Large venues in the past, primarily sports stadiums and conference halls, met their need for consistent quality of indoor signal across the length and breadth of venues with DAS. However, device use is increasingly diversifying with more types of large venues, including enterprise and public transportation. Furthermore, desired service attributes have expanded and are as varied as high quality of experience and spectrum efficiency, high bandwidth, security, low latency, and jitter.
Millimeter-Wave (mmWave), cellular technology providing access to massive bandwidth and capacity available in frequency bands above 24 GHz, is increasingly desired worldwide for high-density communications, superior quality of experience, and fixed wireless access. For high-density communications, usually in narrow spaces, the spectrum becomes a binding constraint. Available options such as the CBRS and the mid-spectrum bands have natural limits. C-band has been much sought lately. However, none of these spectrum bands have as much capacity as mmWave.
However, mmWave does not meet all the needs of large venues. More than one or few complementary private and public networks, cellular and fixed wireless, and ethernet, are needed to meet the needs of machine-to-machine communications, those of entities and guests.
DAS has an enduring value for an even distribution of signals for some use cases. However, cellular wireless would supplement it for communication with moving objects and persons.
Valuable properties of mmWave for large venues
mmWave and massive MIMO (another technology that brings vast improvements in throughput and efficiency) play a critical role in controlling costs of soaring data consumption while maintaining the quality of service. A study completed by Analysys Mason of mmWave deployments in the UK found the benefit-cost ratio ranging between 4 and 30 (benefit far outweighs the cost by more than four to 30 times). For airports, it was 20, and for sports stadiums, it was 4.
mmWave has far more spectrum capacity than the coveted CBRS and mid-band spectrum, allowing for a superior quality of experience. LG U+, for example, has used it in large venues such as hospitals and metro stations to make up for its shortfall of 20 MHz less than its competitors in the coveted and more expensive mid-band spectrum of 3.4-3.7 GHz 5G band. By adding mmWave, it achieved data rates of 1 Gbit/second using 80 MHz of the spectrum—a 40 percent higher rate of utilization than its competitors, who had 100 Mhz.
Recent research by Open Signal has confirmed the significant boost in data consumption of over 2.5 times by mmWave users compared to 5G. The benefit is greater for operators like AT&T, who have focused their mmWave deployments in high-density airports and venues where customers gain greater satisfaction with a shorter time for file downloads.
Massive bandwidth needs of MEC and mmWave
To lower latencies for mission-critical applications, enterprise users have concentrated compute power at the Multi-Edge Access Computing (MEC), often as an extension of the otherwise centralized cloud. They want a bring the MECs closer to the far edge where space is even more constrained. Additionally, bandwidth needs are growing with the adoption of more advanced applications such as locational intelligence for applications such as drones and autonomous vehicles. Similarly, digital twins have applications such as visualizing the design of large venues during construction. mmWave meets such massive bandwidth needs favorably, the narrow space notwithstanding.
High-bandwidth deployments for advanced intelligent factory applications
The first all mmWave private network established by Taiwan’s ASE, Chunghwa Telecom, and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc deployed advanced smart factory applications taking advantage of the ultra-high bandwidth. The factory captures the images of goods carried by mobile autonomous vehicles with high-resolution cameras, analyzing them with AI. The factory also has built-in remote assistance, with augmented and mixed reality glasses, which kicks in after identifying defects.
Low-latency communications on bullet trains
Low-latency communication is illustrated by the successful implementations in Japanese bullet trains, traveling at 283 miles an hour, for use cases involving 8K and 4K videos. NTTDoCOmo executed it with 5G wireless data transmission speeds exceeding 1.0 Gbps. The trial used advanced beamforming and beam tracking technologies to achieve stable service.
Spectrum efficiency and fixed wireless access
Large venues’ bandwidth needs have recurring encounters with the Shannon limits of the radio spectrum. They have met their rapidly expanding appetite for the radio spectrum with the unlicensed spectrum using Wi-Fi and the mid-band shared spectrum using LTE/5G. They are attempting to use the mid-band unlicensed spectrum. The unlicensed spectrum poses technological challenges, and the shared spectrum is a relatively narrow slice of the spectrum.
mmWave is a vast swathe of high frequencies, albeit with a narrow range. In this context, fixed wireless access is an ideal use case that takes advantage of the bandwidth without getting constricted by its narrow range. Boston-based Starry uses the 37 GHz band to provide fixed wireless access for multi-dwelling units. Orange is experimenting at airports, railway stations, and concert halls with mmWave in the 26 GHz range. For example, at the Rennes train station in France, passengers can download movies they can watch on-board the trains.
Conclusion
Networks for large venues are undergoing a paradigm shift as bandwidth needs explode. Wi-Fi met most needs in the past but would have to be replaced by a panoply of choices. Each venue would be configured for the combination of its use cases. Their trade-offs for capacity, propagation range, and cost performance would need a variety of mmWave networks, mid-band and CBRS networks, and ethernet and wireless networks to meet future needs. Above all, mmWave relieves the bandwidth constraints to achieve the overall business goals of each deployment.
