The TEKO Cell Hub is a fiber-connected node targeting the connectivity needs of enterprise buildings, JMA Wireless said
JMA Wireless has launched a new product dubbed TEKO Cell Hub, a fiber-connected node that supports the use of the Citizens Broadband Radio Service at 3.5 GHz.
JMA Wireless said the new solution uses fiber to deliver multiple licensed carrier bands and CBRS spectrum in a single unit. This new offering works directly with the firm’s recently announced XRAN technology, a software baseband solution operating on off-the-shelf servers. The company said that the new offering was designed specifically to address the needs of enterprise buildings.
“We are seeing demand for this products in buildings in the 25,000 to 1 million square-foot range. No other vendor in the industry has built a specific solution for this space,” Todd Landry, corporate VP of product and market strategy at JMA Wireless, told RCR Wireless News.
Unlike small cells, Cell Hub is a multi-carrier and multi-band solution. The Cell Hub unit uses fiber to connect directly into a standard server, JMA Wireless said.
“JMA Wireless’ Cell Hub is a clear example of emerging multi-carrier Distributed Radio Systems (DRS) that can offer scalable coverage for middle sized enterprises,” said Kyung Mun, principal analyst at Mobile Experts. “By utilizing the new XRAN platform for their Cell Hub, they have essentially moved the DRS segment into the virtualized RAN world.”
Each Cell Hub provides 2X2 multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) with one watt of power, and Cell Hubs can be cascaded to easily scale up coverage and capacity as needed, the wireless solutions provider said.
Unlike small cells that are based on third-party chip sets, Cell Hub uses XRAN for its baseband processing, which facilitates the process to expand or adjust capabilities via a software change. JMA Wireless also highlighted that its adaptable sectorization allows each operator individual sector mapping, enabling RF engineers to virtually eliminate the battle against signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) experienced with small cells while optimizing in-building performance by further segmenting the sectors by tenant.
“Cell Hub with XRAN aligns with the new Distributed Radio Systems (DRS) segment, but adds virtualized RAN to the solution,” said Landry.
The executive also said that JMA Wireless will initially focus on the North American market with the new solution but highlighted that the firm will also address the global market as well.
JMA Wireless also said that the new product and XRAN can also be utilized in conjunction with the TEKO DAS platform as a hybrid solution.
“Buildings are complex, some areas of a common ownership may require a DAS, while other areas a Cell Hub. The benefit is they can use a common virtualize RAN with XRAN and we can address the specific needs of these building areas,” Landry said.
The TEKO DAS provides cellular coverage and capacity for indoor and outdoor environments. environment. JMA Wireless’s core DAS platform has two main elements. The master unit is a rack-based platform delivering modularity that allows configurations for different needs and a future-proof design. The remote units (RUs) are connected to the master unit via a single mode optical fiber to distribute multiple frequency bands and multiple Carriers/MNOs to each remote unit, or to multiple RUs to configure multipath configurations.
