By Femi Oshiga, VP sales, service providers, MEA & APAC at CommScope
Reduce, reuse and recycle — these words guide CommScope’s green strategy and holistic approach to protecting the environment. Focusing on turning innovation into environmental responsibility, CommScope works hard to achieve greater antenna efficiency by using less material, less space and less power — all while providing the high-performance connectivity customers expect.
Less Material
Emphasizing the “reduce” part, in the context of wireless networks, means using less material in infrastructure manufacturing without hampering the network’s performance. Using a lot of mechanical strength simulation, design iterations and validation testing, CommScope was able to produce thinner reflectors that maintained the structural integrity of the antenna and delivered the same performance characteristics as the previous thicker designs.
Cellular antenna reflectors are made of aluminum, which creates a lot of environmental damage in its sourcing. Thus, reducing the amount of this metal used in antennas presents a direct and powerful way to help preserve the environment.
In fact, by 2025, we estimate that CommScope’s thinner reflectors will reduce our aluminum usage by 1,000 tons and prevent the 18,500 tons of carbon release that would have been needed to produce it.
Less Space
As part of CommScope’s ongoing efforts to reduce our carbon dioxide (CO2) footprint while improving network performance, we develop platforms that minimize antenna size. Not only do they require less material, but on a macro scale, they also provide operators with better options for long-term network development, evolution and expansion with minimal additional hardware needed.
By enabling more antennas in the same space, CommScope solutions can support more functions and more bands. This extra capacity can delay the deployment of additional antennas and radios, which can cause disruptions in the network.
Less Power
CommScope innovation also centers on improving the electrical characteristics of our antennas to make every watt work at the most efficient level. The improved antenna efficiency in CommScope’s antenna designs enables operators to reduce the maximum transmit power in radios.
The greatest opportunity for these efficiencies can be witnessed in densely populated urban environments, where more people are connected over a greater number of bands in comparison to rural deployments with fewer users and bands.
In support of this, CommScope simulations have shown that high-performance, precision-pattern antennas can carry 10 to 20% more traffic at no additional energy cost. Over hundreds of sites, that’s a lot of prevented carbon release.
As a global connectivity leader, CommScope’s network solutions are essential to the world’s critical and advanced communications infrastructure. We shape the always-on networks of tomorrow in a sustainable manner for the benefit of our customers and the end users.
Apart from the abovementioned initiatives, we also recognize that maximizing the use of recycled raw materials and reducing energy consumption constitute good business practices that lead to the decrease in greenhouse gas emissions and landfill waste.