09 Jul 2012

Nokia Siemens Networks wins Small Cell Forum Industry Award

Nokia Siemens Networks has won top honours at the Small Cell Forum Industry Awards 2012 in the “small cell network element design and technology innovation” category.

The Small Cell Forum has recognised the company’s Flexi Zone suite for its so-called Hot Zone approach, which facilitates cost-effective small cell deployment for increased capacity in congested mobile broadband networks.

“Nokia Siemens Networks’ Flexi Zone is undeniably ambitious, going beyond small cell deployments to adaptive clustering of small cell access points. More importantly, the solution was designed to deal with real-world operator HetNet challenges including interference mitigation, handover engineering and backhaul,” said Peter Jarich, service director, Current Analysis.

Based on the company’s Liquid Radio architecture, Flexi Zone comprises multiple, inter-connected low-power small cells that use a common resource pool managed flexibly by a zone controller.

These clusters of multi-radio access points complement the macro-cellular network to deliver the best coverage and capacity where and when required.

Flexi Zone allows local offloading of internet traffic, which according to Nokia saves up to 80% of transport and mobile packet core costs. By managing interfaces, simplifying backhaul and significantly reducing operational costs, it also reduces Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by 50% when compared with traditional small pico and micro cell deployments or the addition of new sites.

• Established in 2009, the Small Cell Forum Industry Awards recognize outstanding achievements within, and contributions to the small cell industry.

Most popular news in Cellular telecoms