Boomer Cellular Networks

The next-generation cellular networks

Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) have provided the world with mobile phone coverage by building cellular networks and continue to do so. We are now 5.5 billion unique mobile subscribers on the planet, and the growth rate is approx 3% year over year.

More and more people have started to use their mobile phones for advanced services that are becoming necessary for being part of society and modern business. To be able to do critical things like the below is getting more and more pressing:

Payments
Digital identification
Government services
Video Conferencing and Virtual Meetings

Drivers for more cellular network coverage and user experience

Several vital drivers make it increasingly critical for us to expand high-quality cellular networking and make affordable mobile internet services available for more people and IoT devices on the planet.

Customer expansion and experience are important for MNOs to compete and keep down customer churn.

Business development
Democratization
The big internet companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft need to grow and continue to develop their business models
Development of the use of IoT
More and more people want to work remotely
Challenges with mobile Internet user experience
Our ability to reach the 17 SDGs defined by the United Nations

The challenges with building better mobile coverage and capacity

There are many challenges that we must be able to overcome to provide better mobile coverage and user experience.

The cost of building and maintaining cellular networks is enormous. MNOs are not interested in covering areas where they can not profit from new subscribers or existing subscribers with more advanced services.

The cost of building and maintaining must drastically be lowered. Challenges with building and maintaining cellular networks in operations also need to be mastered. Lower energy consumption so that network antennas and towers can run without access to an electrical grid or diesel generators.
At the same time, MNOs must be able to provide a better user experience. There are many challenges today with delays, poor data coverage, indoor coverage, and disturbances during both digital meetings and traditional voice calls. This is due to low data rates and struggles to be able to send and receive a clear signal.

Building and maintaining cellular networks are complex. There are a lot of critical components that need to work together. They are normally different components divided into RAN (Radio Access Network) and PAN (Passive Access Network).

Extreme range and super low TCO

Use this calculator to see different scenarios, on how to connect unconnected areas in the world. The calculations are based on the average data usage of 10 GB data per month. Your calculations are presented in the chart below:

These are some number you can try out

Africa: area 30,221,532 km², population 1,100,000,000
Sweden: area 447,435 km², population 9,793,172
USA: area 9,826,675 km², population 321,493,080
California: area 423,970 km², population 38,802,500
UK: area 130,279 km², population 53,012,456
Victoria (Australia): area 227,416 km², population 5,603,100

Enter the area to cover (km²)

Customers to serve

Average data usage (GB per customer per month)

Radio Innovation's sites compared
to standard sites

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More coverage

({{ (area / Total_Sites_118()) - (area / Total_Sites_Trad()) | number:0}} km²/site)

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Reduced RRH:s

(QTY {{Total_RRH_Trad() - Total_RRH_118() | number:0}})

_x{{(Capex_Trad() / Capex_118()) | number:0 }}

Lower cost

({{Capex_Trad() / subscriber / 120 | currency:'$':2}} vs {{Capex_118() / subscriber / 120 | currency:'$':2}})

Specification	Standard	RI
Number of sites	{{Total_Sites_Trad() \| number:0 }}	{{Total_Sites_118 () \| number:0 }}
Cost per GB /month /cust over 10 years	{{ (Capex_Trad() / subscriber / 120) / usage * 100 \| currency:'$':2}}	{{ (Capex_118() / subscriber / 120) / usage * 100 \| currency:'$':2}}
CAPEX per customer	{{Capex_Trad() / subscriber \| currency:'$':2}}	{{Capex_118() / subscriber \| currency:'$':2}}
CAPEX cost /customer /month over 10 years	{{Capex_Trad() / subscriber / 120 \| currency:'$':2}}	{{Capex_118() / subscriber / 120 \| currency:'$':2}}
CAPEX (towers and antennas)	{{Capex_Trad() \| currency:'$':0}}	{{Capex_118() \| currency:'$':0}}
Remote radio head (RRH) ¹	{{(Total_RRH_Trad() * 2000) \| currency:'$':0}}	{{(Total_RRH_118() * 2000) \| currency:'$':0}}

The calculations are based on results from out test site in Östhammar, Sweden measured in Q1 2017.
With power and transmission included, total cost per customer will be reduced further. Calculations will differ depending on frequency bands, number of operators per site, local variations, terrain, etc.

¹ In our calculation, we use $2,000 per RRH.

Boomer Cellular Networks (BCN)

Antennas are at the heart of the Mobile Communication Network solution. However, the antenna represents a relatively small part of the mobile network infrastructure.

If an antenna could send radio waves with a significantly higher gain, there would be a dramatic change to providing more coverage and data rate for a considerably lower cost of investment and operations. The concept of Boomer Cellular Networks (BCN) is all about this.
To solve the challenges with coverage and quality, it’s required to think long-term and short-term simultaneously. The long-term effects are the final goals, but short-term investments in BCN make up the path to those goals.

Why is the long-term perspective critical?

Enhanced value of the site thanks to an increasing number of users.
Increased customer satisfaction and lower customer churn.
Improved society and the development of businesses that need digital mobile infrastructure
Sustainability with energy savings and significantly lower operational costs.

Why is short-term critical?

Competition between MNOs makes it beneficial to find clever differentiation and short-term advantages. It also makes it possible for greenfield MNOs to enter the market.
It can be less complicated to take small steps in improving the network coverage and quality and use new technology to expand over time.
Pressure from the authorities to connect certain areas.

Existing antenna technologies vs Boomer Cellular Networks

Current antenna technology is focused on chiming loads of bands into one antenna unit, sacrificing the gain. That way, the products will, in general, be suited for regularly sized cells, which in turn will require the cellular network operators to keep implementing a large number of sites.

With that strategy, getting the revenues needed for an investment to pay off is troublesome.

Current technology also needs stronger margins for limited output power, which is a current issue now worldwide with energy-saving targets in the industrial world and a lack of electricity in remote regions in the developing world.

This is how BCN technology works.

BCN technology is not focused on being a regular-sized product. Still, mobile operators can avoid implementing a huge number of sites, thanks to the products being more powerful with a significantly longer reach. BCN products are also designed to distribute the benefits more towards the cell edge than other products, to be as fair as possible to all the users in the cell. Sometimes this is referred to as “The Robin-Hood Effect”.

At the same time, BCN uses multiple beams per sector, which secures the data speed while serving large areas.

Traditional Antenna
Single-beam system
2 ports / sector

BCN-Antenna System
Dual-beam system
4 ports / sector

BCN-Antenna System
Quad-beam system
8 ports / sector

The most striking difference between the BCN concept and a traditional one is that BCN is based on a modular building practice, where panels are stacked vertically, forming a “parallel circuit” of antenna panels that work together as one but with more gain.

BCN uses vertical and horizontal lobe shaping units to squeeze the radiated beams vertically and horizontally.

BCN is totally passive and agnostic, making it compatible with any radio equipment, independent of vendor, and with Open RAN.

Boomer Cellular Network antenna technology benefits

Modular solution with stacked antenna panels working as one unique system.
High gain using the aforementioned stacked panels.
High capacity using multiple beams.
Reduced TCO (total cost of ownership).
Seamless outdoor and indoor coverage.
Better efficiency thanks to empty air cavities.
Goes hand-in-hand with any Radio Base Station provider - Robust, passive, and agnostic.

Since the BCN focuses on the high gain (up to nearly 30 dBi) instead of the size of the antenna, it can allow the operators to implement or rent fewer sites. The cost of ownership can be reduced by 60%, as much as 70-85%, including transmission. It can consequently reduce the required maintenance and logistics and accelerate the deployment of a new network at a lower cost.

A limited number of sites means a reduction of the CO2 footprint. As a result, operators get an opportunity to reduce energy consumption and improve their public image. It also makes using solar panels instead of diesel-powered antenna towers possible. The risk of operation problems will be reduced.

In a more urban environment, the BCN-concept allows much better in-building penetration and customer experience. It’s a seamless transition from outdoors to indoors.

To put it differently, BCN offers a larger/stronger link budget than other concepts. The strength of the base station antenna benefits downlink and uplink equally, strengthening them both as much.

Examples of typical implementations of Boomer Cellular Networks technology

Road and Area Coverage

The BCN concept is excellent for coverage of extensive road stretches. The reduction in terms of the number of sites can be as much as x3 thanks to the powerful reach of the antennas, with an estimated OPEX- and CAPEX-saving of the same magnitude.

Converting reach to its two-dimensional counterpart - area -, it’s apparent that the savings can become very large, as much as up to 75% has been calculated by Radio Innovation customers.

Improving customer experience

The enhanced link budget of BCN antennas can be used to improve the user experience for the connected subscribers significantly. The benefits are evident with a wall penetration proven to be three times as strong as a regular antenna. Several times the data speed makes a big difference for the individual user or can serve way more subscribers in a scenario where low speed serves the purpose.

Maritime coverage

BCN can also effectively be used to cover Maritime areas. This image is an example of how a Maritime area can be covered. In this case, a 180 km long busy ferry line with 2 million passengers per year can be covered with only 2 towers.

The MNO that has built the network has found that it would become more competitive by improving the customer experience on the ferries and stepping into the maritime connections. This is why they wanted to cover this area with 4G. A major ferry line company is also involved as they also want to improve their customer experience.

In the future, it could lead to coverage of the cargoships or offshore windfarms, easing the connection of the onboard IoTs. 5G is also in the pipeline.

Extreme Cell-Range Optimization

BCN has proven to be an excellent choice when wanting to optimize on both the software and the hardware side for extreme cell-size.

With BCN as hardware and an extended cell range feature in the software, cell edges have been moved from 28 to 80 km.