New Study Highlights Next Generation Wireless Opportunities

With 5G testing being conducted by operators around the world, the market for macro base stations is being analyzed to determine opportunities for next generation wireless services. A new study conducted by Mobile Experts on macro base station receivers is providing guidance on the outlook for Massive MIMO, Active Antenna Steering, and the future of 5G.

According to the report and Principal Analyst and Mobile Experts Founder Joe Madden, the decline of LTE (News - Alert) investment is here, which will result in the market slowing down in the coming years. However, Madden sees new features that will provide some relief into the macro base station market.

This relief is coming in the form of upgrades for thousands of base stations over the next two years with massive MIMO radios for China Mobile and Softbank (News - Alert) as they deploy next-generation wireless services. The growth is also going to be propelled with the pre-5G deployment that has already begun and is driving large numbers of radios because they use active antenna systems (AAS) for beamforming and for Massive MIMO.

“As we took steps through 2G, 3G, and now 4G, mobile infrastructure investments grew exponentially. The public adopted phones, then smartphones, and a widespread replacement of wired communications. LTE enables our smartphones to become personal computers in our back pocket.   Every generation of technology has a surge of deployment, and now the 4G surge is over. The 5G wave of deployment is coming, and we see some basic architectural changes that will make the hardware quite different than other generations,” added Madden. 

As Massive MIMO and TD-LTE systems continue to drive larger numbers of transceivers per base station, Mobile Experts is predicting rising numbers of transceiver shipments. This, according to the firm, will present growth opportunities for new types of components used in the radio. The report includes data on how the macro base station market will change, with detailed analysis on MIMO level (2x2 up to 16-stream MIMO), transceiver complexity, beamforming architecture, base station deployment by network density level, overall OEM market share and more.

Multiple Input/Multiple Output (MIMO) is the same technology responsible for delivering the fast speeds in 4G by increasing the number of antennas at the transmitter and receiver. Massive MIMO, on the other hand, uses even more antennas and they are operated fully coherently and adaptively to improve throughput and energy efficiency. This gives service providers the ability to deliver next generation wireless services with reduced latency and greater efficiency. 


Edited by Alicia Young