Zone Gadget

Press Release: KYOCERA to Unveil World’s Lightest, Smallest and Most Efficient LTE Base Station at Mobile World Congress 2010

Kyocera Corporation (President: Tetsuo Kuba) today announced its plan to showcase the industry’s first Long Term Evolution (LTE) micro base station at Mobile World Congress (MWC), taking place February 15-18 in Barcelona, Spain. The world’s smallest, lightest and most efficient LTE base station*, Kyocera’s prototype LTE micro base station is unique in its compact, all-in-one design, giving network operators an ideal tool to complement existing networks by enhancing coverage or adding incremental capacity in high-use areas. Kyocera invites MWC attendees to see the micro base station at MWC Hall 2, booth 2E66, and is offering private briefings by appointment for media, analysts and network operators.

Kyocera’s micro base station weighs less than 26.5 pounds (12 kg) with a volume of 12 liters, and offers 8 watts of transmit power, a fraction of typical macro base stations. Designed to address gaps in coverage and overloaded network “hot spots,” the micro base stations function cooperatively with existing macro base stations in highly scalable “heterogeneous” networks. This is enabled by Kyocera’s pioneering work in the development of interference-mitigation technology. The company is a leading contributor of such technology to the 3GPP.

Along with displaying the micro base station, Kyocera will offer a live demonstration at MWC of its ultra-efficient macro base station, which weighs less than 39.7 pounds (18 kg) with a volume of 20 liters, and uses only 211 watts or less of power — significantly less than any LTE base station demonstrated to date. Kyocera achieves unprecedented performance in both its micro and macro base stations through state-of-the-art RF technology and the industry’s most efficient power amplifier. For network operators, Kyocera’s infrastructure products offer significant reductions in both capital and operating expenditures (CapEx and OpEx).

“LTE networks are capable of offering rich content and amazing features, but only if coverage is consistent and provides reliable multi-megabit-per-second speeds for all consumers,” said Junichi Jinno, Executive Officer & General Manager of Kyocera’s Corporate R&D Group for Equipment and Systems. “Kyocera’s micro and macro base stations are the industry’s best, most cost-efficient tools for operators to implement and fine-tune a network that delivers on this promise.”

Kyocera’s infrastructure business began in 1995, and the company has since perfected its all-in-one design in more than 634,000 base stations installed globally using PHS technology. At Mobile World Congress, Kyocera along with Starent Networks (now part of Cisco), a leading provider of multimedia core technology, will demonstrate a complete LTE solution for mobile operators worldwide. The joint demonstration, which consists of base stations (eNodeB) from Kyocera and evolved packet core equipment from Starent, is available at MWC2010 in Kyocera’s booth.

Kyocera’s booth at MWC will also feature infrastructure and terminal devices employing WiMAX and iBurst broadband technologies, along with a broad array of mobile handsets. Network operators, journalists and analysts wishing to schedule private briefings at MWC may do so by contacting John Chier, Director of Corporate Communications at Kyocera Communications Inc., at email: john.chier.