Qualcomm sees indoor small cells taking off as 5G rolls out

During its annual 4G/5G Summit, Qualcomm executives repeatedly called out the role 5G could play in opening up new enterprise and industrial applications. Because the vast majority of connected activities enterprises and industries rely on take place inside, coupled with the challenges that come with an inside-out approach to in-building coverage, that means bringing RF signal inside with small cells. Qualcomm’s Durga Malladi, SVP of Engineering and general manager of 4G/5G, discussed this dynamic during a keynote panel led by Patrick Moorehead, founder of Moor Insights and Strategy. “There’s something very interesting. If you were here last year we talked a lot about how millimeter wave is going to look in a dense deployment in downtown areas, dense urban areas. That was an outdoor base stations serving outdoor users. As we have kind of have looked into it a lot more…what we considered earlier as a challenge–the idea that you want to serve indoor users from outdoors–we said, ‘Well, that’s going to be a problem because of the propagation issues.’ Actually it’s an opportunity.” He continued: “Now you can have indoor base stations, indoor small cells, serving users inside. These private networks can go into enterprises, they can go into stadiums and hot spots…this kind of is a very unique situation with millimeter wave where now we’re beginning to understand what we can do with it both in outdoors but also indoors.” Qualcomm Senior Director of Technical Marketing Rasmus Hellberg also discussed bringing 5G indoors in a separate presentation for media and analysts. Outdoor millimeter wave propagation faces challenges like bouncing off of trees, he said, but that’s not as much of an issue in indoor environments like a stadium.