STL unveils Garuda 5G indoor small cell

STL, an integrator of digital networks has unveiled Garuda, a smart 5G Indoor small cell. With Garuda, STL continues to play an instrumental role in building an indigenous 5G ecosystem and enabling its customers to provide enhanced 5G experiences in the future.

A game changer for the technology landscape, 5G will enable many data intensive real-time applications. However, 5G signals will require closer proximity to mobile devices, creating a need for short range networks. Such access raises questions regarding coverage at a premise level.

Garuda indoor small cell solution addresses these challenges by using devices as cellular access points, providing 5G grade coverage to meet the burgeoning data demands of the end users. STL Garuda offers a low cost and agile means for faster 5G readiness, improving the economics for Digital Service Providers and enterprises.

STL Garuda seamlessly complements the network capacity, density and coverage of macro networks, and can serve as a single board optical-to-radio interface solution for 5G low power pico cell applications. Leveraging the Xilinx adaptable radio device platform that offers full programmability while delivering high-performance and cost/power effectiveness, this O-RAN 7.2x split small cell can handle more than 30 concurrent user devices and can be backhauled across several kilometers. Moreover, it can be installed within 30 minutes and deployment can be as seamless as that of a simple Wi-Fi. Garuda is equipped with inbuilt Low-Phy layer functionality, small form factor and an integrated four channel MIMO support omni-antenna to cater to the ever-growing demand of data networks.

Here are the salient features of Garuda, which make it ideal for 5G indoor coverage:

Open interfaces: Fully compliant with O-RAN specifications for vendor neutrality
Energy efficient: Ensures lower electricity consumption for telcos and enterprises

Plug and play solution: Can be seamlessly installed under 30 mins
Ease of deployment: Supports both power source DC and PoE++
Xilinx, a leading provider of solutions in 5G, offers wired and wireless products designed to perform today and remain adaptable for the needs for tomorrow. STL Garuda incorporates the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSOC device.

“By being adaptable with full programmability, Xilinx’s world-class 5G radio solutions are a cost-effective and efficient way to deploy 5G O-RAN for a wide variety of wireless network environments,” said Liam Madden, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Wired and Wireless Group at Xilinx “Our platforms combined with STL’s know-how, architecture expertise, and market reach will enable the Garuda RU system to deliver the high performance and scalability required for any 5G network rollout.“

We are incredibly excited to launch Garuda and we believe it will play a significant role in driving 5G experiences for consumers by creating a dense environment for indoor coverage with the required speed, capacity, and low latency,” said Rajesh Gangadhar, CTO, Access Solutions, STL. “This technology has been indigenously developed in India as a part of our Atmanirbhar Bharat initiatives. Garuda is a next-gen product with an open interface that is not only cost effective, but also creates a new ecosystem for service innovation.”