LittleFeet Caps Field TrialsLittleFeet Caps Field Trials

Littlefeet concludes eight successful field trials of its Spice GSM solution on three continents; was the Spice Network one of the trialers?

June 17, 2003

2 Min Read

SAN DIEGO -- Littlefeet®, Inc., the leader in distributed wireless coverage technology and developer of SPICE™ (Small Profile Intelligent Coverage Element), a new category of network infrastructure equipment, today announced the successful completion of eight GSM (global system for mobile communications) system field trials in Asia, Europe, and North America that tested the flexibility, deployment functionality, and interference reduction capability of the SPICE coverage solution.

The commercial trials with different operators took place in various geographical locations in United States, China, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and Ukraine, and resulted in significant improvements in signal strength and coverage quality. Highlights of Littlefeet's commercial demonstrations included:

  • Doubling the coverage area of an existing base station;

  • Considerable improvements in the average signal level received by the handset;

  • Reduction of interference in urban and rural networks resulting in improvements in the overall coverage quality of the network;

  • Significant in-building coverage improvement could be achieved through the SPICE distributed coverage architecture without costly and time consuming traditional “cabled” systems. In-building coverage levels improved by 10 dB – 20 dB in poorly covered areas, resulting in a better quality of service and reduced dropped call rate for the subscriber. In these cases it was also verified the ease in which coverage SPICE (cSPICE) could be relocated quickly within the target areas to further optimize the radio frequency (RF) footprint;

  • SPICE equipment could be used for specialized coverage applications such as providing wireless coverage to road tunnels or remote rural villages;

  • Proving the benefits of the Relay SPICE concept that allows the link distance between the base station SPICE (bSPICE) and coverage SPICE (cSPICE) elements in a network to be extended up to several tens of kilometers.



As a result of the successful completion of the trials, Littlefeet will continue to work with these operators to improve their networks and deliver better quality services to their customers while the company participates in new trials with operators in South Africa and SE Asia countries.

“The success of these trials have demonstrated that our distributed coverage systems can help operators around the world deal with quality issues effectively and economically,” said John W. Combs, chairman and CEO of Littlefeet.

SPICE is commercially available for in-band 1800 MHz or 1900 MHz, and cross-band 900/1800 MHz GSM networks worldwide. Product development efforts are underway to address 3G-technology, as the demand for new higher data rate service continues.

Littlefeet Inc.

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