Small cells in focus: Wi-Fi Integration

Small cell deployments and Wi-Fi offload are two of the most important ways that mobile operators increase network capacity and coverage, but until recently they have been seen as separate solutions. Now carriers are looking for small cells that integrate Wi-Fi connectivity. These so-called “multi-standard” cells are not expected to hit the market until next year at the earliest, but operators are not waiting to integrate Wi-Fi into their small cell solutions. AT&T, which is in the process of deploying 40,000 small cells as part of its Project Velocity IP initiative, has said that it does not want to roll out any small cell deployments in 2014 that do not include Wi-Fi.Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) is at the forefront of small cell/Wi-Fi integration with its lightRadio software. The company has said it will integrate Wi-Fi solutions from Qualcomm and Motorola into its multi-standard metrocells.“There’s a lot of interest in Wi-Fi being added into these cells,” said Greg Fischer, vice president for carrier access at Broadcom (BRCM). “Our particular devices don’t have Wi-Fi integrated into them, but the Broadcom Wi-Fi is integrated onto the platform and into the software.”Qualcomm (QCOM) recently launched its FSM99xx small cell chipset, which can host Wi-Fi at Layer 3. “We have two PCIE ports which can support Wi-Fi radios, and then we can aggregate and integrate the traffic at Layer 3,” said Nick Karter, vice president of business development and product management at Qualcomm Atheros. “We can host the Wi-Fi off this chipset … but the actual Wi-Fi radios are separate. The important thing about the fact that we are hosting at Layer 3 is that you can integrate the traffic and do connection management.”Qualcomm and Broadcom both make Wi-Fi connectivity chips. While their small cell customers can choose to integrate a third party Wi-Fi solution, they are likely to save time if they work with just one chip vendor. “Certainly customers always have the option of integrating themselves, and bringing other Wi-Fi to the solution,” said Broadcom’s Greg Fischer. “But I think what we’ve seen in other markets that we participate in where we use Wi-Fi with Broadcom chipsets is that customers see the time-to-market benefit of working with one supplier to integrate both the software and the RF. … I would say 80% of the time customers will go with silicon from one supplier.”

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