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Wireless Backhaul There have been dramatic changes in wireless networking with the proliferation of high speed mobile services, e.g. mobile video, multimedia, messaging, web browsing and online gaming. The increase in bandwidth is not only due to these new services but the volume of mobile subscribers that continues to rise from more than 2 billion worldwide in 2005 to more than 3 billion in 2009, driving an increase in the number of base stations and cell sites. In addition, competition is driving service providers to improve services by upgrading network technology/capacity to maintain call quality and offer new features for users. This is causing mobile operators to reevaluate their mobile backhaul strategies and look at IP technologies. The need for large amounts of bandwidth and the support for hundreds of thousands of users on a usage-based model ensures that the current architecture will become obsolete.
CDMA EV-DO and UMTS HSDPA technologies have enabled most of these aforementioned services, which are not cost effective or scalable with the current technology. Legacy TDM network architectures and transmission methods do not map to these new data oriented 3G networks and cannot support the large scale bandwidth requirements and QoS needed. With this greater focus on operational efficiency at mobile operators there is a challenge of delivering connectivity to these base stations at a price point that makes these services profitable and which can gracefully migrate several generations of installed product to a common packet network. This will require operators to provision tens of megabits per second of capacity to the cell site, and then transport IP traffic through efficient aggregation, to metro and core networks. One implication of the move to packet based cellular architecture that combines 2G and 3G voice and data traffic, is that radio base stations deployed today typically support either TDM, ATM or in some cases Ethernet interfaces. This creates a requirement for a device at either the cell site or at a remote aggregation node that supports all three interfaces and that can be used to combine traffic types for onward transport. Having these multiple traffic types converge at the aggregator presents operators with an opportunity to streamline the network from this point onward into the metro and core networks. Service providers can choose a new technology that will drastically reduce their price per bit of backhaul charges. The major challenges that service providers face are how to consolidate more traffic onto existing backhaul links and how to create cheaper backhaul so that costs can be minimized to maintain reasonable profits in light of slow growing ARPUs. There is a significant opportunity to leverage IP transport in the Radio Access Network. The HSX 6000 is well positioned to support wireless backhaul and deliver a high performance, cost effective solution for the mobile carrier network by providing MPLS based transport of mobile network traffic. The HSX 6000 can do this efficiently by encapsulating all mobile services into Pseudowires. This solution enables the deployment of the HSX 6000 as a system aggregation node with the ability to provide cost effective channelized interfaces to support a large volume of low speed terminations for efficient aggregation and handoff to the MPLS core. And unlike other Pseudowire-enabled backhaul solutions, the HSX 6000 offers very high density for Gigabit Ethernet aggegation, such that the system can easily aggregate traffic from over 100 base stations delivering individual Gigabit Ethernet links. In summary, the HSX 6000 provides substantial operational savings by leveraging its statistical multiplexing, comprehensive QoS, and application-aware networking capabilities. Operators can continue to oversubscribe access at the cell site but can reap the benefit of lower operational expenditures through oversubscribed distribution of core network facilities. The deployment of the HSX 6000 utilizing Pseudowires allows it to be easily added to the existing wireless infrastructure, interoperating with the base station equipment already in place, supporting the demanding applications of both packet and circuit based voice, while providing a flexible interface that smoothes the transition from Frame Relay to ATM to IP and Ethernet for data services. This solution can provide the following benefits: Ensuring a smooth migration to an IP RAN Capacity is not stranded as users migrate from one service to the next No change is required to the installed mobile infrastructure Delivers QoS that is matched to the application High-density aggregation for both Gigabit Ethernet and low-speed circuits This solution enables mobile operators to grow their networks, keep their operational costs low and design for future services. |
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