Small Cells: Surf mobile faster

We set up compact radio cells in areas with a high volume of mobile communications.

The spatial expansion of radio cells can be very different. In sparsely populated areas, GSM cells can have a diameter of up to 70 km, in LTE networks only up to 20 km. Since all mobile service users within a radio cell have to share the available capacity for phone calls and internet access, radio cells in cities, for example, are designed to be much smaller. In inner cities, they often have a diameter of less than 100 meters.

In high-traffic areas such as train stations or shopping districts, even this dimension might still be too large. When many users in a compact space go online with their cell phones, send messages, or make calls at the same time, even smaller cell diameters are sometimes required. These are referred to as “small cells” – in contrast to the macrocells that are normally used in mobile communications.

The importance of small cells will increase in the future. The future 5G mobile network, for example, which is expected to be set up by Germany network operators in 2020, will require a high number of radio cells with small cell diameters.

 

Small cells and distributed antenna systems improve wireless communications

The set-up of small cells is already improving the mobile network coverage today. They are closely related to what are known as distributed antenna systems (DAS). To put it simply, these distributed antenna systems consist of several “fill stations” which help to noticeably optimize the signal distribution, particularly indoors.