Ubidyne has announced that it will be featuring a new active antenna solution for the US LTE 700MHz digital dividend band at next month's Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona. The uB700 Antenna Embedded Radio with flexible beam forming and tilting capabilities has just completed independent network trials with a leading US mobile operator, reportedly delivering double throughput at the cell edge and an increase of over 40% cell capacity with the same output power. Ubidyne says these results show that operators can use active antenna technology to address the exploding demand for wireless data by maximising coverage and capacity from their existing macrocells before they need to invest in small cells.
In addition to the new uB700, Ubidyne's uB900 Antenna Embedded Radio supports GSM, UMTS and LTE in the 900MHz frequency band to address mobile networks in Europe, Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Middle East. Future products are also in development for the European digital dividend bands of 800MHz and highband up to 2.6GHz as well as multi-band solutions.
By removing the need for bulky coaxial feeder cables, remote electrical tilt assemblies and additional amplifiers on antenna towers and masts, Ubidyne says that its 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 a self-healing mechanism that secures antenna coverage in the event of a system failure.
"The US trials show that active antennas can significantly increase cell capacity using vertical sectorisation and double the uplink throughput at the cell edge as well as increase the coverage area with independent uplink and downlink tilting," said Michael Fränkle, CEO of Ubidyne. "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. Active antennas have arrived and we are seeing increasing interest and demand from operators around the world."
