Microwave solves the problem of fiber shortage at LTE backhaul sites

On December 4, 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued TD-LTE 4G licenses to China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, and China Unicom officially entered the period
of rapid growth of 4G networks 。 The issuance of 4G licenses is a great opportunity for Chinese operators, but it also faces challenges: the coverage of LTE base stations is small, the deployment density is much higher than that of GSM base stations and 3G base stations, LTE construction will face a large number of new site demand, and some new sites are short of fiber resources, and newly laid fiber, high cost and long cycle, can not meet the needs of LTE rapid site construction, affecting LTE network coverage
。 In the face of challenges, domestic operators began to try to use microwave backhaul to solve the problem of lack of optical fiber resources, microwave transmission does not require optical cable connection, can quickly establish base station backhaul connection, cooperate with the existing network optical fiber network, realize rapid deployment of new sites, and help LTE network construction
.

In other parts of the world, such as Europe, Southeast Asia and other countries, these countries are restricted by the privatization of property rights, the terminal fiber resources are extremely scarce, microwave with its wireless transmission, rapid deployment and other characteristics, has become the mainstream solution
of 3G/LTE mobile backhaul in such regions.
Microwave is widely used in the world, products and solutions are also very mature, mainstream telecom equipment suppliers (such as Huawei, Ericsson, ALU, NEC, etc.
) have provided mature microwave products, the industry chain is quite complete and mature
.
At present, the overall global microwave market space is about 5 billion US dollars, of which 83% of microwave equipment is used for mobile backhaul
.

Microwaves are evolving toward grouping and large bandwidth

LTE base station service backhaul has two characteristics: 1.
Upstream interface grouping; 2.
The backhaul bandwidth requirement is large
.

As a supporting wireless backhaul solution, microwave technology is also evolving, packet microwave came out in 2008, is a microwave that supports packet switching function and can dynamically adjust the transmission bandwidth
.
It can realize MPLS/PWE3-based mobile backhaul solution, which is suitable for 3G/LTE scenarios
.
Compared with traditional TDM microwaves, which can provide greater bandwidth, packet microwaves can achieve single-carrier frequencies up to Gbps level, and can provide advanced packet technologies, such as MPLS/MPLS-TP and 1588v2 clock synchronization technology
.
It also has the same reliability as TDM microwave, which can achieve similar service O&M capabilities as SDH networks, providing graphical network management, automatic protection switchover, and real-time accurate monitoring
of alarms and performance.

At present, the grouped microwave technology is still developing, and more and more new features and technologies
have emerged.
At the 2013 Barcelona Communications Exhibition, the second generation of E-BAND and v-BAND new band packet microwave technology was shockingly launched
.
Among them, the second-generation E-BAND is favored by many operators because it is the first to support ultra-large bandwidth (single carrier frequency 2.
5Gbps), high spectrum utilization (only 250MHz spectrum for 1Gbps throughput), powerful packet capability, high reliability and easy maintenance
.
V-BAND products suitable for free frequency bands are compact, simple and low-key and environmentally friendly, suitable for streets, buildings and other occasions
.
In particular, the unique smart antenna used in V-BAND can realize automatic system alignment, greatly simplifying the traditional antenna installation method, which has attracted the attention
of many operators at the exhibition.

Compared with 3G networks, LTE networks have higher requirements for bearer networks, including large bandwidth, large network management, high QoS guarantee, high network reliability, and accurate clock synchronization
.
The packet microwave can fully meet these requirements of LTE bearing:

Ultra-large bandwidth: With its 1024QAM high modulation mode, frame header compression, and air interface physical link aggregation, packet microwave can achieve ultra-large bandwidth of single-carrier frequency Gbps, fully meeting the access and bearer requirements
of LTE large-bandwidth services.

High network reliability: The 3GPP protocol puts forward strict requirements for the latency and availability of LTE services, and packet microwave supports a variety of carrier-class protection technologies based on MPLS/MPLS-TP, making packet services connection-oriented and achieving the same hierarchical management as SDH to ensure service reliability
.

High-quality service transmission: Group microwave supports H-QoS, making QoS control more fine, different customer services can have different priorities, and different priorities can be guaranteed within the same customer service, so as to effectively ensure high-priority services and truly achieve high-quality service transmission
.

High-precision time synchronization: The 1588v2 can fully meet the frequency and phase synchronization requirements of TD-LTE, reducing installation and maintenance costs
.

E2E network management: Packet microwave and packet optical equipment are co-networked, which can realize E2E pull-through between microwave and packet optical equipment in terms of service, protection, management, and clock, effectively cooperate with packet optical equipment, and accelerate the pace of
LTE network construction.

Simple and rapid deployment: The all-outdoor solution for grouped microwave equipment does not require a computer room, and the installation and deployment are simple and fast, meeting the requirements of rapid deployment of
LTE intensive miniaturization.

Application of packet microwave in LTE backhaul network

Packet microwave can be regarded as a wireless extension of optical fiber, which mainly solves the problem of insufficient optical fiber in some scenarios, quickly implements service backhaul, and improves network reliability
.
With the advent of the LTE era, packet microwave as LTE mobile backhaul has the following three main application scenarios:

End-of-line LTE service backhaul and comprehensive access to key customer services: If the fiber resources of the new site are unreachable, you can use packet microwave to achieve fast service access and then transmit it to the fiber node.
At the same time, packet microwave can support multiple service access, taking into account the comprehensive bearing
of major customers' services.
Packet microwave can be seamlessly connected with packet optical devices on the live network, and a unified NNI interface is adopted on the network side to realize end-to-end service provisioning and management
.

Ring replenishment network with packet optical equipment: The accelerated construction of LTE consumes huge access fiber resources, and only 60% of the existing network terminal access network is expected to be fiber looped
.
If the optical fiber fails, all the base station services on the single chain will be dropped, which will have a huge
impact.
However, the long period and high infrastructure cost of laying fiber will not improve network reliability
in the short term.
Packet microwave can be seamlessly connected with the existing network packet optical equipment to form a ring network solution, and improve network reliability
by configuring service ring network protection.

Disaster recovery backup and emergency rescue: Packet microwave network construction is flexible and fast, and can use microwave to establish independent disaster recovery backup links between important network nodes, especially in areas where natural disasters occur frequently, to ensure the permanent connection
of important nodes.
In the event of a disaster, packet microwaves can quickly build networks to realize emergency communications
.