Small cell indoor deployments have been lacking despite 80% of traffic occurring indoors. Some reasons for this include: 1) Outdoor CPE solutions were seen as more cost effective than indoor small cells. 2) Small cells were not pocket friendly due to high costs, while WiFi access points were much more affordable. 3) Operator business models did not encourage indoor small cell deployment by sharing costs with organizations.

1. Small Cell indoor deployment: What went wrong?
Tremendous growth in smartphones penetration, higher per user traffic, cost reduction
in data plans and undistributed traffic patterns etc. are few of the catalysts for the multi-
fold increase in data traffic requirements and indeed have forced operators to look for
alternatives. If we go by numbers 80% of the traffic will be generated from indoors and
hotspots. Licensed spectrum is costly affair, hence WiFi convergence came to be a
perfect engagement.
But what happened to the small cells? Why not enough indoor deployments in urban
and dense urban areas with Pico or enterprise LTE small cells. Was WiFi the only
feasible/ultimate choice? Does small cells only stand a chance to flourish with so called
LTEU/LAA or in simple words in unlicensed world?
Nah!! I don’t think so! Then what possibly went wrong?
Here are few reasons (personal thoughts of course) which I feel are the reasons that’s
there aren’t enough LTE small cells indoors/Enterprise. Although I think people and
organizations have figured out many of these and are exploring these lately. But is it too
late or it was meant to be this way? I leave that on you to figure out. LTE world has
always found Macros as fascinating solution for coverage, capacity and revenue
generation. Outdoor CPE had been more feasible proposal for extending/enhancing
indoor coverage which make sense from cost perspective.
BYOD: What about my Choice and requirements:
Cellular world still lags “BYOD concept”. Enterprises/Home users love the idea of bring
your own device, they are free to choose the back-haul from local ISP
vendors/operators and they can select APs with specifications they wish. Imagine if
cellular operators start pushing this solution, buy your transmitting device, users are free
to choose the frequency/operator/network they wish as back-haul.
Pocket Friendly: “who wishes to fight must first count the cost” -Sun Tzu
The biggest show stopper has been the cost of cellular access points (radio units). They
are not very pocket friendly and that’s where WiFi gained momentum and snatched the

2. indoor/enterprise market from cellular. Statistics clearly proofs that how indoor users
prefer and connect mostly via WiFi.
Who should pay? Why not be partners in crime.
No need to use excel or calculator to figure out how costly it is to deploy LTE indoor
using a DAS or CRAN solution. WiFi is the clear winner here as well, it is so easy and
cost effective to deploy WiFi indoors and hence small cells are not in the picture till now.
Operators shall come up with special low cost deployments plans or share cost with the
organization for small cells deployment. Billing plans also need to be re-considered for
these deployments. May be the cost of power can be taken care by organization and OAM
by telecom operator. This can be Win-Win situation for both the parties. There is strong
need to have smart and sensible business models from operator to push small cells
deployment.
Although have read a lot about many companies working on few smart solutions
especially for indoor and enterprise deployments. One great example is LTE-P (private
lte) especially for enterprise deployments.
Antenna Integrated radio: Plug and Play for real.
Why cellular did not think of this earlier when they are using the same solution for
Macro. Another area where deployments indoors are still surprisingly working with the
orthodox solutions of DAS deployments. So much pain and cost is involved for both the
parties (operator and users) and hence increase the cost and time of deployment by
many-folds:
1. Surveys and re-surveys.
2. Cable routing/Deployment cost.
3. Cable (CPRI) cost (DU to RU).
4. Co-axial cables from RU to Antenna.
5. Antenna installation.
But why not antenna integrated radio units similar to APs? Doesn’t it make sense?
Centralized vs Distributed:
Use of CRAN can be another proposal. Optic cables can be replaced with CAT6
Ethernet/UTP cables to further lower the cost. Use of POE to power up Antenna

3. integrated radio units which will further reduce the cost of deployment and number of
cables.
Site Acquisition: Not specific to indoor itself
WiFi gets easy site acquisition and deployment permissions, if you are radio engineer
reading this article ,you will have a smile on your face reading my next few lines.
Probability 20-30% of times you get the decent acquisition the site
was actually planned. Same is happening with small cells,few may be due EMF myth,
others may be lack of knowledge transfer but never the less, I find it one of the reasons
for low deployment of LTE small cells more closer to human race
(indoors/communities/societies).
Synch with Macro layer:
It is very important for indoor and enterprise deployments to be in synch with outdoor
macro network without which it can end more horrible for both. I have actually witnessed
a case where the people sitting on edge cabins get worst throughput even with great
coverage from small cells, because of interference from macros. Cellular already have
all the solutions like CSG, ICIC, e-ICIC etc. which can be utilized for the similar
scenario.
Positives of having cellular indoors:
I am not not denying the fact that WiFi is a great solution very cost effective, real time
plug and play, BYOD, less hustle and pain but cellular have its own advantages such as
Stable quality with even high traffic load, Better interference management, better
adaptive modulation coding scheme ( 6.67bits/symbol (WiFi) and 7.43bits/symbol for
256 QAM).The ultimate solution is cellular + WiFi (being little diplomatic and playing
safe) but I believe cellular small cells have potential of having a great indoor and
enterprise solution even without LTEU/LAA.