Zinwave, SOLiD, JMA Wireless, Verizon Make DAS Announcements

As the telecomm industry continues its gradual shift to virtualized, streamlined hardware and software solutions, major DAS (distributed antenna systems) vendors are keeping pace while working to break into an enterprise market in need of cost-conscious connectivity.

SOLiD company announced its GENESIS distributed antenna systems solution, which relies on standardized, structured-cabling to take cost and complexity out of installation, while also helping mitigate PIM. The system supports a variety of node power configurations to support flexible, bespoke enterprise needs.

CEO Seung Hee Lee said the new product was designed “to provide the middleprise with a solution that is ready to use right out of the box, supports structuring cabline common in enterprises, and provides investment protection.”

Last year, SOLiD announced the complementary GENESIS RAX virtual Radio Access Network (vRAN) solution, which swaps traditional signal sources like a base station or small cell or cells with modular, plug-and-play equipment.

To better understand what’s motivating vendors to rethink the hardware-driven approach to DAS provisioning, it’s worth noting some parallel trends shaping in-building wireless. The first is centralization of the RAN. Instead of one system for one building, a commercial high-rise for example, a centralized RAN (radio access network) could serve remote radio units providing cellular signal to multiple buildings. Take the concept of RAN centralization one step further and replace that centrally-located base station with a virtualized RAN running on commercial off-the-shelf hardware in a data center-type environment.

JMA Wireless announced the release of its XRAN solution, which creates a signal source on COTS hardware and was developed through a collaboration with the Intel Network Builders program. Todd Landry, JMA’s Corporate VP of Product and Market Strategy, said the new solution is compatible with LTE, Cat-M, NB-IoT and is 5G-ready. The sever-based system can provide flexible capacity by simply adding Intel Xeon processors.

Additionally Verizon is working with Nokia and Intel on commercialization of a vRAN solution that was trialed in Oklahoma City, OK. The idea is to reduce capital and operating expenses by creating a software-defined, hardware agnostic solution that facilitates scalable network densification. The Oklahoma City test used a cloud base station server supplied by Nokia and is a move toward what the carrier described as a vRAN 2.0 architecture.