WIRELESS ANTENNAS : Scaling New Heights

As the need for faster, easier, and reliable connectivity is mounting in
emerging economies like India, wireless technology is creating a huge appeal for
sophisticated voice and data services. The broadband hungry nation represents a
huge potential for wireless technologies such as WiMax, Wi-Fi, 3G, in addition
to GSM, CDMA, and UMTS.

India being one of the huge markets in the world in terms of telecom
infrastructure investment, is gearing hard towards wireless options in providing
broadband connectivity. And wireless antenna plays an important and significant
role in the execution of wireless system.

The country is relatively young in the wireless communication sector as it
was only in 1995, when the first wireless communication network was set up. The
need to connect rural to global has essentially opened up the need for wireless
technologies in a big way and with recent announcement of 3G guidelines, the
industry is betting big for the next level of growth. Ironically, in the past,
the role of antennas in finished product was often undervalued. As in order to
achieve better performance sometimes a sizeable amount of endeavor is put into
enforcing a variety of coding techniques in radio systems. On the other hand,
the strength of a chain is determined by the weakest link and as a section of
the wireless communication system link, the antenna performance is equally
important.

Moreover, if the antenna system can give a nice and clear signal source for
the radio parts, it would be actually much easier for signal processing and
optimizing.

To achieve greater strength, it is also important to pay proper attention to
critical electrical and mechanical characteristics apart from frequency band,
beam width, and gain. It is important to mention that while electrical parts
include gain related to the distance of coverage, vertical beam width,
horizontal beam width, front to back ratio, and inter-modulation (related to
signal interference), the mechanical part includes size and weight (as one site
can only carry a few antennas) and material related with lift time.

Heading in a New Direction

The market, according to experts, is becoming ever more sophisticated
because of the tendency of industry players to focus on more highly engineered
site architecture that could enable them to reap benefits such as reduced
operation cost, improved coverage in rural areas, share multiple frequency
bands, and greater control over their network.

In the present scenario, variable tilt, higher gain, multi-band, and remote
electrical tilt (RET) antennas have become increasing popular as compared to
earlier fixed-tilt single band antennas.

Further, with the emergence of 3G markets, tri-band antennas have become
essential in providing value added services such as mobile broadband. The need
of multi-band antenna is gaining traction in the market. A single multi-band
antenna can operate under GSM, CDMA, and 3G frequencies, and can be shared by
different operators.

Another trend, according to industry experts is the increasing traction of
high-gain antenna.

“India has a large rural area; operators need high gain antenna to cover this
area and to reduce the number of sites, thus to reduce the cost. The high gain
antenna has an ability to cover larger areas as compared to low-gain and middle
gain antennas,” says Navin Vohra, country manager and director, South Asia
operations, Andrew Wireless Solutions. The company has made significant
investments in terms of manufacturing facilities in India and continues to
invest in R&D. With the growing need of the Indian market, which is building
tens of thousands of sites every year, the requirement of antennas is huge.

“We will put more effort on reaching to consumers and open an antenna
manufacturing factory in India with other antenna vendors to reduce the cost in
the future” Vohra added.

Also with the diversion of telecommunication market toward spread spectrum (UMTS
and CDMA) technology, antennas such as Di-Pole require controlling radiation
patterns, which significantly impact the capacity of the network and user
experience. Further, in new technologies that use TDD and MIMO capabilities,
antennas are needed to accomplish beam forming, which is the basis of an
optimized network, feel industry experts.

“Antenna is an integral part of any wireless technology. It receives and
transmits the signal of an entire system. It plays an important role in SNR
(signal-noise rate), conversion quality, reliability of system, coverage, etc,”
says Geng Jie, general manager, India, Mobi Antenna Technologies. The company is
presently offering BTS antennas including GSM, CDMA, UMTS, and 3G, microwave
antennas and accessories and RF devices such as filters, duplexers, couplers,
etc.

According to Monica Wang, international sales manager, Kenbotong
Communication, “Antenna is a very important segment of wireless communication.
It is important to develop advanced technology antennas to meet Indian market
requirements. The growth of the market is mainly dependent upon telecom
infrastructure growth.”

At present, the China-based company is offering antennas for Wi-Fi indoor
coverage, WLAN, passive components, etc, and planning to bring their expertise
in India. “As a passive device that converts RF signals bonded to transmission
lines into free space radio waves, antennas are integral to enabling wireless
systems to ensuring mobility, optimal capacity, and the quality and durability
of RF reception,” says Navin Vohra, country manager and director, South Asia
Operations, Andrew Wireless Solutions.

The need is undertake consistent research and develop tailor-made products as
per the specific need of consumers. As such, while fixed- tilt single band
antennas were commonly used in the past, variable- tilt, higher gain,
multi-band, and remote electrical-tilt (RET) antennas becoming increasingly
popular over the last two years. This move enables service providers to enhance
their service offerings with improved data rates and access more potential
customers.

The Road Ahead

Although the growing wireless demand makes India one of the hottest markets
for the wireless antenna segment, there are myriad challenges that need to be
addressed to make an appropriate business model for existing, as well as new
players. The various challenges faced by the global and domestic players include
meeting the escalating local demands, proper training, educating the market,
decreasing ARPU's, and site kitting logistics solutions.

The other challenges for the vendors is to make proper network planning for
their customers, selection of cities, correct installation of antennas,
adjusting the down tilt, coverage, etc.

According to industry experts, working closely with the customers is going to
be the key focus area for vendors as they could come out with more customized
solutions to minimize the overall cost of site built. For example adding tower
mounted amplifiers (TMA), power amplifiers, fiber-optic interfaces, etc. The 3G
and rural area coverage is going to be a key driver for growth, and according to
the industry sources, India could be one of the most promising markets in
2009-10 in the wireless antenna segment.

Jatinder Singh

jatinders@cybermedia.co.in