The radio heads of a distributed antenna system are essentially “dummy” radio heads: these access points don’t provide any signal processing like a small cell antenna system would. Instead, DAS radio heads relay the signal to a cellular base station located at a central hub. Once the signal is relayed to the hub, it’s processed at that central location.

Base stations installed at a central hub are essentially macrocells, and by installing additional base station units within the hub, cellular providers can increase their broadband capacity. Since the cell signal is processed at a base station, a single hub can support multiple carriers and multiple bands at the same time, with each carrier installing their own units.

In certain scenarios, like a football stadium used for a Super Bowl, distributed antenna systems can actually be far more efficient that small cells when it comes to supplying multiple band coverage with different operators. Typically, small cells can only support one or two bands with one or two operators at a time, so their total network capacity is significantly more limited than that offered by DAS systems.(Reprinted&non-original)