When microwave meets the IP wave

The popularity of 3G networks has culminated in increased demands for IP and broadband
services across mobile networks. However, this causes bottlenecks in conventional microwave
systems. Existing bandwidth fails to meet service development and is unable to support Ethernet
packet services.

Paving the way for IP backhaul

Current backhaul networks must efficiently transport existing networks' E1 services, HSPA-
based broadband services, and dynamic Ethernet packet services. IP microwave technology has
emerged to fulfill these needs.

IP microwave incorporates adaptive modulation (AM) to directly map packet signals onto an air
interface. Microwave systems are in development that can transmit IP services and large service
volumes to transport networks, but they require cutting-edge IP microwave technologies.

The All-IP oriented IP microwave system adopts packet switching as its core technology under
which the air interface fully adopts packet technology. AM greatly improves the efficiency and
capacity of packet data transmission by offering high bandwidth and dynamically adapting the
packet microwave to different weather conditions, such as rain and fog. Technologies such as
AM, layered QoS, and high frequency modulation (256QAM) achieve this without interrupting
existing TDM/ATM service transmission.

Benefits of packet microwave

Operators can utilize advanced packet microwave technologies to enhance mobile broadband
service transmission in a number of ways.

Improving bandwidth utilization

The IP microwave system not only improves the bandwidth multiplexing and transport efficiency,
but also supports burst service transmission via a packet switching kernel, a packet air interface,
and statistical multiplexing technology. It optimizes the microwave frame structure and link
protocol in a way that reduces OPEX and handles larger traffic volumes despite the limited
bandwidth of microwave air interfaces.

AM lowers TCO

Compared with identical transport conditions in a traditional TDM microwave system, the IP
system maximizes different services' availability allocation ratio through AM by expanding
transport bandwidth. AM adjusts transport bandwidth for low priority Ethernet packet services
and maintains bandwidth for high priority E1 voice services.

The IP microwave system automatically changes modulation mode (for example, from 256QAM
to 16QAM) in unfavorable weather conditions to ensure error-free bit communications.
Microwave air interface bandwidth decreases to protect high priority services, while blocking
low priority services. Favorable weather conditions stimulate a recovery in transport link quality
and the system automatically resumes its original bit rate to transmit all services. Thus, AM
technology implements condition-based bandwidth adjustments across the microwave air
interface to help operators decrease frequency spectrum costs and reduce antenna weight, both of
which lessen TCO.

Unified multi-service transport

Conventional 2G networks are based on TDM, 3G R99/R4, and now ATM. 3G

R5/R6/LTE/WiMAX networks are transiting to IP-based networking, under which TDM, ATM,
Ethernet, and other services can coexist in the long term. The IP microwave system carries
existing services and realizes unified service transmission through E2E hybrid technology or
pseudo wire emulation edge to edge (PWE3) to decrease equipment investment and O&M costs
and complexity.

Packet-based clock synchronization

When networks evolve from SDH to IP-based backhaul, factors such as traffic connection and
synchronization must be considered; otherwise, expensive GPS modules are required for
multicast broadcast multimedia services (MBMSs) including mobile TV in LTE TDD and LTE
FDD. In some indoor cases, it's impossible to get GPS resource because antenna installation is
not viable.

Current packet-based clock transfer technology is already advanced and can be applied to the IP-
based microwave transmission system. Coupled with a PTN, this supports various packet-based
clock transfer protocols including synchronous Ethernet and IEEE 1588v2, to realize network-
wide E2E transmission and synchronization.

Smooth evolution

Huawei has innovatively integrated the TDM, hybrid, and packet microwave systems into a
single system that smoothly transits conventional microwave to packet microwave. Huawei is
also the only vendor offering the capability to provide seamless evolution from TDM, hybrid to
pure packet microwave.

Hybrid microwave for 2G/3G

Given that TDM/ATM services and Ethernet packet services will coexist over the long-term,
hybrid microwave transport forms an effective choice for operators as the air interface can
encapsulate TDM and packet services into a unified microwave frame prior to transmission. The
hybrid microwave supports three types of air interface modes: TDM, hybrid (TDM + packet),
and packet.
The Huawei hybrid microwave features high bandwidth, optimum performance, and adaptive
modulation to enable operators' existing networks to develop into hybrid packet microwave
transport networks and ease network transition pressures.

During the initial phase of evolving 2G networks to 3G, voice services still dominate mobile
service provision and data services are negligible. In order to safeguard existing equipment
investment and ensure existing voice service transmission, the preferred solution during mobile
transport network transformation should incorporate packet switching capability into existing
TDM microwave equipment. After data services emerge as the major concern of mobile
transport networks and all interfaces are technologically IP-based, the hybrid microwave system
can completely function as a packet microwave system. This maximally extends system life
cycle and decreases CAPEX.

All-IP of mobile broadband services will catalyze a massive increase in data services. This tends
to promote an IP core as the mainstream choice, underpinned by an effective OAM mechanism
from the IP Core to the IP RAN. The hybrid mode will gradually fail to meet holistic IP mobile
network maintenance, encouraging the hybrid mode to smoothly evolve to an all packet mode.

Packet microwave for 3G/LTE

The packet microwave mode converts services from TDM to circuit emulation services (CESs)
that are then mapped onto the microwave frame. The synchronous clock transfer specific to the
Huawei packet mode supports synchronous Ethernet and IEEE 1588v2. Clock frequency
accuracy exceeds +/-0.05ppm and phase synchronization occurs in under 1ms to meet the
requirements of various radio mobile bearer networks.

The microwave transport network has developed from TDM microwave to hybrid microwave;
this will inevitably evolve into a packet microwave network and become the preferred
microwave transport solution for operators. Packet microwave networks yield the best
performance/cost ratio, safeguard existing network investment, support flexible upgrades, and
ensure compatibility.

Packet microwave equipment represents the optimal choice for future All-IP service transmission
should operators choose to construct their own IP transport networks. As the only vendor able to
provide TDM microwave equipment, hybrid microwave equipment, and packet microwave
equipment, Huawei is positioned to assist operators construct a cost-effective microwave
transport network capable of sustaining commercial growth..

The packet microwave solution

Microwave communications systems transport a large amount of mobile services and are as
important as optical communications systems for accessing services through base stations.

Mobile operators throughout the world have diversified base station access resources. In Asia-
Pacific, base stations are allocated relatively rich optical fiber resources. In Europe where costs
are high in manpower and optical fiber laying, and in other areas with special environmental
conditions, microwave-based systems are still major transport media.

Bottlenecks for traditional microwave systems

In 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

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 an SDH-
based microwave system 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.

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 bearer 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 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. Services 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).