Indoor Wireless Communications

10Small Cells

Prof. Simon R. Saunders

Adjunct Professor, Trinity College Dublin

Small cells are not a new concept, but over the last few years they have entered a new phase of growth and development, with a standards-based ecosystem, greater acceptance by operators and tens of millions deployed. As a foundational technology for network densification, they are a key element in advanced 4G and eventually 5G mobile technology.

In this chapter we chart the development of small cells, explaining some history and the technology principles and give an overview of market trends and the business case for small cells. We explain where small cells fit in the in-building wireless toolkit and explain how small cells are expected to contribute to the future evolution of the mobile network topology and to 5G.

This chapter draws on our previous book on femtocells (Saunders et al., 2009) and our work with Small Cell Forum ¹ and Real Wireless ² and the interested reader is referred to those sources for further details.

10.1 What is a Small Cell?

There is no formal definition of small cells, but they can most easily be explained as any cell serving mobile traffic which is not a conventional macrocell. The Small Cell Forum provides the following definition:

‘Small cells’ is an umbrella term for operator-controlled, low-powered radio access nodes, including those that operate in licensed spectrum and unlicensed carrier-grade Wi-Fi. Small cells typically have a range from 10 meters to several hundred ...