LightRadio
LightRadio is an energy-efficient mobile communications solution that starts at the base stations. This concept, developed under the leadership of Alcatel-Lucent and with the collaboration of Hewlett Packard and Freescale, is designed to make mobile networks leaner, simpler and much more cost-effective to manufacture.
The goal of LightRadio is to reduce operating and energy costs and to simplify the technical concept of mobile radio networks. These goals are achieved primarily by reducing the number of base stations and transmission towers and by simplifying the mobile network architecture. In the flexible, adaptable LightRadio concept, the various base station components are separated from one another, making the individual signal processing and transmission components small and lightweight and allowing them to be installed on telephone masts or on buildings. The signal processing works with intelligence distributed in the network, comparable to a carrier cloud, allowing the LightRadio architecture to be dynamically adapted to increasing transmission needs.
The transmit component, a cube with an edge length of 6 cm, integrates the broadband antenna arrays, the antenna switches, the radio module and an amplifier. The active broadband antenna array operates in multiband with several frequencies for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation networks and thus also for Long Term Evolution( LTE). A LightRadio cube can cover two frequency bands, for example those between 1.8 GHz and 2.6 GHz. Frequency band expansion is possible with additional transmitter components. Improved compression algorithms for quardature amplitude modulation also ensure more efficient utilization of the transmission capacity. All that is required to operate the LightRadio cubes is a broadband connection and a power supply. No new transmission towers are planned in the LightRadio concept; existing ones can be used for the installation of the LightRadio transmission component.
To make the components for signal processing and the transmitting unit as compact as possible, state-of-the-art system-on-chips( SoC) are used. The components react automatically to changes in field strengthand bandwidth requirements. They are implemented as relatively small cubes weighing only a few hundred grams, several of which together replace a base station.
A similar approach to energy efficiency is also used by Liquid Radio, a concept from Nokie Siemens Networks in which all technical aspects of the various mobile communications systems, such as the different frequency ranges, architectures and radio emissions, are concentrated and standardized in decentralized units.