Huawei Technologies
To build IP-based broadband mobile networks, you need
The packet microwave solution
The packet microwave system is oriented to ALL IP transport networks. It adopts
packet switching as the core technology and uses pure packet structure on the air
interface.
Bottlenecks for traditional
microwave systems
I
n microwave-based mobile backhaul networks,
the plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH)
microwave is adopted in the access layer, while
the synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH)
microwave is used in the convergence layer. When
evolving to IP-based and broadband networks, the
microwave-based mobile backhaul networks have
encountered technical bottlenecks including:
Insufficient bandwidth for service
development
Traditional time division multiplexing (TDM)
microwave system features low efficiency in using
air interface bandwidth. At present, as the mobile
traffic involves mostly voice services, bandwidth is
still sufficient for transporting services. However,
as 3G services such as HSPA become more popular
and develop rapidly, TDM-based microwave systems
will begin to falter. Forecasts indicate that by 2012,
booming data traffic will cause a four-fold increase in
transport bandwidth for mobile local networks.
Poor capability of accessing and bearing
packet services
By Cui Jiang
TDM-based microwave systems perform poorly
when accessing and bearing IP services, and there are
only a few microwave equipment vendors who support
IP over PDH technology. Presently, PDH-based
microwave systems are incapable of providing strong
access capability. SDH-based microwave systems also
have rather poor support for packet services. Because
packet services have to be encapsulated in generic
framing procedure (GFP) frames in the Ethernet over
SDH (EoS) mode, and then mapped to the virtual
container (VC) for transmission. This results in a
waste of air interface bandwidth, and indoor units
(IDUs) adopted in SDH-based microwave systems
can access only a limited number of packet services.
To meet the new market conditions driven by
the trend toward IP-based and broadband mobile
networks, new technologies need to be introduced
to ease the bottlenecks created by microwave
communications systems.
Four features of the packet
microwave
To guarantee long-term service development,
the mobile transport solution adopting microwave
technology for service access must support IP
bearing and large capacity to meet network needs.
MAR 2008 . ISSUE 39 50
 LEADING EDGE
The packet microwave solution
For future mobile broadband networks,
an end-to-end mobile broadband solution
lies in a packet transport network (PTN)
that combines both microwave system and
optical fiber system to offer pure packet
architecture.
The packet microwave system is oriented
to ALL IP transport networks. It adopts
packet switching as the core technology
and uses pure packet structure on the
air interface. Through the IDU, the user
network interface (UNI) can be used to
access IP services like fast Ethernet (FE)
service. Legacy TDM services can be
accessed in the pseudo wire emulation
edge-to-edge (PWE3) mode.
The packet microwave system can form
a logical end-to-end PTN independently
or along with the packet fiber transport
network, providing high-quality service
transport based on supported network
protocols, such as multiprotocol label
switching (MPLS), transport MPLS
(T-MPLS) and provider backbone bridge -
traffic engineering (PBB-TE). The packet
microwave system has the following
characteristics:
Improved bandwidth utilization
Traditional microwave systems mostly
adopt an Ethernet over PDH/SDH mode
to provide Ethernet features, yet have
complicated mapping and multiplex
layers. Also, traditional microwave systems
are inherently inefficient for transporting
packet services because of poor burst traffic
support, high costs, and low-efficient
bandwidth usage.
The packet microwave system adopts the
pure packet switching kernel and the pure
packet air interface structure to improve
bandwidth multiplexing and transport
efficiency, and offer better burst traffic
support. Optimization of the microwave
frame and link-layer protocols, allows the
system to process more traffic by using
limited microwave air interface resources.
Adaptive code modulation
technology
Adaptive code modulation technology
can be used to automatically adjust
modulation modes and dynamically
enable service transport according to the
51 MAR 2008 . ISSUE 39
To meet the new market
conditions driven by the
trend toward IP-based
and broadband mobile
networks, the packet
microwave solution is
needed.
performance of air interface channels
that might be affected by bad weather
conditions.
The modulation mode can be changed
(for example, from 128QAM to 16QAM)
to enable error-free communications.
As a result, the access bandwidth of the
microwave air interface is decreased from
STM-1 to 32E1 or even 16E1. Low
priority services become invalid, while high
priority services are protected. The system
will automatically recover the original rate
when the channel quality is recovered.
Adaptive code modulation technology
also significantly strengthens bandwidth
capability, resulting in high scalability,
low-cost maintenance, fast deployment,
and increased adaptability, which enable
microwave systems to adapt to different
types of densely populated areas.
Circuit emulation supports TDM
services
TDM-based service transport occupies
fixed bandwidth. The PTN, however, uses
bandwidth with statistical multiplexing
and transports TDM services through
circuit emulation technologies, such as
PWE3. All services are then transported
via the packet kernel and interfaces,
allowing the system to interconnect with
other data communications equipment.
Traditional 2G networks are TDM-
based. 3GR99/R4 adopts the asynchronous
transfer mode (ATM), but 3GR5/R6/
LTE/WiMAX networks will evolve to
ALL IP networks. TDM services and
packet services will probably coexist in the
same network using PWE3 technology
for quite some time. TDM services of
the GSM network and ATM services of
the universal mobile telecommunications
system (UMTS) will all be transported by
the PTN.
Packet-based clock transfer
technology
Mobile communications services are
highly dependent on clock and timing
information transfer. Packet-based clock
transfer technology is now more mature
and can be applied in packet microwave
systems. The packet microwave system and
the PTN support various packet-based clock
transfer protocols, such as synchronous
Ethernet, Timing-over-Packet (ToP), and
IEEE 1588V2, providing end-to-end and
network-wide synchronization solutions.
Evolution solutions
Huawei pioneered in creating two
evolution solutions to help traditional
microwave systems meet mobile network
requirements and service development.
In the microwave system evolution,
hybrid transport modes are supported
when TDM and ATM services coexist
during the transformation of mobile
services from TDM E1/IMA E1 to FE.
The air interface supports the transport of
both TDM services and packet services.
Ser vices are encapsulated in unified
microwave frames. The system can then
support pure packet transport after the
simple hardware promotion.
In the equipment evolution, pure
packet microwave equipment and packet
transport equipment are integrated if
mobile operators build their own optical
fiber-based transport networks instead of
leasing frequencies for microwave transport.
An operator can start by constructing only a
packet microwave system. After the optical
fibers are in place, the operator can pull out
the intermediate frequency (IF) boards to
transform the packet microwave equipment
to PTN equipment. The new PTN
supports various optical fiber networking
schemes so that operators can maximally
protect investments and strategically
decrease operation expenditures (OPEX).
Editor: Xu Peng xupeng@huawei.com