Wireless Carriers Prove Quintel’s SONWavTM Antenna Solutions Win In Live Networks Across All Bands
Rochester, NY (PRWEB) February 24, 2014 -- Quintel, a leading innovator of spectrum- and space-efficient antennas for wireless networks, has now completed multiple commercial field trials of its new SONWav antennas in live operator LTE networks at both lowband and highband frequencies. SONWav antennas are currently deployed in a Tier 1 operator network carrying commercial traffic. The SONWav antenna leverages Quintel’s patented QTiltTM technology which, when connected to any OEM’s 4-branch receive base station, provides adaptive elevation plane beamforming that delivers a per-user self-optimizing network (SON) feature in the uplink path. This is functionality envisioned by 3GPP to be available only with active antenna solutions, which are not currently practical due to size and cost. The SONWav trials confirmed that up to 80% throughput gains can be achieved for LTE vs. a standard antenna and that the Quintel passive beamforming solution delivers these benefits for both lowband (700-900 MHz) and highband (1.7-2.6 GHz) frequencies. Additionally, SONWav antennas demonstrated these types of throughput gains and interference rejection when connected to multiple different vendors’ 2T4R radio access network (RAN) equipment without any modifications to the RAN equipment.
Dual X-Polar antennas (termed CLA-2X) for LTE 4-branch receive combining at highband spectrum bands have gained operator and OEM interest due to increasing spectral efficiency, and hence data throughput, via a simple adaptive azimuthal beamforming action. However, this technique has been of little interest at lowband (i.e. 700 MHz, 800 MHz or 850 MHz) because CLA-2X antennas designed to operate in these bands would be very wide and not practical. Quintel’s SONWav antennas dramatically change this paradigm by delivering practical, commercially viable MIMO 4 branch Rx with SONWav at lowband and highband in a single standard slimline form factor. Combining SONWav technology with its newly announced Pentaband Slimline Antenna platform, Quintel can provide up to 12 ports, offering one 4-branch SONWav LTE service at lowband and either two 4-branch SONWav or two independent CLA-2X 4 branch LTE services at highband, while maintaining the conventional 12in/300mm-wide form factor.
The exponential growth of wireless data traffic is challenging the industry to rapidly adopt and implement LTE to serve this growth with high quality. The RAN will evolve from 2T2R base stations with basic SON features to 8T8R base stations with advanced SON features. “Quintel’s SONWav technology demonstrates that spectral efficiency can be dramatically improved with a more intelligent approach to beamforming; even smarter in the sense it uses a passive, single Quintel X-Pol antenna array, and exploits basic 4-branch receive MRC/IRC combining schemes, which are available and mature,” said David Barker, Quintel’s CTO and VP of Technology Marketing. “The industry can have low cost practical “smart” antenna solutions now using Quintel SONWav. Being able to also add lowband spectrum to the “smart” offering is especially valuable since lowband spectrum is typically an order of magnitude more expensive per MHz than highband spectrum.”
About Quintel
Quintel is an innovative leader in wireless network antenna technology development. The company’s products enable wireless operators to independently deploy and optimize multiple air interfaces and/or services on a single standard antenna platform. Quintel is the only antenna supplier whose products can increase a wireless network’s capacity, and the number of services, without increasing the number of antennas or size. Our core technologies originated in the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence, and are now deployed throughout the world. Quintel is headquartered in Rochester, New York with additional offices in North America, Europe and Asia. More information about Quintel is available at http://www.quintelsolutions.com.
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“Quintel” and the Quintel logo are registered trademarks, and “QTilt”, “New Dimensions in Wireless” and “SONWav” are trademarks, of Quintel Technology Limited. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.
Joe Veni, Quintel, http://www.quintelsolutions.com, +1 (408) 687-1093, [email protected]
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