Millimeter wave systems can meet growing indoor bandwidth requirements

The wireless marketplace has many segments or industries, but the two largest categories are indoor and outdoor. Indoor wireless internet consists of several access technologies – most commonly Wi-Fi and mobile small cells. In the outdoor segment there are more usage scenarios and therefore more vertical alignments. The most common of these is cellular, which can then be broken down into macro, micro, and pico or small cells. A smaller but also important outdoor access technology is the fixed wireless access market.

In addition to these access applications, wireless has long been used to connect cell towers and buildings with point-to-point technology, all deployed in the microwave and millimeter wave bands from 6GHz to 86GHz. These systems can support connection capacities up to 10 Gbps full-duplex. What had never been seen on the market until recently is the concept of using microwave or millimeter wave frequencies to perform the same function – indoors. Despite the clear benefits of using wireless in this role (cheaper, faster and more flexible to use compared to fiber or cable), there were significant barriers to this approach indoors, particularly the requirement that systems in these bands have a clear Line of Site must have operated. Clearly, in an indoor environment with hallways, walls and unique floor plans, virtually building by building, this becomes a barrier too high to overcome if LoS is a requirement.