Quintel Launches SONWav Adaptive Beamforming Multiband Slimline Antenna Application For VoLTE

Quintel Launches SONWav adaptive elevation beamforming features offered by SONWavTM Antenna can be used by Operators to enhance the fragile LTE uplink, in particular for VoLTE services.

Rochester, NY (PRWEB) - Quintel®, a leading innovator of spectrum and space-efficient base station antennas for wireless networks has launched new applications of its SONWavTM Antenna, which is designed to bolster the Uplink Link Budget for coverage challenged Low-Band LTE services, including VoLTE. When the SONWavTM antenna four Low-band RF ports are connected to a standard LTE 2T4R Radio (e.g. 700MHz or 850MHz bands), up to 50% spectral efficiency gains or up to 3dB effective Uplink Gain can be achieved, without an increase in antenna aperture size.. The benefits are similar to those achieved by using two X-Pol antennas, but SONWavTM, having a standard antenna width of 12”/300mm, is more practical at sites where it would be unfeasible to deploy two antennas, especially at Low-Band frequencies where antennas are much larger.

For decades the wireless industry had been chasing elevation beamforming adaptive antennas. Quintel is the first practical, deployable elevation beamforming antenna solution that address’ the mass market need for slimline, multiband/mulit-port passive antennas.

Quintel’s novel application of the SONWavTM antenna is particularly useful at cells which have aggressive down-tilts; such tilts perhaps being needed for Downlink interference or capacity management which may constrain the Uplink Link Budget. SONWavTM allows LTE Downlink to be optimized for capacity without worrying about the LTE Uplink. For example, consider a typical 35 meter base station with a cell edge at 1km. An 8o Antenna Tilt means that the cell edge may be >3dB off boresight. SONWavTM ensures this gain, on the uplink, can be recovered due to the unique way SONWavTM behaves as an Adaptive beamforming antenna in elevation, when connected to a simple 4-branch Rx radio running Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC). The application maximizes the range and QoS for VoLTE.

The SONWavTM Antenna will be initially available for the primary North American bands in 4ft, 6ft, and 8ft lengths: 4x Low-Band ports at 698-894MHz with 4x high-band ports as two conventional separate arrays at 1695-2400MHz. This will be followed by versions aimed at European and other markets extending the low-band ports to 960MHz, allowing legacy GSM/UMTS900 services to be hosted as well. SONWavTM also has an upgrade path to supporting future 4T4R Radio interfaces. The 3x tilts (Low, High, High) are controlled independently via fully internal RET actuators compliant to AISG1.1, AISG2.0 and 3GPP protocols.

Another powerful characteristic of all Quintel Antennas is that the Azimuth patterns have been optimized with network design and deployment in mind. The 3dB Azimuth beamwidth is ~65o as with most Base Station Antennas, but Quintel optimizes how the pattern rolls-off and where the sidelobes emerge such that there is minimal Inter-Sector Interference. when 3x sectors are deployed. This means for interference limited networks, where LTE traffic is high, Quintel antennas can deliver up to 25% higher capacity from this unique pattern optimization.

“Quintel’s SONWav antenna shocked the industry a year ago by being the first, and still to date, only deployed passive antenna that provides many of the features and benefits of 4-branch LTE with dynamic elevation beamsteering, which previously was thought could only be delivered by fully “smart antennas.” While smart antennas remain impractical for most applications and their widescale use still many years away from realization, Quintel’s SONWav elevation beamsteering solution is practical as it delivers advanced LTE 4-branch features in standard antennas sizes along with all the latest multiband/multi-port features now demanded by most wireless operators,” said Joe Veni, Quintel’s Vice President of Sales and Business Development. “This latest release of Quintel’s SONWav antenna, providing even more features that would normally require twice the number of antennas, along with our recently released 12-Port antenna, continue to allow wireless operator’s to extract the maximum capacity for minimum cost from their existing physical sites without incurring the cost of tower upgrades and redevelopment or having to install costly, complex and inefficient combining schemes.”

About Quintel
Quintel is the leading innovator in the design, development, and delivery of network-efficient Multi-Port slim-line Cellular Base Station antennas. The company’s products allow wireless operators to gracefully and cost-effectively increase capacity, by supporting legacy, new and future air-interfaces with independent optimization and low interference RF patterns. Quintel antennas are designed to maximize benefits wireless operators can derive from advanced LTE deployments including Carrier Aggregation, VoLTE, Cloud-RAN and MIMO systems. Quintel is headquartered in Rochester, New York with additional offices throughout North America and Europe. More information about Quintel is available at http://www.quintelsolutions.com.

“Quintel” and the Quintel logo are registered trademarks, and “QTilt”, “MultiServ” and “New Dimensions in Wireless” are trademarks, of Quintel Technology Limited. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.