Huawei takes customer-centric approach to antenna innovation

“A paramount factor is Huawei’s spirit of staying customer-centric,” he says. “We always work together with customers to address the challenges in their networks. In that way we are able to gain insights into their pain points and identify future trends. That’s the foundation for innovation.”

Sun was speaking to Light Reading at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where Huawei put on display a wide range of antenna innovation. Sun is not only laser-focused on achieving greater antenna efficiencies and performance in terms of coverage and capacity, but also in simplifying site installations to lower costs and shorten time-to-market (TTM).

Remote O&M, he says, which eliminates the need for expensive and time-consuming physical site visits by field engineers, is another pressing Huawei priority because it’s such a huge customer pain point. “According to our insights from many operators, the actual status of their antenna can often be very different from what they planned; in addition, antenna azimuth beam related cell topology often needs to be quickly adjusted,” explains Sun. “This brings tremendous challenges to their network performance and optimization.”

Remote O&M

To provide operators with remote and quick adjustment capabilities to correct antenna beam misalignments, which stops OPEX from spiralling out of control, Huawei formally launched at MWC its new Marconi antenna. According to Sun, it’s an industry-first digital passive base station antenna design with beam adjustment capability. It is integrated with Huawei’s in-house developed Remote Azimuth Adjustment (RAS) technology, which can adjust the horizontal beam within a range of ±30 degrees.

Moreover, a larger Remote Electrical Tilt (RET) of up to 20^o is achieved, compared to the current industry benchmark of 10^o , providing the operators with more powerful electrical down tilt capability and removes the need for additional mechanical tilt compensation. “From trial testing with European operators,” says Sun, “we’ve been able to enhance the sector daily traffic by 30% and increase the cell users by 28%, and meanwhile shorten the adjustment cycle from days to minutes.” Sun calls it “rapid optimization.”

Another advantage of the Marconi antenna is that it uses a cylindrical design, says Sun, which lowers wind load by more than 50% compared with traditional panel antennas. This makes deployment easier, faster and cheaper, while also having the potential to be more environmentally friendly through reducing needs for steelwork in sites. According to theoretical calculation by Huawei jointly with operators, Marconi antennas can help customers save 50% on rental fees on cell towers.

Ticking the ‘zero’ boxes

The Marconi digital antenna is an important plank of Huawei’s three-pronged antenna strategy, announced last year, of ‘zero limit’, ‘zero loss’ and ‘zero touch’.

Zero limit refers to overcoming limited tower space, breaking deployment restriction and keeping wind load in check – a task made all the more difficult in the 5G (and 5.5G) era that requires more antennas and equipment. “How to simplify antenna installation and occupy a smaller space is an important area we have been studying,” says Sun. To help address the problem, Huawei is not only increasing integration of its antennas but also innovating significantly with new antenna forms like invisible, cylindrical designs.

Zero loss is the goal of minimizing loss in wireless propagation paths from base stations to user equipment and maximizing RF transmission efficiency of antennas. The zero-loss strategy of E2E improvement of antenna efficiency, asserts Sun, addresses operators’ aspirations to run much greener networks. “At this year’s MWC we’ve launched the newest version of our highly efficient antennas,” says Sun. “With SDIF 2.0 and Meta Lens 2.0 technologies, the energy efficiency of our antennas can reach as high as 85% and reduce power loss by more than 20%.”

SDIF (Signal Direct Injection Feeding), is a proprietary Huawei technology that improves antenna efficiency. With the SDIF 2.0 technology the antenna efficiency can approach to the theoretical limit. Meta Lens technology reduces spatial dissipation of energy by “optimizing the electromagnetic beam direction” and projecting more RF energy to the target area. Both SDIF and Meta Lens underpin Huawei’s “Eco-series” antennas, designed to reduce site power consumption, improve network coverage efficiency and save OPEX.

The third zero, zero touch, is remote O&M. Sun is confident that the Marconi antenna is a big step towards making zero touch a practical reality, although of all the ‘zeros’ it seems the most challenging. Marconi antenna marks a significant milestone in pursuit of new way of network deployment, optimization and maintenance.

Antenna R&D commitment

“We always believe that R&D and innovation is not a sprint, but a marathon,” says Sun. “That’s why, for a very long time, Huawei has been investing around 15% of annual revenue into R&D.”

Huawei’s antenna research team, adds Sun, numbers around 1,200 experts worldwide. “We have seven labs studying cutting edge antenna technologies,” continues Sun, “including the Munich Research Center for Advanced Antenna Systems and Singapore Metamaterial Antenna Research Center. We have been investing in these leading innovative antenna technologies for nearly ten years and that’s the foundation for our success.”

Huawei, stresses Sun, is keen to work with other players to better the advancement of antenna R&D and share best practice. “We hope that we can contribute to the progress of the whole antenna industry,” he says.