Liquid Radio

There are some interesting developments in modern mobile radio concepts that increase the efficiency of data transmission in the limited frequency spectrum available, make better use of free frequencies and reduce energy consumption. LightRadio from Alcatel-Lucent focuses on green IT and thus on energy efficiency, Cognitive Radio works with frequency efficiency by using unused frequencies, and Liquid Radio from Nokia Siemens Networks provides network capacity where it is needed.

As data volumes in mobile networks continue to grow rapidly, network operators are forced to provide enhanced broadband services with the highest possible quality. To meet this increasing demand for capacity, Nokia Siemens Networks has developed a mobile network architecture called Liquid Radio, where liquid refers to the fluid adaptation of network capacity to local and temporal demand. The concept does not require a conventional base station and decentralizes the radio technology in the antennas and the connection of the base stations is integrated into the network concept.

The liquid radio concept relies on so-called baseband pools with digital signal processing. In these baseband pools, the various mobile radio technologies such as GSM, 3GWiMAX or Long Term Evolution( LTE), which use different frequency ranges, and the different radio cells such as the microcell, picocell or femtocell are combined into a logical, heterogeneous mobile radio network and managed together. And antenna technology is dominated by active and smart antennas, which can use beamforming to direct the radio beam to where it is needed.

In the liquid radio concept, the conventional remote radio head( RRH) is converted into a flexible multi-radio antenna system with multiple radio sectors.