World's First 700 MHz Active Antenna Solution?

Ubidyne will be featuring its new LTE 700 MHz active antenna solution at next month’s Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona.??

Calling it a “world’s first,” Ubidyne says its uB700 Antenna Embedded Radio with flexible beam forming and tilting capabilities just completed independent network trials with an unnamed U.S. wireless carrier, “delivering double throughput at the cell edge and an increase of over 40-percent cell capacity with the same output power.”

It adds, “The results show that before investing in costly small cells, operators can use active antenna technology to address the exploding demand for wireless data by maximizing coverage and capacity from their existing macrocells.”

Here’s how it works: By removing the need for bulky coaxial feeder cables, remote electrical tilt assemblies and additional amplifiers on antenna towers and masts, Ubidyne says its 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.” ??

According to CEO Michael Fränkle, “The U.S. trials show that active antennas can significantly increase cell capacity using vertical sectorization and double the uplink throughput at the cell edge as well as increase the coverage area with independent uplink and downlink tilting. Active antenna technology offers end users a continuous service, while operators will save both capex and opex costs; we have the potential to dramatically change the radio architecture and operations of mobile communications without migrating to small cells at tremendous cost.” ??

In addition to the new uB700 that supports 4G (LTE) in the 700-MHz “digital dividend” band for U.S. broadband mobile networks, Ubidyne’s antenna also supports GSM, UMTS and LTE in the 900 MHz band.