The total global revenue from distributed antenna systems (DAS) will cross $13 billion in 2015, according to In-Stat.
By 2012, the value for all DAS projects in North America, with the exception of metro area outdoor DAS, nears $2 billion, In-Stat said in its report.
Cellular reception issues are becoming more acute as mobile access devices are designed to handle more data-rich applications. Adding new macro base stations has been the traditional way of creating new mobile capacity.
However, cell tower locations are becoming harder to acquire, and the cost of new base stations is prohibitive. Enter distributed antenna systems. DAS represent a versatile indoor/outdoor approach for mobile transport by routing radio frequency (RF) signals through fiber or copper cabling from a single base station to multiple antennas located throughout a building or through antenna nodes.
In the Caribbean and Latin America regions, DAS revenue will increase 20 percent or more over the forecast period.
By 2015, hospitals and healthcare will represent almost half of the DAS revenue opportunities for indoor deployments in Western Europe.
In Eastern Europe, the build-up for DAS starts modestly, but eventually grows to 3,897 new deployments in 2015. In 2010, 15,000 new nodes were deployed in metro area outdoor DAS.
Distributed antenna systems bridge several key areas in cellular coverage,” said Chris Kissel, analyst at In-Stat.
Femto-, pico-, micro-, and macrocells all augment cellular services and each provides a specific solution for a specific application. However, for each nodeB, latencies must be accounted for, and each nodeB requires its own backhaul.
Wi-Fi alleviates capacity issues on cellular networks and provides terrific data rates, although there are limitations with interoperability and there are distance limitations. At this point, DAS becomes an unconventional, but practical answer where multiple airlinks need to be supported.
By TelecomLead.com Team
