Study Validates Movandi Solution Cuts Millimeter Wave 5G Deployment Cost in Half
August 31, 2021
News
The Movandi approach is based on patented 5G millimeter-wave chipsets, RF power amplifiers, MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) antennas, BeamXR smart repeater modules, and BeamX algorithms and software. It provides mesh networking capability with redundant and dynamic routing and will soon provide control via cloud-based data centers to balance and optimize network routing based on traffic and quality of connectivity. This reduces the required number of gNBs through load-balancing traffic across networks to provide continuous connectivity, even in moving vehicles.
Movandi announced a new whitepaper titled “Repeaters Cut 5G mm-Wave Costs in Half,” published by Mobile Experts Inc., a team of industry professionals that provides technical analysis to the mobile industry in 5G, edge, cloud, and IoT development.
The study, conducted by Mobile Experts, Inc. founder and chief analyst Joe Madden, had a goal of assessing whether a new network architecture leveraging repeaters could reduce millimeter-wave network cost. It concludes that the traditional 4G, 3G, and 2G network expansion approach that adds more radios to increase capacity and coverage simultaneously becomes too expensive in a 5G mm-wave scenario. Unlike pre-4G generations of radios, 5G gNodeBs (gNBs) have significantly more capacity but limited range. Therefore, expansion by adding more radios underutilizes radio capacity while dramatically increasing costs and installation complexity.
To make his determination, Madden based his study on a Dallas neighborhood covering 1.4 square miles with a high density of sub-6 GHz traffic that, during peak times, generates about 31 Gb/s of traffic, but by January 2024 will likely double to nearly 61 Gb/s. After comparing various deployment scenarios, he concluded that rather than employing large numbers of next generation gNB radios — the traditional approach that is used for 4G and its predecessor standards — an effective way to satisfy both coverage and capacity requirements is using a mesh of smart repeaters. He estimated 10-year total cost of ownership for outdoor and substantial indoor coverage for each scenario:
- 95 gNB units only: $12.M ten-year TCO
- 10 gNB and 85 wired repeaters: $6.6M ten-year TCO, 48% savings
- 10 gNB, 60 wired repeaters, and 60 solar repeaters: = $6.0M 10-year TCO, 52% savings
“Our benchmarks with multiple mobile operators reveal that the costs of permitting, fiber, and power to a millimeter-wave network can be significant,” says Madden. “The use of repeaters to ‘spread’ the RF capacity throughout an urban area can effectively cut the operator’s cost dramatically.”
For more information, read the study here.
