from other operators.

Antennas sharing: a step further

Fractal technology used by TELNET Redes Inteligentes in the family of ENVIA Compact antenna makes available a very low visual impact solution that can integrate within the same radome radiating elements to serve up to 4 different operators.

The new antenna models designed thinking of sharing allows each operator to have independent mouths and electrical tilt.

Advantages of Compact antenna vs combination solutions

The TELNET sharing models have several advantages over the alternative of using additional equipment such as cavities Combiners or duplexers:

• Saves money compared to the cost of procuring combiners equipment, couplers, duplexers, triplexers and/or the necessary filters for the three sectors of an antenna, often handmade items and with a much dilated delivery time.
• Allows having independent cable and tilting adjustment for each operator.
• No insertion loss and isolation problems or ROE, as there are no transitions or interposed elements.
• Avoid problems associated with the diplexer channel blocking and spurious emissions outside the band.
• It is also possible to reuse the most of the existing mast in case of re-engineering projects for the adequacy of sites.
• Allows sharing the same antenna for up to 4 operators; solution that can not be obtained through combination.

Adaptation of the antennas for sharing

PANEL Antennas

The replacement of existing panels for other new models for sharing TELNET is simple and is not apparent to the layman. Furthermore, these models use the same anchors as those used in the panels supplied by Siemens in the past.

COMPACT Antennas

The TELNET Compact antennas integrate into its design the Universal Modular Mast, who has multiple configurations depending on the type of anchor, mast height, security system and antenna model, which gives the place a minimum visual impact. This modular design enables the mast to replace existing antenna (Slim) by sharing another with minimal changes to the mast for most cases.

If you change the antenna diameter (250mm to 450mm step) should require the provision of the retrofit kit consisting of a flange of a adaptation and aesthetically cone trim that softens the transition diameter.    

Should be kept in mind that the new mast+antenna configuration is within the approved configurations. For soil anchors pillar or wall pillar refer to approved configurations for each type of pole (fixed-GameSystem or swing). 

Real case study

A site on which an operator had a Compact Singleband Broadband antenna on a MUM 3m mast, is replaced by a Compact Dualband (BB/BB) 450 antenna for sharing, that is serving two UMTS operators.

Each operator has a band Broadband (1710-2170MHz) with independent electrical tilt in each sector and its own cable, which connects the BTS case located in the tech-room that seen in the left and the other operator links with remote heads seen in the photograph.

The complete replacement took less than five hours, shutting down the operator active service the shortest possible time and leaving the second one operative by the end of intervention.