Spectrum options for wireless backhaul of small cells

Abstract

Small cells need to be deployed in many environments ranging from rural where wireless spectrum usage is light to dense urban where wireless spectrum usage is intense. But all small cells, especially those with LTE and WiFi, need hundreds of megabits per second of very low latency backhaul to fully support their access capabilities. In an ideal world, the backhaul would be optical fiber to every small cell base station, to give massive capacity and low latency. In the real world, fiber is frequently impractical and wireless backhaul becomes a necessity. For these situations, a key question for those deploying small cells is what wireless spectrum options should be used to provide fiber-equivalent backhaul in various deployment scenarios? This presentation will address this question, in particular for the North American environment.