@ CTIA: NSN and Tellabs talk of need for flexible, scalable networks

ORLANDO, Fla.—Nokia Siemens Networks continued innovation in network architecture by introducing an approach called Liquid Radio, which directs broadband capacity to where the network needs that extra capacity.
The solution builds on existing services the infrastructure vendor provides today, and is designed to be commercially available this year. “Our Liquid Radio architecture removes the constraints of traditional mobile broadband networks to address the ‘ebb and flow’ of traffic created by users’ movements across the network,” said Thorsten Robrecht, head of Network Systems product management at NSN in a prepared statement.
NSN believes that in the future, people will consume 1 GB of data per user per day, noted NSN’s Chris Ebert, who explained Liquid Radio as a suite of innovations that will pave the way for connected video. The heart of NSN’s solution is its Flexi Multiradio Antenna System and an active antenna that allows beamforming to connect a specific radio connection to a specific user via multiple technologies. NSN said that beamforming can deliver a capacity gain of up to 65%, when used as part of a heterogeneous network.
The self-organizing network solution moves capacity to a centralized location and shifts capacity with users to give the greatest capacity to the people who need it at the time, said Ebert. “It’s like having all the lights on in the house while everyone is sitting downstairs in the kitchen.”
Tellabs’ Stuart Bennington, director of global portfolio strategy, said even as operators are transition more and more to the packetization of data, aggregate demand is going up from the cell site, driving the need for both Ethernet and mobile backhaul solutions. Tellabs works with NSN on providing core and backhaul solutions for service providers. “Scalability is just has much of a challenge; helping the operators grow as they need to.”