Gilat hosts free webinar on satellite-based cellular backhaul solutions

Gilat Satellite Networks is inviting mobile network operators to a free live webinar solutions on April 17, 2013 at 13:00 GMT. The webinar will discuss how broadband satellite-powered cellullar backhaul solutions can extend mobile connectivity.

According to Gilat, satellite backhaul solutions can bring mobile networks to remote areas; increase subscriber bases; and fulfill requirements for bandwidth, budget, and network architecture, all while complying with government regulations.

The Gilat free webinar will discuss access schemes that support both small cells and large macro cells, reduction of OPEX through maximum bandwidth efficiency (TDMA,) dedicated channels for high throughput (SCPC,) and support for heterogeneous networks like 2G, 3G, and LTE. All of these can extend mobile connectivity using satellite broadband technology.

Proxim Tsunami mobile backhaul helps secure Villefontaine, France

Proxim Wireless Corporation announced that it deployed a mobile backhaul solution for the security and surveillance systems of Villefontaine, France. The French town deployed a wireless HD video surveillance system that leveraged Tsunami QB-8150 wireless backhaul products.

The Community of Villefontaine is a suburb of the City of Lyon. A relatively young town, it is located in the Rhone-Alps Region.

Villefontaine local government dispersed its facilities all across the town to best serve its population. However, this made it difficult for the local police force to regularly patrol such a large area, not to mention quickly responding to emergency incidents. Therefore, Villefontaine authorities decided to deploy a video surveillance system that could assist local law enforcement in protecting and maintaining the safety of the community.

For the Villefontaine mobile backhaul project, Proxim Wireless tapped its certified regional partner, Libertylan, to perform a detailed wireless site survey and serve as project integrator. Proxim Wireless and Libertylan then replaced existing leased lines with secure wireless links. The completed high capacity radio network now provides secure wireless transmission of video images, data transfer services, and VoIP services to Villefontaine.

Thierry Gouin, IT director for the Community Council of Villefontaine, stated that the mobile backhaul system installed by Proxim Wireless performed flawlessly and proved very secure. The Council was thus able to save money by canceling its leases on several fiber lines which had now become superfluous.

Windstream picks Goodman Networks as preferred FttT supplier

Wireless network service provider Goodman Networks Inc. will serve as the preferred supplier of Windstream Corp. while the latter company deploys Fiber to the Tower (FttT) mobile backhaul solutions in the U.S.

Goodman Networks is a leading U.S. company that designs, engineers, deploys, integrates, and maintains wireless networks in the United States. It helps Windstream generate the additional backhaul bandwidth needed for LTE/4G growth by delivering fiber connectivity from Windstream’s network to the cellular towers of leading wireless service providers.

Goodman Networks' backhauling solutions aim to create efficient processes and establish program planning between Windstream and its wireless service customers. Backhauling will lower deployment costs and, incidentally, reduce Windstream’s carbon footprint as fewer number of trips are needed to upgrade the network for LTE/4G applications.

“We believe that Windstream’s leading-edge FttT solution provides wireless carriers a unique ability to meet their growing need for wireless backhaul," said Josh Shipman, EVP of Sales and Business Development at Goodman Networks. "We share many of the same wireless customers as Windstream and look forward to helping them deliver this technology to these customers.”

Interested in another article? Why not try this one: Mobile backhaul industry expected to be worth $9 billion by 2016

Mobile backhaul testing needs updates, says Frost and Sullivan analysts

Current methods of testing mobile backhaul require updates that reflect the ongoing shifts to new technologies and architectures, said analysts from Frost & Sullivan.

The 3G telecom industry is currently shifting to Long Term Evolution (LTE) and 4G technologies. At the same time, mobile backhaul is moving to new architectures like Internet protocol (IP) and Ethernet, with backhaul speed going from TDM to hit up to 10 GB at certain facilities.

Due to the recent, massive, and rapid proliferation of media-rich and bandwidth-intensive applications, network operators are reevaluating the mobile network infrastructure. Testing companies are also implementing certification programs that intend to ensure telecom-network standards are upheld. The certifications' homogenous network devices work together to implement OEM technologies across the networks.

According to Mariano Kimbara, a senior research analyst for Frost & Sullivan, these paradigm shifts are creating opportunities for mobile backhaul testing. This migration presents a number of key growth opportunities for test equipment vendors,” he told the Backhaul Bulletin.

Mr. Kimbara went on to explain that mobile backhaul test equipment vendors would find it profitable to develop solutions that ensure mobile backhaul testing can operate with multiple networks. Customers are looking for a one-stop-shop investment to get all test deployments from a single source,” he said.

Mr. Kimbara explained that one of the main factors driving demand for the mobile backhaul test equipment markets is the continuous replacement of time-division multiplexing (TDM) technologies into Ethernet and IP technologies. According to him, the industry is going through an unprecedented high growth in mobile traffic and data. The massive demand stresses the importance of a new set of dynamics and realignment for mobile backhaul.

Within this transition, it is crucial for IP and Carrier Ethernet to stay ahead of higher-bandwidth and quality-intensive service demands, such as data, voice and video services delivered over the network,” Mr. Kimbara said.

The change in the infrastructure architecture that delivers LTE services is opening up growth opportunities of testing. By 2011, there were approximately 30 commercial LTEs. And Mr. Kimbara expects that voice over LTE (VoLTE) will be first implemented in 2012.

For at least the next two to three years, the industry is expected to experience a combination of both E1/T1 (for voice) and Ethernet/IP (for data services) technologies in the mobile backhaul market,” he said.

Mr. Kimbara further said that the hybrid-network approach poses several key challenges to the industry, as such networks must be compatible with both legacy networks and new architectures. Carriers are thus forced to look for cost-efficient ways to sustain two separate, different networks. At the same time, the new architectures are attempting to match the standard set by TDM networks.

Dell'Oro: Mobile backhaul market will hit $9 billion in 2016

Dell’Oro Group had just released its 5-Year Forecast, which predicts the mobile backhaul market will hit $9 billion by 2016, with routers and switches accounting for almost a third of the market value.

According to Dell'Oro's Mobile Backhaul Market Research division, the demand for mobile backhaul continues to grow at a fast pace. Backhaul operators are deploying new cellular sites and transitioning to an all-IP network. Dell'Oro expects that the operators will keep evolving their backhaul networks by further improving routers and switches at cell sites and the edge of the network to achieve better throughput and efficiency.

The report goes on to predict that backhaul transport will grow at a 2 percent compounded annual growth rate to $6 billion by 2016, with microwave backhauling accounting for over half of the sites. Meanwhile, the router and switch equipment sector should grow at a 9 percent compounded annual growth rate to nearly $3 billion, which is 30 percent of the market.

Continuing, mobile backhaul operators will be rolling out macro cell sites to improve coverage. At the same time, they will deploy micro and pico cells or small cells in metro locations to increase backhaul capacity. Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) solutions are expected to become the choice to provide backhaul for small cells.

Dell’Oro Group's Mobile Backhaul 5-year Forecast is a thorough overview of trends and forecasts for the mobile backhaul market. Among the information it presents are tables on manufacturers’ revenue, backhaul links, average selling price forecasts for the Mobile Backhaul Transport and Routers & Switches, worldwide and regional cellular subscribers, and cell sites.

EDX releases SignalPro v8.0 network design tool for small cell network designers

Confronted with the growing complexities of BWA, M2M, and mobile backhaul deployments, EDX Wireless recently announced the release of the v8.0 version of its EDX SignalPro wireless network design and optimization software.

"Version 8.0 of SignalPro has been designed with the needs of increasingly complex Broadband Wireless Access (BWA), Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and backhaul deployments in mind," said Mark Chapman, CEO of EDX. "Looking forward, we see this release as a critical step in supporting the automation of small cell deployments as they emerge. We are pleased to be able to offer this level of wireless network analysis and design automation to our customers," CEO Chapman said, and added that SignalPro's newest version "will greatly simplify the design and optimization of large and integrated networks."

v8.0 improves SignalPro's Point-to-Multipoint (PtMP) planning capabilities. It also adds a good number of new features as an inline upgrade for the entire EDX range of products.

SignalPro v8.0 supports native 64-bit operation, allowing it to rapidly process data for the kind of large projects usually found in traditional Smart Grids and the new small cell systems. Enhancements to the EDX product's PtMP design and analysis capability will allow it to be used for large-scale BWA, M2M, and integrated backhaul design.

Like previous releases, v8.0 also supports an extensive range of study types. Multipoint system links can thus be analyzed using virtually any type of technology.

In addition, the SignalPro + Network Design Module package also has the Automatic Frequency Planning. This assignment mode considers a comprehensive set of system constraints that can be thoroughly programmed to coordinate CPE channel and server assignments, thus optimizing the channel plan. Meanwhile, its Automated Site Selection utility picks hub sites and CPE's from a candidate list based on an RF-optimized site selection algorithm. This simplifies project design for systems with known candidates, initial estimates, presales analysis, and RFP responses.

In addition, SignalPro v8.0 has a fully programmable query function and statistical analysis utility, allowing it to show key statistics and study results.

Ruckus Smart Mesh: Leveraging small cell mobile backhauling

Small cells are a new architectural approach to increase capacity of service provider networks. Essentially miniaturized base stations, they combine licensed and unlicensed radio technology with wireless backhaul. The result: Short-ranged, lower-powered wireless signals that deliver better signal coverage, improved voice quality, and higher data performance to mobile users.

Small cell technology can be used to generate high-quality mobile signals indoors and at remote outdoor locations. It can also satisfy the growing demand for mobile data by expanding a macro network’s data capacity at a fraction of the cost.

Robert Joyce, chief radio engineer at Telefonica UK, noted that the major obstacle to deploying small cell was finding a reliable and yet inexpensive way to backhaul traffic from hundreds or even thousands of small cell nodes.

That is where Ruckus Wireless’ Smart Mesh technology comes in. Smart Mesh combines advanced self-organizing network (SON) principles with Ruckus-patented adaptive antenna arrays and predictive channel management techniques. The synergized technologies and techniques result in Wi-Fi mesh backbone links between nodes that are highly resilient and rated at speeds of 5 GHz.

These links automatically adapt to changes in environmental conditions. Wireless service providers like O2 and its owner, Telefonica UK, can use those links to mesh traffic. The innovative method will allow delivery of reliable backhaul for licensed cellular and unlicensed Wi-Fi traffic in both line of sight and non-line of site environments.

The Ruckus SmartCell system allows the innovative use of LTE small cells to give mobile operators a boost in capacity. By co-locating and combining LTE small cells with Wi-Fi access points, which allows LTE small cells to share site-lease agreements and backhaul, wireless network operators can simplify operations and save money.

In addition, by integrating Wi-Fi and LTE small cells within the cellular core, operators can better optimize network utilization across the radio access network. Subscribers will get to enjoy further improvement in performance and a seamless Wi-Fi experience.

Mr. Joyce can attest to the effectiveness of the SmartMesh-empowered mobile backhauling services. "With Smart Mesh,” said the Telefonica chief radio engineer, “we are running fiber to just one of every five nodes.” Reducing the amount of fiber led to savings in capital and OPEX. It also allowed faster deployment of the system and similarly speedy delivery of the wireless service.

Lemko DiMoWiNe offers mobile backhaul-free LTE

Lemko Corporation is advertising its Distributed Mobile Wireless Network (DiMoWiNe) as a cheaper yet similarly-effective substitute for backhaul services. And it's putting its Long Term Evolution (LTE) concept on its first big trial with a Canadian Tier 1 operator.

In a Light Reading article, the small Illinois-based company proposes doing away with the intermediate links between the core/backbone network and the subnetworks at the edge of the hierarchical network.

Instead, Lemko suggested virtualizing the network's Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and IMS functionality. By removing the backhaul and converting the entire switching center into software, a network operator could perform all LTE operations -authentication, switching, routing, and rating- at the eNodeB, a Layer 7 cloud application at the network's edge.

DiMoWiNe is expected to reduce operating expenses by four-fifths, with Lemko estimating that the cost spent for each gigabyte will drop from $5 to $1. The new technology will also decongest the spectrum, allowing wireless operators to reduce their dependency on expensive Wi-Fi offload.


"DiMoWiNe turns cellular into an app that jumps on the Internet right away," says Lemko COO Bohdan Pyskir.

Lemko's DiMoWiNe has been deployed at more than 500 commercial and military-operated locations. One notable example cited are the primarily rural wireless operators in remote areas like Alaskan fishing towns. Big operators do not cover these areas because of the lack of infrastructure and- according to COO Psikyir- motivation.

The biggest test for Lemko is a five-month trial with a Canadian Tier 1 operator. Lemko is also pitching its DiMoWiNe concept to other Tier 1 operators as a competitive substitute to backhaul.

On July 24, 2012, Lemko Corporation also announced that its DiMoWiNe 4G system has reached interoperability for roaming between 700MHz LTE lower band class 12 and band class 17.