Alcatel-Lucent has claimed that its new "lightRadio" technology would halve overall operating costs and energy consumption, while extending deployment ability.
The new technology compresses a standard base station down to a few chips, which fit in a cube called as "lightRadio".
Alcatel-Lucent’s mobile business head Wim Sweldens said the "lightRadio" technology could halve network operating costs and do the same for power demands.
The company said tiny base stations can be installed almost anywhere in the world. What they require is electricity, and can then connect either over an internet connection or via microwave links to processing units elsewhere. The new "lightRadio" cubes would also be able to cover the same area as existing stations, said the company.
Alcatel-Lucent said, "The need for a [large] base station pretty much goes away."
However, Sweldens said the technology is aimed to not replace but augment the build-out of high-speed optical fibre networks.
The "lightRadio" cubes are capable of providing 2G, 3G and Long Term Evolution (4G) radio connections.
Alcatel-Lucent has partnered with semiconductor company Freescale and with Hewlett-Packard for computing services for the new technology.
"LightRadio" is expected to be tested by a number of mobile operators including Orange, Verizon and China Mobile.
