As the need for faster, easier, and reliable connectivity is mounting in emerging economies like India, wireless technology is creating a huge appeal for sophisticated voice and data services. The broadband hungry nation represents a huge potential for wireless technologies such as WiMax, Wi-Fi, 3G, in addition to GSM, CDMA, and UMTS.

India being one of the huge markets in the world in terms of telecom infrastructure investment, is gearing hard towards wireless options in providing broadband connectivity. And wireless antenna plays an important and significant role in the execution of wireless system.

The country is relatively young in the wireless communication sector as it was only in 1995, when the first wireless communication network was set up. The need to connect rural to global has essentially opened up the need for wireless technologies in a big way and with recent announcement of 3G guidelines, the industry is betting big for the next level of growth. Ironically, in the past, the role of antennas in finished product was often undervalued. As in order to achieve better performance sometimes a sizeable amount of endeavor is put into enforcing a variety of coding techniques in radio systems. On the other hand, the strength of a chain is determined by the weakest link and as a section of the wireless communication system link, the antenna performance is equally important.

Moreover, if the antenna system can give a nice and clear signal source for the radio parts, it would be actually much easier for signal processing and optimizing.

To achieve greater strength, it is also important to pay proper attention to critical electrical and mechanical characteristics apart from frequency band, beam width, and gain. It is important to mention that while electrical parts include gain related to the distance of coverage, vertical beam width, horizontal beam width, front to back ratio, and inter-modulation (related to signal interference), the mechanical part includes size and weight (as one site can only carry a few antennas) and material related with lift time.

Heading in a New Direction
The market, according to experts, is becoming ever more sophisticated because of the tendency of industry players to focus on more highly engineered site architecture that could enable them to reap benefits such as reduced operation cost, improved coverage in rural areas, share multiple frequency bands, and greater control over their network.

In the present scenario, variable tilt, higher gain, multi-band, and remote electrical tilt (RET) antennas have become increasing popular as compared to earlier fixed-tilt single band antennas.

Further, with the emergence of 3G markets, tri-band antennas have become essential in providing value added services such as mobile broadband. The need of multi-band antenna is gaining traction in the market. A single multi-band antenna can operate under GSM, CDMA, and 3G frequencies, and can be shared by different operators.

Another trend, according to industry experts is the increasing traction of high-gain antenna.

“India has a large rural area; operators need high gain antenna to cover this area and to reduce the number of sites, thus to reduce the cost. The high gain antenna has an ability to cover larger areas as compared to low-gain and middle gain antennas,” says Navin Vohra, country manager and director, South Asia operations, Andrew Wireless Solutions. The company has made significant investments in terms of manufacturing facilities in India and continues to invest in R&D. With the growing need of the Indian market, which is building tens of thousands of sites every year, the requirement of antennas is huge.

“We will put more effort on reaching to consumers and open an antenna manufacturing factory in India with other antenna vendors to reduce the cost in the future” Vohra added.

Also with the diversion of telecommunication market toward spread spectrum (UMTS and CDMA) technology, antennas such as Di-Pole require controlling radiation patterns, which significantly impact the capacity of the network and user experience. Further, in new technologies that use TDD and MIMO capabilities, antennas are needed to accomplish beam forming, which is the basis of an optimized network, feel industry experts.

“Antenna is an integral part of any wireless technology. It receives and transmits the signal of an entire system. It plays an important role in SNR (signal-noise rate), conversion quality, reliability of system, coverage, etc,” says Geng Jie, general manager, India, Mobi Antenna Technologies. The company is presently offering BTS antennas including GSM, CDMA, UMTS, and 3G, microwave antennas and accessories and RF devices such as filters, duplexers, couplers, etc.

According to Monica Wang, international sales manager, Kenbotong Communication, “Antenna is a very important segment of wireless communication. It is important to develop advanced technology antennas to meet Indian market requirements. The growth of the market is mainly dependent upon telecom infrastructure growth.”

At present, the China-based company is offering antennas for Wi-Fi indoor coverage, WLAN, passive components, etc, and planning to bring their expertise in India. “As a passive device that converts RF signals bonded to transmission lines into free space radio waves, antennas are integral to enabling wireless systems to ensuring mobility, optimal capacity, and the quality and durability of RF reception,” says Navin Vohra, country manager and director, South Asia Operations, Andrew Wireless Solutions.

The need is undertake consistent research and develop tailor-made products as per the specific need of consumers. As such, while fixed- tilt single band antennas were commonly used in the past, variable- tilt, higher gain, multi-band, and remote electrical-tilt (RET) antennas becoming increasingly popular over the last two years. This move enables service providers to enhance their service offerings with improved data rates and access more potential customers.

The Road Ahead
Although the growing wireless demand makes India one of the hottest markets for the wireless antenna segment, there are myriad challenges that need to be addressed to make an appropriate business model for existing, as well as new players. The various challenges faced by the global and domestic players include meeting the escalating local demands, proper training, educating the market, decreasing ARPU's, and site kitting logistics solutions.

The other challenges for the vendors is to make proper network planning for their customers, selection of cities, correct installation of antennas, adjusting the down tilt, coverage, etc.

According to industry experts, working closely with the customers is going to be the key focus area for vendors as they could come out with more customized solutions to minimize the overall cost of site built. For example adding tower mounted amplifiers (TMA), power amplifiers, fiber-optic interfaces, etc. The 3G and rural area coverage is going to be a key driver for growth, and according to the industry sources, India could be one of the most promising markets in 2009-10 in the wireless antenna segment.

Jatinder Singh
jatinders@cybermedia.co.in

Page(s)   1