Facebook made a prototype base station capable of covering a larger area than traditional macro sites. The company says it is a cost effective way to boost rural access.
Facebook communications systems lead Abhishek Tiwari said in a blog that the SuperCell is designed to be mounted on towers up to 250 metres high and uses high-gain, narrow-sector antennas to increase mobile data coverage range and capacity. Testing showed a single SuperCell can provide mobile data to an area up to 65-times larger than a traditional rural macro base station mounted on a 30-metre tower in the same environment.
In trials, the system delivered two-way voice and video call traffic to a range of 38km, with data rates of up to 7.8Mb/s in the downlink and 1.2Mb/s up over 40km. Facebook estimated each SuperCell could replace 15 to 25 traditional macrocells or hundreds of small cells, providing coverage to the same number of people with a 33 percent lower total cost of ownership.
Nokia and SURF, the organization for IT in Dutch education and research, have successfully reached a single carrier 800Gb/s optical transmission over SURF’s existing cross-border, multi-vendor research and education network infrastructure.
Nokia and Vodafone are collaborating to test the viability of L4S technology over passive optical networks (PON).
The GSMA believes that critical reform of European laws is necessary to position the region as a technology frontrunner by 2030.
