The vast majority of mobile phone use takes place indoors but in many homes and offices signal strength is less than perfect - call quality and data connectivity suffer accordingly. In-building coverage issues are becoming more important and operators that sort the issues out quickly will be handed a significant competitive advantage but the solutions already proposed, including femtocells to create an in-building ‘mobile cell’ and an increase in base station density and capacity, have considerable capital and operational implications and they will take some time to implement effectively. Since 2006, US wireless product and technology company Nextivity has been developing an innovative solution to indoor mobile coverage, known as Cel-Fi, that is available now, user installable and already being adopted by operators worldwide.

The performance of any mobile device is directly related to signal quality and that signal quality is influenced by distance from the base station, receiver sensitivity of the access device and most critically, physical obstruction  – it’s a cruel irony that, although most mobile voice and data connections originate indoors, mobile networks just don’t like walls, floors and ceilings.

At the heart of Cel-Fi is a proprietary semiconductor technology that addresses those three key issues (distance, sensitivity and physical obstructions) directly. The patented IntelliBoost Baseband Processor (IBP), together with advanced signal processing and intelligent antenna design, creates a new market for self-configuring, environmentally-aware indoor coverage systems. The Nextivity Cel-Fi solution dynamically manages bandwidth provision within the home or office environment and actually increases the capacity of the operator’s RAN (radio access network).

Cel-Fi consists of a ‘window unit’ and a ‘coverage unit’, each about the size of a broadband router, and is entirely ‘plug and play’ – consumer installable in approximately five minutes, and for mobile subscribers, the benefits are immediate. Field tests and live installations have shown that voice coverage improves dramatically and data rates can rise by a factor of ten or more. For mobile operators, the impact on subscriber retention and revenue are obvious. After extended trials Nextivity’s Cel-Fi solution is being deployed selectively by 20 mobile operators around the world (including tier one European operators) and active field testing is taking place with another 27.
www.nextivity.com