Future-Ready Mobility

Small cells, DAS, and crafting a future-ready mobility landscape

No bars? No thank you.
Executive Summary
In this white paper, we will illustrate how:
The enterprise rallying cry of “no bars, no thank you” is
heard far and wide across the land. It can be heard in real
▄
Buildings of all sizes, educational and business
estate acquisition and lease renewal. It can also be heard campuses, and geographic areas can be easily
when enterprise facilities managers shift well-connected equipped with a solid mobile foundation.
employees to an area with insufficient cellular coverage. ▄
Taking a future-ready stance in acquiring systems
When employees loudly push back due to poor service, it’s a today will help this investment carry over into the
clear sign that mobility is not just an optional amenity, but 5G era.
it’s mission critical.
▄
Capacity in long-lived transport infrastructure
Richer apps and experiences that incorporate video needs to be able to satisfy the expected 48% CAGR
will continue to drive the tremendous traffic growth in of smartphone traffic.
enterprise cellular consumption, accelerating wholesale
replacement and integration of enterprise communications ▄
The flexibility of enterprise small cells can address
platforms. This will, in turn, accelerate the adoption of a variety of cellular demands, including
progressive strategies that value both Wi-Fi and cellular as replacement of legacy base stations.
equally important halves of a total wireless solution. ▄
Small cells and DAS can be integrated to provide a
Exciting times, indeed. flexible environment that incorporates emerging
cellular technologies.

Introduction
The term “future-ready” implies that investments in cellular systems today can be used at least in part for the 5G transition
that’s coming. Simply put, future-ready infrastructure investments are made a forward-leaning direction, so that they can be
valuable during 5G transition. The term “future-proof” does not apply in this situation, because it implies a guarantee that
the whole investment will carry over.

Now, let’s examine each portion of the technology stack and identify a future-ready posture based on what we know today.

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Transport Infrastructure
Let’s start at the bottom of the technology stack, which will be based on optical transport in our future-ready infrastructure.
Optical infrastructure has been the sole solution in the vertical telecom riser since the 1990s, so there is nothing new to
consider here. In greenfield construction, the expected 48 percent CAGR of cellular traffic combined with more than 20 years
of depreciation drives the installation of riser cabling with massive fiber counts. Given the significant construction costs to
remediate an undersized cable plant, installing at least a 500-fiber cable to each floor’s telecom closets is the more practical
approach to take.

SSP Radio Node SSP Radio Node

SSPRN 20 SSPRN 24
Mounted Below Mounted Below
SSP Radio Node Suspended Ceiling Suspended Ceiling
SSPRN 19
Mounted Below
Suspended Ceiling

KEY
SSP Radio Node SSP Radio Node SSP Radio Node
SSP Positive Radio Node SSPRN 21 SSPRN 22 SSPRN 23
Mounted Below Mounted Below Mounted Below
SSP Active Radio Node Suspended Ceiling Suspended Ceiling Suspended Ceiling

Actual As-Built Densification Floor Plan

Horizontally, technology is shifting from copper to fiber. Indoor cellular will almost certainly require optical transport to
handle the planned data rates of the future. Beyond data rates, the other driver that creates system capacity is densification,
or many smaller cells/sectors. Devices perform better on smaller cells because there are less devices contending for each
cell’s finite resources. Densification implies that estimated coverage areas must be assumed during design and plenum
cabling must be installed in the overhead to feed them. Similar to riser environments, installing higher fiber count is
recommended. Additionally, to power a coverage area’s network infrastructure, use composite cabling that has copper
conductors for power along with the optical fibers for network traffic. This strategy reduces implementation costs and
long-term operations expenses by centralizing the floor’s horizontal infrastructure power and network to its telecom
closet(s).

“future-ready infrastructure will be based on optical transport”

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Distributed Antenna System (DAS)
After establishing a future-ready transport, active electronics must be connected. For most buildings today, there is a desire
to support two or more mobile operators. The two major U.S. operators are important to enterprises due to their national
network coverage and focus on the enterprise market. Depending on building size, the solution of choice could be small cells
or DAS; however, let’s assume that we want to choose DAS for a building.

There are several generations of technology competing against each other in the DAS market, and many may not be future-
ready. To simplify the discussion, let’s compare this to cars. Today, if a luxury car company was still building 2009 model
vehicles alongside 2019 models, would you really buy a 2009 version if you had a 2019 version available? This is the state of
available DAS solutions – options range from coax cables with very lengthy hand-crafted installations to software-driven
modular optical platforms that operate by software and a keyboard. The 2019 models support mmWave, 5G-NR, user speeds
well above 1 Gbps, and cell densification.

DAS 5G-NR
Test Results

Pass

Band: PCS (Band 2)

CH BW: 20 MHz
CH Power: 33 dBm
RMS EVM: 0.8%
(limit 3.5% max)

Most important future-ready consideration is that most DAS installed today will experience spectrum refarming. Refarming
means that the LTE signal source on the DAS headend will be replaced with a 5G signal source. At Corning, our engineering
teams have already tested and successfully passed 5G-NR over our optical DAS solution. When evaluating products today, a
future-ready DAS already has 5G-NR test results available.

“future-ready DAS already has 5G-NR test results available”

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Small Cells
The Corning SpiderCloud® enterprise radio access network (E-RAN), with a broad family of radios, flexible deployment
topology, and IP/Ethernet transport, is the key to servicing more locations than ever before. The radio nodes enable
unprecedented cellular coverage and capacity through secure IP/IPSec data connections over readily available Ethernet and
internet services. An E-RAN system is made up of one services node that manages a group of radio nodes (access points)
that are attached to it.

Services Node
The services node lies at the heart of the SpiderCloud E-RAN
solution. It ensures that the E-RAN system is easy to deploy
and manage and that it delivers the performance mobile
operators expect. The services node is access technology
agnostic, supporting UMTS, LTE, and LTE-LAA. It orchestrates
the self-organizing network (SON) process, controls the
operation of different radio nodes during neighbor discovery,
gathers information from different radio nodes, and creates
optimized neighbor lists based on information received from
the neighbor scans.

SON capabilities include:

▄
Discovering macro cells in the area, along with the
internal small cell and Wi-Fi topology.
▄
Assigning UMTS primary scrambling codes, LTE physical
cell identifier, and LAA unlicensed channels. No GPS Cabling
▄
Setting maximum transmit power levels.
▄
Automatically configuring cell neighbor lists to make the
system operational.

Installation benefits for E-RAN compared to base stations

include:
▄
No GPS cable required; typical installation cost is
$3,000-$6,000 and up to $50,000 in a high-rise building.
No 48 VDC Power
▄
No -48 VDC power source required.
▄
Two standard 110 VAC wall outlets required for services
node. That’s it. AC
▄
No dedicated backhaul circuit required. A 1 Gbps MPLS
Internet
or metro Ethernet drop can cost thousands of dollars
No Dedicated Backhaul Circuit
per month.
▄
1 RU (1.75-in) of space required in 19-in rack.

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Radio Nodes
Like Wi-Fi access points, radio nodes are small with low profiles. The E-RAN offers a wide range of radio nodes for many
applications and mobile operator configurations. All models are powered by PoE+ (802.11at) Ethernet switch ports.

Installation is quick and easy using commonly available PoE+.

1. Pull a structured cable (CAT 5e or greater).
2. Attach the radio to a wall or ceiling.
3. Connect Ethernet patch cords at both ends.

The available family of radio nodes is shown below.

Capabilities SCRN-310 Dual LTE SCRN-220 Agile LTE SCRN-320 LTE-LAA SCRN-330 TDD-LTE CBRS SCRN-340 Dual LTE
Band 4 + 5 GHz
Band 4 & 13 Band 4 (66), Band 2 (25), Band 41 (Sprint) Band 2 (25)/4 (66) and
Available bands Band 2 + 5 GHz
Band 4 & 2 Band 12, or Band 13 or 48 (CBRS) Band 13/14 (FirstNet)
Band 4 (66) + 5 GHz
225 Mbps (-0413) 270 Mbps (Chan 32 only) Peak DL rate of
Peak speed (Mbps) 150 150 Mbps
300 Mbps (-04L2) 400 Mbps (3 CCA) 100 Mbps with FC2
Transmit power 250 mW 500 mW 500 mW 500 mW 500 mW
Coverage 8,000 – 10,000 10,000 – 13,000 10,000 – 13,000 10,000 – 13,000 10,000 – 13,000
Internal Internal Internal Internal Internal
Antennas
External as option External as option External as option External as option External as option

Deployment Options
The E-RAN is very flexible and can be deployed in three modes to maximize use of resources and provide the premium
quality cellular services that subscribers expect. From a 10,000 sq ft retail shop to a 1,000,000 sq ft building, there is a
solution.

E-RAN has three deployment modes:

Driving DAS Headend

Services Node DAS Headend DAS Remotes

On a per-sector basis, E-RAN can save an operator or enterprise 30 percent over a

Building
traditional base station. Multiple mobile operators have already switched to E-RAN for
their enterprise DAS customers. Additionally, the internet is used to connect to each
operator’s core network instead of through expensive private networks.

Corning has developed a mounting rail, brackets, and passives kit for use in E-RAN
headend construction. It ensures that DAS installations have a stable radio installation.
I
It also creates a point-of-interface (POI) to the DAS headend for use in operations and
management. Services Node Ethernet
Corning Optical Communications Switches Future-Ready Mobility White Paper | CMA-721-AEN | Page 6
 Building

Traditional Small Cell

I
Services Node Ethernet
Switches

Building
E-RAN can be deployed like a Wi-Fi network throughout
a commercial structure using an Ethernet VLAN supplied
by the enterprise for transport. When a single operator
Services Node
configuration is required and throughput-per-square-foot DAS Headend DAS Remotes
matters, E-RAN shines for cost savings, ease of installation,
and quality.
From 1 to Building
20
radio nodes
In tight budgetary situations, an E-RAN can get the first
Services Node Small cell or
operator in-service and during next budget cycle, a Corning
DAS headend
DAS solution can be implemented that reconfigures the deployment
E-RAN for useCenter
Data in the headend.

INVESTMENT PROTECTION: Building

I E-RAN “distributed small cells”
installationServices
can be pulled
Nodeback to Ethernet
headend and drive Corning® ONE™ Switches
DAS solution when enterprise is
ready to add additional operators.
Building

Centralized Services Node

From 1 to 20
radio nodes
Services Node Small cell or
DAS headend
deployment
Data Center

E-RAN can also be used to support a geographic region, like Building

a college campus or downtown area. In this deployment, Shopping Center
Police

the services node is shared in a data center. The buildings

are IP connected via installed radio nodes. This shares the
capacity of the services node and internet backhaul across Fire Station

all of the attached buildings. This installation can easily

drive traditional small cell or DAS headend configurations Data Center
MTSO
in remote buildings. Example urban configuration outlined Broadband Provider
Metro Ethernet
below. City Hall

Hospital/
Commercial Emergency Room
Office Building

Corning Optical Communications Future-Ready Mobility White Paper | CMA-721-AEN | Page 7

Hybrid Integration
Internet Backhaul to Core Networks Enterprise RAN (One Per Operator) Corning® ONE™ DAS

Services Node
Remote

Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Remote
Remote
Services Node Remote
Remote
Remote

Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Remote
Remote
Services Node Remote
Operator A Remote
Remote

Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Radio Node
Remote
Remote
Remote
Operator B Integrated Headend Remote

Operator C

The pain of acquiring base stations directly from operators significantly improved in the last year when three of the four
major U.S. mobile operators approved small cell E-RAN as a suitable replacement for the traditional base station. Corning
has many E-RAN-fed DAS sites up and running across the U.S., and it is a proven solution. For enterprises who must fund
entire installations, E-RAN offers the headend advantages of lower acquisition cost, monthly electricity use at a fraction of
comparable alternatives, and lower physical space consumption.

Base Station E-RAN

146,765 kW Annual Power Usage for Two eNodeB 6,010 kW Annual Power Usage for Two ERAN

62,026 kW Annual Power Usage for 5 Tons Headend AC - No AC Required in E-RAN Headend

216 Annual Tons of CO2 (Base Station + AC) 6 Annual Tons of CO2

$40,297 Cost of Power (New York) $1,160 Cost of Power (New York)

$28,395 Cost of Power (Dallas) $817 Cost of Power (Dallas)

$38,417 Cost of Power (Los Angeles) $1,106 Cost of Power (Los Angeles)

Corning E-RAN Business Savings Year One Year Two to Five

Savings by Purchasing Corning E-RAN $207,474 -

Electricity Cost Avoidance (Dallas Cost Basis) $27,578 $137,890

Carbon Footprint Reduction 210 Tons 1,049 Tons

Summary
Corning offers an end-to-end future-ready solution today that features:
▄
High-capacity optical transport to equip vertical risers and composite cables for horizontal zone-based designs.
▄
Software-driven optical DAS solutions that are proven to carry 5G-NR signals
▄
A SpiderCloud® E-RAN small cell platform that is approved by three of four major U.S. mobile operators and features a
wide range of available cellular radios.

From cabling to licensed/shared/unlicensed spectrum,

Corning enables future-ready enterprise mobility.
To explore further, visit corning.com/wireless.

Corning Optical Communications LLC • PO Box 489 • Hickory, NC 28603-0489 USA

800-743-2675 • FAX: 828-325-5060 • International: +1-828-901-5000 • www.corning.com/opcomm
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is ISO 9001 certified. © 2019 Corning Optical Communications. All rights reserved. CMA-721-AEN / July 2019