Extremely high frequency

InterDigital - Densification in millimeter-wave bands

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• published: 14 Aug 2016
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A conversation with Alpaslan Demir, Principal Engineer, InterDigital 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.