Manhole Covers Serve as Antennas Expanding Wireless Network Coverage
20th December 2018
The inconvenient truth of future 5G networks is that their increased high-speed bandwidth, and the use of the millimeter wave spectrum (the radio spectrum above 30 gigahertz) to achieve it, comes at a price: Those radio signals barely propagate around the corners of buildings.
To overcome this issue, the strategy has been a combination of small cells with massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas to increase coverage. Small cell deployment will be so extensive that the Small Cell Forum predicts 5G small cell will overtake 4G small cells by 2024. The total installed base of 5G or multimode small cells will reach 13.1 million by 2025, constituting more than one-third of the total small cells in use.