5 key takeaways from Small Cell Forum Release 7

With the latest installment in its release program, Small Cell Forum is both focusing on practical operational elements for current hetnet implementations and taking a look forward to the role that small cells will play in “5G.”
“The whole target [of this release] is really about ensuring that operators and the industry are informed about the techniques that are out there and available to be used to manage the increasingly heterogeneous nature of networks – networks that are composed of multiple layers, not just in terms of the size of cells but layers in terms of technologies,” said Alan Law, chairman of Small Cell Forum. “As these networks are expanding, you need to ensure and manage the performance of the network and also techniques to help manage the operational costs of those networks as well.”
Initial releases from Small Cell Forum focused on the business case for small cells in different scenarios: urban, residential, rural and remote, and in enterprise. Since then, the focus has shifted to deployment tactics and now to a focus on operational elements – which also reflects the change in small cell technology maturity.
In Release 7, Small Cell Forum focuses on a number of key components, including:
SON as reality, with further complex capabilities ahead. As small cell deployments gain momentum and numbers, the importance of self-organizing network capabilities and automation increases as well so that small cells are manageable as a piece of the overall hetnet, and that costs and complexity are contained. Small Cell Forum cited an operator survey, which found that 36% of 120 global mobile carriers surveyed had deployed some type of SON features.
“They’re not merely conceptual capabilities, they’re capabilities that have been deployed and are already in use by a significant number of operators and deployments,” Law said.
The forum’s most recent plugfest focused on features of multivendor SON. In Release 7 the group lays out future goals for SON capabilities: end-to-end SON that coordinates the backhaul and core network along with the radio access network; a common SON system for small cells with both cellular and Wi-Fi; and the potential for a single, open SON platform that leverages cloud to help reduce the number of management systems that operators need to maintain.
LTE in unlicensed spectrum. Cognizant of the widespread industry interest in leveraging LTE in unlicensed bands in small cell deployments, Release 7 looks at the ability to integrate multiple LTE in unlicensed strategies, from License-Assisted Access to LTE-U to LTE WLAN integration with IPSec tunnel. The release notes that LTE in unlicensed is likely to be deployed in small cell scenarios and discusses the relative merits and some coexistence and performance test data for LTE in unlicensed.
Small cells and relationships between operators and enterprise. Although it already has a specific release for the enterprise small cell use case, the forum revisits some aspects of enterprise small cells in Release 7 with a revision of its document on enterprises and multioperator small cells as well as exploring the use cases for an application program interface for unified communications integration. In the context of LTE in unlicensed spectrum, Small Cell Forum also points out that for LWIP, the simpler path to implementation means that LWIP “is expected to encourage more partnerships between [mobile network operators]  and [wireless local area network] network managers – e.g., enterprise [information technology], third party and vendor managed. Such collaboration seems especially likely in environments such as large enterprises, where hundreds of Wi-Fi APs are already deployed and where several additional years of service are expected.”
Evolving market drivers and definition of heterogeneous networks. Small Cell Forum has taken a much broader definition of hetnets, defining them as a “multi-x environment – multi-technology, multi-domain, multi-spectrum, multi-operator and multi-vendor. It must be able to automate the reconfiguration of its operation to deliver assured service quality across the entire network, and flexible enough to accommodate changing user needs, business goals and subscriber behaviors.” The group cites a recent survey in which enterprise deployments, consumer video and multiscreen viewing and bundles drive the small cell business case in the short term, but that “by 2020, the use cases for the hetnet are expected to be more diverse and driving brand-new revenue streams.” These are expected to include “internet of things” connectivity, wholesale models and new video-based services and user experiences.
Small Cell Forum declared that operators’ “challenge for 2020, if they are to reap healthy profits from their network investments, is to undergo digital transformation, which involves branching out from the homogeneous business model, as well as the homogeneous networks, of the past. They will become IT platforms, cloud providers, wholesalers and vertical market specialists as well as MNOs, and will be handling a huge diversity of devices with different demands on the network. All this will require dramatic change to their processes, partnerships, management systems and, of course, their networks.”
A look forward to 5G. That new definition of hetnets and operator expectations sets the stage for the path forward to 5G networks, which are expected to encompass many of the “multi-x” qualities that Small Cell Forum talks about in a hetnet context. 5G is widely expected to involve massive numbers of small cells due to capacity needs and spectrum characteristics. Law noted that one of the topics tackled at a recent roundtable in Shanghai was hyperdense deployments of small cells, with research showing that by 2020, 40-50% of networks will have hyperdense deployments – which the forum considers more than 150 small cells per kilometer. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to be one of the pioneers in this area.
Small Cell Forum noted that it has already presented to 3GPP its views on three key technologies that must be built into 5G: an interface for virtualized small cells; a multioperator, neutral host framework; and an API/services framework. The forum said that those three elements also are a part of its work program from 2016 to 2020.