The global small cells market revenue is expected to triple to over $4.5 billion by 2022, according to telecom research firm Mobile Experts.

The anticipated growth in small cells market globally is due to the increase in densification and indoor coverage.

The growth for non-residential small cells is more dramatic. Small cells for carrier and enterprise segments are expected to grow at over 30 percent CAGR from 2016-2022.

The overall small cell market, including residential femtocells, is growing at about 17 percent (CAGR) over the forecast period.

Carriers with broad LTE coverage are reaching a level of traffic density in excess of 1 Gbps/km2, which leads to a need for small cells to increase capacity. Telecom operators are making investment in small cells to expand mobile coverage in strategic locations within macro coverage areas to target high-value customers.

“CPRI will be giving way to split-baseband architectures.  Small cells will become an integral part of mobile networks as operators make the move toward hyper-dense networks with 5G services,” said Kyung Mun, senior analyst at Mobile Experts.

Carriers and enterprises have technology choices from FDD/TD-LTE, LTE-U/LAA, LWA, CBRS, and even Carrier Wi-Fi to address skyrocketing mobile data growth.

The report said that mobile infrastructure suppliers including Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia are commanding larger share of the carrier outdoor segment through macro parity small cells, which take advantage of their macro footprints.

Smaller companies such as Spidercloud and Airspan are gaining small cell share in enterprise and indoor segments at several Tier 1 operator accounts.

This year, the small cell market will dip by a notch, as some key programs in China and direct-to-enterprise channel did not materialize as anticipated.