Learnings from Small Cell Deployments

This chapter gives an overview of the main learnings from the small cell deployments in live networks. The results are collected from a large number of cases from multiple networks in Asia Pacific, United States and Europe. The chapter discusses the small cell motivations from the mobile operator point of view, and the small cell challenges. From an operator's perspective there are several challenges to building, optimizing and operating small cells. One challenge is providing suitable cost‐effective backhaul solutions to the small cells that scale down proportionally with the expected decrease in radio access network (RAN) equipment and leasing costs. The small cell products have been deployed in a number of commercial networks which allows engineers to get useful hands‐on learnings from the field. The chapter summarizes the 10 main learnings from the small cell measurements. It illustrates a small cell case study from the United States.