A conversation about millimeter wave densification with Alpaslan Demir, Principal Engineer, InterDigital
The below is only a summary. Download a transcript of the complete interview and the full report “Massively densified networks. Why we need them and how we can build them.”
In millimeter wave deployments, densification is not an option, but a necessity because of the limited coverage radius, as well as the opportunity to provide a vast capacity increase in the backhaul or in the access. We talked about the role of mmW in densification with Alpaslan Demir, Principal Engineer at InterDigital.
Alpaslan told us: “The beauty of these frequencies is that the new bandwidth they make available is tremendously large. You are talking about Mbps or multiples of-100 Mbps bandwidths, with up to 2 GHz bandwidths, or multiples of 2 GHz, especially at 70 GHz. This gives you the ability to increase densification. The more bandwidth you have, the more data you can transmit. When it comes to the millimeter-wave domain, one thing we need to understand is that, due to the propagation loss, you need to deploy nodes very closely. Maybe you’re talking about spacing nodes at 50 m to 100 m to 200 m. This automatically creates densification.”
Alpaslan believes that this makes the expansion into mmW bands a priority for operators: “There is no escape from creating solutions for millimeter-wave or high-frequency bands. The overall industry is pushing for that. We definitely see some operators taking advantage of that, as well.”
As operators prepare to move to mmW, Wi-Fi retains a central role in wireless access: “Even today, we talk about operators embracing Wi-Fi and connecting with Wi-Fi, and we do see a lot of ways to merge LTE and Wi-Fi systems,” Alpaslan said.
We further discussed the topic of densification during our recent webinar. Download the webinar.
