Tag Archives: Small Cell

Wade4Wireless BlogCast

Small Cell Deployment: 10 tips you need, especially #6 Podcast

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Hello wireless workers in the wireless world! OK, this is long but filled with good information!

Small cells, small cells, small cells! Are you tires of hearing about small cells? They have been hyped but they are slow to roll out. However, many of the obstacles, mostly permitting and leasing, will be overcome at the end of 2014, yay! So now what, will the carriers go to the lowest bidder? Maybe, because they need to have the learning curve, that is except maybe Verizon and AT&T. They already learned that there are skills involved in deployment. So they should have the requirements listed when they put the installations out to bid. Why? Because they want to do it once, not twice! Luckily they learned a lot in their trials. So let me share some of what I know with you.

I want to give you some insight as to what will set you apart from other deployment companies in the business. It all comes down to skills! Skills that make you valuable so your company can honestly answer the RFP or RFQ without saying, “We can learn that if we win”. Now, don’t be naive, it will come down to price if you qualify. The key thing is that they will try to hire crews in local markets to save any per Diem costs. Remember that they put it out to bid to serve their purpose, not yours.

  1. Mounting options – knowledge of mounting options. I am talking about wall mount on a building, pole mount on a wood pole, light pole mount on a light pole, and strand mount on a cable. Know what you are mounting to and how to properly mount to each of them. It matters that you know what you are getting into and that you do a quality mount job. If the unit falls down in a year due to weather or vandals then you may not get another chance to deploy for that company again. Remember that they invite you to that bid offering.
  2. Antenna options – knowledge of how to mount antennas will play a key role in deployments. What does that mean? Do you know that the antenna will need to be vertical or horizontal? Will you need to point it at a bearing of 187 degrees? Does it matter? Yes, use your head and be aware of what you are mounting and how you mount it. Make sure it’s weather proof.
  3. Fiber termination – do you know how to terminate fiber. It will matter. You will need to connect the fiber to the router and or the small cell, it will need to have the proper connector and it will need to be done on site. Make sure your fiber skills are up to date.
  4. Training on the product – did you get trained on the product? Do you know the OEM? Do you have a clue or do you think you will wing it. Training matters, it will be so important if something goes wrong and the warranty is impacted. Do you think the customer will be happy if you do anything wrong? Do you see the payment from the customer fading away because you were not certified to mount that product and now someone else has to go out and fix your screw up? Training will matter!
  5. Backhaul connection options – do you know the difference between fiber connections? Do you know how to terminate CAT5 copper? Do you know what the DOCSIS interface is? I expect the cable companies will play a part in small cell deployment. Why? Because they have access to so many poles that they will be ready to assist in deployment if they don’t decide to deploy their own systems which would mean more work for you! So make sure your team has all the right tools, what will they be terminating? Will it be fiber, copper, or cable? It could be all three depending on the situation. Don’t show up with only fiber tools when you may need to be ready for CAT 5 and coax? Read the SOW!
  6. Street pole mounting locations – do you know the difference between a telecom zone and the power zone on a street pole? If you want to deploy, don’t be stupid and know the mounting locations and the rules. Strand mount has size and weight limitations, know them. Just ask the owner and do some research. Small cells are being designed to meet these specifications, so it may be in your best interest to know what can be mounted so if the OEM sends you the wrong unit then you can point it out once instead of replacing it later. If you mount something too big and too heavy the problems start with permitting and maybe a citation from the city and they could grow into the strand coming down or a truck catching the small cell and ripping the small cell and the strand out of the pole (it happened). That would be ugly and involve a lot of finger-pointing. It pays to arm yourself with some knowledge. Size and weight matter, in this case. Poles are filling up quick, or they will so if you see someone else on the pole then you may want to let everyone know. I don’t know how many small cells can be mounted on the pole but it seems to me that the first one to mount there wins.
  7. Router skills – this may be important to the deployment people in case there is a problem or if they have a script file that you need to load. It will help if you can do it. You may be able to do this in the warehouse prior to deployment, but it is something that can set you apart from your competition. If you do it in the warehouse make sure you label the units for the designated location if they each have a unique IP, it matters to the NOC so they know where you installed it. That is usually determined ahead of time. When they integrate it into the network they need to know exactly where it is if it doesn’t have a GPS or if it is in a large building.
  8. Grounding – so do you think because it is a small cell that it doesn’t need to be grounded. You should learn in your OEM train how to ground each unit properly because if anything is wrong they will blame grounding. They just do because no one really knows how it affects the base station, so do the grounding per the specification.
  9. RF knowledge – this will help in case they try to mount a small cell in a metal box, (this did happen) and then they wonder why it doesn’t work. It was a small cell with integrated antennas. This is something you could point out immediately. Not rocket science, but when the NOC is working on it they can’t see it, you can. Point that out.
  10. Acceptance testing – chances are they will ask the deployment team to do the testing when they turn it up. The plan is to have them come live immediately and with SON (Self Organizing Network) systems taking over along with plug and play technology, the installers should be able to use a special phone for the final test. This is something that you should be ready to learn and familiarize yourself with this. The OEM training should cover this so pay attention in class!

 

OK, that’s all I have for small cells. I have some cool things coming up. I have an interview with Vicky Kaseorg who wrote the “The Tower Builder” available on Amazon and it’s about the towers that were taken out by a hurricane and rebuilt by a tower builder and all the effort put into it as well as the life of Tony, the tower builder, and beacons. Yes, beacons, read it to learn more!

I also have an interview with a guy who is turned his toy drone helicopter into a tool to do tower inspections. He has a camera on it and he has the soft touch to control it around towers to take pictures. It’s really cool and when I get the information I will have Greg on my podcast and some of his pictures on my blog.

Someone reached out to me about rigging tags, http://www.certags.com/lifting-rigging-rigg-tag.php and they offer free samples on that site. I am not getting anything for this word of mouth but I thought some of you may be interested. Someone sent me the link on LinkedIn and I thought I would share. It seems like a good way to mark your cables, shackles, and wire rope as well as your safety gear. They have guides here, http://www.certags.com/free-guides-gifts.php if you’re interested.

If you’re interested, my books are “Field Worker’s Aid for Tower Work” and “Tower Climbing: An Introduction”.

Be safe, be smart, and pay attention! Robert T. Kiyosaki said focus – follow one course until successful which I think really applies to the communications work on the tower and off the tower. We all need to focus until the job is complete. Each job requires us to focus on it until it a success. Unfortunately many of you blame the schedule but if you look at the schedule and not the job at hand something may slip. If something slips on the tower then it may hit someone below. Then the schedule just doesn’t seem important anymore.

Wade4Wireless BlogCast

Small Cells? What hell is a small cell?

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OK, what the hell is a small cell? Well, let me tell you about small cells. It’s like putting the cell site where the people are, I mean right where the people using the most data. Suddenly you have a cell that can service a group of people with little RF loss and high data throughput. This is a great thing for carriers because it relieves the macro from the loading it would have from one area in its larger coverage area. That is the goal of the small cell, to alleviate the loading and add coverage. I will concentrate on the outdoor small cells for this article but the indoor may be very similar, just less up front work.

So putting a small cell in should be easy, right? I mean if any of you worked with Wi-Fi you would think you can just pop up an access point and you have an instant hot spot. Well, there is so much more to it than that. The carriers will need to do some work up front is they are to put it in their system. They need to do the RF design, loading study, and coverage analysis. They will probably study the analytics to see where the need is based on coverage and macro cell loading, (data and voice). This is prior to placing the small cells in the macro coverage area. They will look at each sector of a Macro site.

The other challenge is putting the backhaul in. It usually will be fiber, about 10 to 100Gbps backhaul provided to the router connected to the small cell. This is usually a Service Aggregate Router, (SAR). Backhaul quality is everything because you have to make sure you have quality of service. Here is where the LTE small cells have a huge advantage because they have a complete IP backbone, unlike most 3G stuff out there, LTE will be a cleaner deployment. All this is done before they decide to deploy anything.

So mounting the unit will not be too hard, but the connection of the backhaul will require fiber skills. They may have wireless backhaul in some areas, if they connect from the wireless backhaul to the SAR it will be using a fiber jumper. Fiber will be the key to most small cell backhaul connections. The one exception may be if the cable companies step up with a cable backhaul for small cells, they call this Data Over Cable Interface Specification, (DOCSIS), which should be a game changer if it becomes mainstream. Then you could use a standard cable connection for backhaul. This may or may not work because carriers seem to like a dedicated connection back to their core or to one of their cell sites. This is a dedicated connection that would give them security and complete control. It’s what most of them want to do. They don’t just tie into an internet connection like a Wi-Fi connection would. It’s just not that easy at this time. If you’re interested in LTE backhaul, there is a good overview at http://lteuniversity.com/get_trained/expert_opinion1/b/skrishnamurthy/archive/2013/04/01/why-ethernet-backhaul.aspx to explain in more detail.

So let’s look at what we’ve done, we’ve completed the engineering, defined the spots where we wanted it. We then narrowed the spot by finding a mounting location, a pole or a building top, then we found a mounting location that has a fiber connection near it, (fiber is not everywhere), now we finally have the exact location to mount it. Then we have to get a lease, this is all part of site acquisition! We need to work out all of those headaches. If you are not familiar, you don’t just go out and mount it to a pole.  You need to find out who has rights to the pole or building, who you lease it through. Then you may or may not need to do a structural analysis on the mounting asset. You will need to do a site design drawing for the documentation prior to the mounting of the asset. What about permits? The local municipality or city wants to take their cut and they want to know what is mounted where. So you will need to make sure all the permitting is completed, this usually slows down the process even more and cost money because you need to file paperwork and often need to hand deliver the documentation.

OK, location found, fiber nearby, mounting asset identified, leasing completed, permitting completed, now we can mount and move ahead, right? OK, now we need to follow the engineering, install the unit, connect the fiber, power to the unit. Did you say power? Did anyone order power? This is something else that needs to be taken care of, power at the pole.  So now, at a pole we need fiber and power. Both have a long lead time.

OK, pole, permitting, lease, power, fiber, so now we can mount, and connect it up. Then we’re off to the races. Well, it is mounted to the pole so we are good there. We connected the backhaul to the SAR, we are good there. We now power it up and it should work, right? Make sure the antennas are facing the proper direction and the tilt is set up properly. Now you need to make sure it is provisioned properly, that means that the SAR has to be integrated, then the small cell has to be integrated, then the carrier will want to make a test call and they may or may not want to optimize it with someone doing a walk test. Remember, if the cell has any problems it could create more problems with self interference. The engineering has to take that into consideration. Self interference is taken very seriously because it will create dead spots.

Once the small cell is up and running, life is good in that area, loading is off the macro and on the small cell. The carriers plan to put 10s of thousands of these in. I believe that if the FCC allows more bandwidth to be freed up for LTE, this will be the way that utilities will access their fixed networks. Public Safety already is carving out their chunk of LTE bandwidth. I think that they will rely heavily on small cells because they need coverage in specific areas. Let’s face it, LTE and small cells will be an amazing thing as the world of data takes over. Video will not be just for entertainment, it will be the requirement both ways, video streaming up to the network and down to a device.

OK, now I gave you a background, how does it affect the field worker? Well, you may need to be certified to mount the small cell by the OEM. Remember that the warranty will be affected if you mess something up. Also, this is going to have intricacies that may be affected by how you mount it. Antenna direction, fiber skills, and power connection could all play into this. The Power Distribution Unit (PDU) may be mounted at a different location to power the SAR and Small Cell. You need to know what you are doing to make the connections. It will take skills. Chances are good that you will need to make a test call for the integration phase, provisioning, to be completed. You may need to program the SAR by connecting your laptop to it and uploading a specific configuration file. You need skills! This isn’t Wi-Fi, it’s carrier grade equipment. If you do tower work you know the difference.

I plan to do more on small cells in the future. This is something I have been working on and I have more information to share.

Let me know what you’re struggling with out there in the field. I would like to write about something that could help. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or hitting me up on Facebook or reach out to me on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/wadesarver/! I am looking for tower pictures on Facebook page! I am working on a new book, an aid for the field worker and I plan to have a new website ready soon. I have been very busy on other projects but I think that it should happen soon.

Hey, I talk about learning fiber training and I see that JDSU has free webinars on fiber, go their website here and see if you can learn more about fiber! The webinars are free!

To learn more about LTE and Small Cells;

http://lteuniversity.com/get_trained/video_tutorials/default.aspx

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/solutions/small-cells

http://www.thinksmallcell.com/

http://www.qualcomm.com/solutions/wireless-networks/technologies/1000x-data/small-cells

http://www.3gpp.org/hetnet

http://www.ericsson.com/res/thecompany/docs/press/media_kits/hetnet_infographic_vertical_04.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_cell

http://www.wilson-street.com/2013/10/how-to-deploy-metro-cells-infographic-3-part-1/

http://www.wilson-street.com/2013/10/how-to-deploy-metro-cells-infographic-3-part-2/

http://www.wilson-street.com/2013/07/public-access-small-cells-roadmap-to-successful-deployments/

http://electronicdesign.com/engineering-essentials/understanding-small-cell-and-hetnet-movement