Technical

Technical Paper
Paper
Microwave takes a leap into a new dimension:
Packet Radio
Broadband for All is the new trend in access
technologies. As a result, the transmission world
is moving to IP: new access technologies are
IPbased, since this is the best way to support
broadband traffic.
Operators will deploy the new, packetbased access
technologies over existing TDMbased infrastructures
to attract new customers and generate new revenue
streams. Alcatel has anticipated this migration, and
is launching a new packet microwave radio solution,
which delivers current TDM services with TDM
performance, and allows native handling of
packetbased traffic to deliver broadband services
efficiently and costeffectively.

TECHNICAL PAPER

G. Mirelli, F. Gavioli

MICROWAVE TAKES A LEAP

INTO A NEW DIMENSION:
PACKET RADIO
Alcatels microwave solution is evolving into a new dimension enabling the delivery of Broadband for All. Packet
Radio is the new concept that will change the microwave
market for the better.

roadband for All means allowing

any user anywhere to access bandwidthhungry services such as
Triple Play, i.e. a combination of voice,
video and data. Fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) ensures that these services
can be accessed regardless of access
technology: the services can be delivered
via the mobile network, WiMAX hotspots,
or fixed line.
The result is to give the user the
power to access any service, anywhere.
To provide this tremendous access flexibility, the operator needs a transmission
network with equal flexibility, ensuring a
nontraffic blocking solution.
With previousgeneration networks,
whether GSM or data access via copper,
the capacity bottleneck limiting broadband service provision was the access
technology itself, which was designed
with circuitbased logic. These were

designed to provide realtime services

like voice, but not data traffic, which is
variable by nature.
Nowadays, new access technologies
(UMTS, WiMAX, IPDSL) have solved
this issue, based as they are on
packetbased logic. This allows flexibility in the traffic type carried, both real
time and nonreal time, including CBR
(Constant Bit Rate) and VBR (Variable
Bit Rate) status. With this evolution, the
capacity bottleneck has been pushed
back into the backhauling transmission
network (Figure 1).
The new operator challenge is how
to decouple capacity growth requirements from costs.
Traditional TDMbased solutions provided the best technology choice to backhaul circuitswitched services. Capacity

Figure 1: Broadband network bottleneck

Access

Backhauling

Backbone
Microwave

Microwave
UMTS-HSDPA

ADSL2+

Fiber

WiMAX

Leased Line

Leased Line

Is backhauling the new

broadband network bottleneck?

Core

- Alcatel Telecommunications Review - 3 rd Quarter 2006

Fibre

Leased Line

and costs were proportional, however

capacity requirements were quite low.
With the advent of broadband and wireless
broadband, capacity growth could require
10X greater backhaul capacity. The
cost/capacity model clearly becomes unacceptable, as the cost of building up the network would be far greater then the generated revenues.
With the acknowledgment that microwave
radio remains the preferred solution to provide backhauling, an innovative microwave
solution is required. As access technology
changes from circuit to packetbased, the
transmission network also has to follow a
similar evolution path. Microwave provides an efficient solution for moving from
traditional TDMbased to packetbased
solutions.

Running a profitable
business model
All mobile operators today have the
opportunity to offer broadband services
to their users to increase revenue
streams, since broadband access technologies are now a reality (EDGE, UMTS,
HSxPA, UMA/WiFi, WiMAX, DVBH, etc.),
and mobile terminals and applications are
widely available. But that it is not enough
to create a profitable business, because
todays network model shows associated
fixed costs rising in line with broadband
penetration. A new model is therefore
required (Figure 2).
Sooner or later, 2G mobile operators
will come under pressure to offer broadband services. Such pressure can be
resisted for a while, but eventually, as
users demand real highspeed, high
capacity broadband services, they will
need to respond or risk losing customers
and revenue.

www.alcatel.com/atr

MICROWAVE TAKES A LEAP INTO A NEW DIMENSION: PACKET RADIO

Transport technology: TDM

Figure 2: Mobile operator business model

Table 1) highlight two

Cases 1 and 2 (T
interesting points:

Running a profitable
business model
Increase revenues
Reduce fixed costs

Retain and expand customer pool

Increase customer spending
Increase number of offered services
Match customer satisfaction expectations

Optimize Network Cost

Use limited resources in the most
profitable way
Protect the investment against new
services requirements.

Be up to speed with latest

access technologies
Always offer latest technologies
(EDGE, UMTS, HSxPA, UMA/WiFi,
WiMAX, DVBH)
Always offer most fascinating applications

The effective introduction of broadband services is not only revenuedriven,

but also competitiondriven, since users will
quickly change operator to obtain better
services. The mobile operators challenge is:
How can I offer mobile broadband
services to my customers without a
dramatic cost impact on my transport network?
When GSM was first deployed, voice
was the primary service. As circuitbased
TDM was the main network support
requirement, the use of digital PDH and
SDH TDM technology was and still is the
best fit for this application.
The efficiency of traditional circuit
based transport stemmed from two main
factors:
each phone call uses very limited transport resources for delivery, consuming
only 16 kbit/s;
voice communication is constant
bitrate, realtime traffic that requires
a dedicated, fixedcapacity path into
the transport network.
Broadband services are the opposite:
each broadband user section consumes
much more transport than voice at
least 300 kbit/s;
broadband communication is variable
packetrate, nonrealtime traffic that
requires priority capacity at times, and
average capacity the rest of the time,
into the transport network.
At this point, operators are struggling
to understand how to transform their
transport networks to fulfill new broad-

www.alcatel.com/atr

band traffic requirements. Their dilemma

lies in choosing between TDM or
packetbased technologies, and their
associated business impact, to handle
these new demands.

Broadband download services have a

potential of 100% usage in a day, with the
possibility of downloading automatically
in batches at night. Voice communication
services obviously cannot be delivered in
this way. This demonstrates the potential of broadbands nonrealtime nature.
Its two main performance discriminators
are average packet download throughput
and peak rate.
When delivering broadband services
over TDMbased transport, there is
a drastic reduction in transport
value, since to respect customer satisfaction criteria, capacity must be
dimensioned at the peak rate. This
means that the total of active users
(and revenue) is drastically reduced,
leading to one conclusion: capacity
must be increased. Unfortunately,
increasing TDM transport capacity
cannot be the ultimate solution,
because increased capacity means
increased costs.

Figure 3: Transport value model

Limited resource (Bandwidth)

Service
(Quality)

Revenue
(Active Users)

Active User
(Customer satisfaction)

Transport value: the correlation

between revenue, cost and
active users
Mobile access base stations and NodeB
need to be interconnected to controllers
(BSC, RNC) relying on a backhauling
transport network.
Microwave backhauling is a challenging transport technology, due to its limited bandwidth. Ignoring the bandwidth
issue, we can compare the characteristics
of voice and broadband delivery over
microwave.
Given that a delivered service produces revenue if the end user is satisfied
with the delivered service and is active in
the network, we can calculate Transport
Value as the total number of active users
within a defined, limited transport capacity (Figure 3).

To deliver broadband music download

over TDM transport at the same transport
value rate as voice services, transport
capacity would need to be 200 Mbit/s, with
an increase in associated transport equipment CAPEX of at least 2X.
As for microwave transport, bandwidth increases also carry an associated
cost:
4 Mbit/s fits into a 3.5 MHz radio channel, with an OPEX x year x microwave
link = 525 (23GHz in Italy).
200 Mbit/s fits into a 28 MHz radio channel, with an OPEX x year x Microwave
link = 2,077.
The average increase in OPEX associated with a radio bandwidth increase is at

3 rd Quarter 2006 - Alcatel Telecommunications Review -

MICROWAVE TAKES A LEAP INTO A NEW DIMENSION: PACKET RADIO

Table 1: Maximum deliverable calls and transport value for 4 Mbit/s transport channel (equivalent to 2 x E1)
Case

Transport

TDM

Packet

6
Microwave packet

userto
user voice

broadband music
download

userto
user voice

broadband music
download

userto
user voice

broadband music
download

Required
transport
capacity

16 kbit/s

1.5 Mbit/s
(27 kbits/s
average)

21.6 kbit/s
(16 kbit/s +
35% overhead)

1.5 Mbit/s
(27 kbits/s
average)

26.8 kbit/s
(16 kbit/s +
5% overhead)

1.5 Mbit/s
(27 kbits/s
average)

% usage

60%

100%

60%

100%

60%

100%

4 Mbit/s

4 Mbit/s

4 Mbit/s

4 Mbit/s

4 Mbit/s

10 Mbit/s
(4 Mbit/s x 2.5)

Max.
delivered
calls

250

2.6

185

148

238

370

Transport
value

150

2.6

111

148

142

370

Service

Available
bandwidth

least 4X, where radio fees are recurrent

fees per microwave pointtopoint transport link (Figure 4).
At this point, operators are struggling
to understand how to transform their
transport networks to fulfill new broadband traffic requirements without the limitations of TDM transport.
What transport solution will cope
with new broadband traffic requirements yet avoid the 2X CAPEX and
4X OPEX associated with TDM technology limitations?
Operators are looking for a transport
technology able to carry traditional, constantbitrate traffic with the same performance as TDM, and at the same time
carry new, variablerate broadband traffic with no TDM limitations.
Packet transport can provide the
answer, as demonstrated by the Transport
Value calculation.

Given that packet transport seems to

be the right technology, what more can be
achieved in the microwave arena?

Microwave packet
radio model
The radio spectrum is a scarce
resource, so any extra need for bandwidth
associated with the overhead for carrying
traditional TDM over packet is an issue.
Similarly, todays microwave point
topoint transport planning assumes
worstcase conditions to guarantee at
least 99.995% availability for voice
services.
Given bandwidth constraints, the availability requirement for voice service, and
the desire to move to packet transport
mode, microwave packet radio can be
defined as a new transport model that

This means that to increase the transport value of a microwave radio network,
it must have an integrated switching
function able to switch transport
resources between different users,
based on their customer satisfaction
service profiles, to keep them active in
the network. The ability to switch the
service of several active users over a single transport resource is called Service
Switching in the microwave packet
radio model (Figure 5).
Data awareness. The 35% overhead
required by packet switching means
that, to increase the Transport Value of
a microwave network, an algorithm is
needed that can recognize the structure
of the packet traffic and, if possible,
remove the extra overhead. The ability
to recognize the nature of the traffic in

Figure 4: Relationship between broadband traffic penetration and fixed cost

OPEX

Capacity Cost

Transport technology: packet

Number of E1s
x4

Cases 3 and 4 (Table 1) show the following:

CAPEX
x2

Packet transport can carry constant

bitrate voice traffic, but needs 35%
extra bandwidth due to the overhead
required for handling packet transmission;
Packet transport is clearly the solution
for variablerate broadband traffic.
Thanks to the packet nature of broadband traffic and its variability (between
peak rate and average throughput), it is
possible to deliver broadband customer
satisfaction profiles by dimensioning the
transport at the average throughput,
while ensuring sufficient capacity to
handle peak rate only when needed.
4

Broadband
Traffic
Penetration
50%

implements three main functions to fulfill these requirements:

Service Switching. Operator revenue
increases in proportion to the number of
users active in the network: Transport
Value is linked to the ability to keep the
largest number of users active using the
minimum amount of transport resources.

- Alcatel Telecommunications Review - 3 rd Quarter 2006

the incoming packets (IP, E1, ATM,

CES, PWE) and related service (video,
voice or data) and to adapt it to the
variability of microwave transport is
called Data Awareness.
Data awareness functional requirements are:
Reduce the need for microwave bandwidth to transport packets;

www.alcatel.com/atr

MICROWAVE TAKES A LEAP INTO A NEW DIMENSION: PACKET RADIO

Guarantee no impact on TDM transport performance;

Guarantee the maximum latency of
packets for each service profile.
Adaptive Packet Transport. Although
guaranteeing voice quality demands
99.995% availability, broadband quality is measured in terms of peak rate
and average throughput. Therefore, to
increase the Transport Value of a
microwave network, there is a need to
differentiate between the packet traffic of constantbitrate services, like
voice, and variablebitrate broadband services, like music download,
allowing both types of traffic to be
carried with different performance
criteria:

Figure 5: Multiple access users over microwave packet transport

Max throughput = maxBBAQ

Fading
Limited capacity (99.998)
Broadband Access (BBA Quality)
Voice (99.998)

Conclusions
- Availability of at least 99.995% for
voice;
- Service peak rate and average throughput for broadband.
The ability to transport differentiated
services over a microwave network, planning the pointtopoint link using the
availability requirement of voice traffic,
whilst adjusting radio coding and modulation to obtain maximum performance in
terms of peak rate and average throughput, is called Adaptive Packet Transport.

Transport value of
microwave packet radio
The comparative benefits of microwave
packet transport can also be assessed in
terms of Transport Value (Table 1, cases
5 and 6).
Thanks to the three major features
provided by microwave packet radio, it
can be seen that microwave packet radio
transport can:
carry constantbitrate voice traffic
with the same guarantees as traditional
TDM transport;
drastically increase the number of
active broadband users in the network.

www.alcatel.com/atr

The introduction of these new,

packetbased technologies is a major
challenge for existing transport networks, yet should allow operators to
retain existing subscribers, and target
new markets.
The evolution of microwave radio
enables dataaware transport that provides support for new, highbandwidth
services without network infrastructure
disruption. Indeed, microwave can combine legacy technology requirements
with additional support for the new
packet transport. This can safeguard
previous investments, while enabling
new services that facilitate IP transformation and service convergence, leading to
new revenue streams.
The operators aim is to offer any
service to any user via the most suitable
access technology, whether this is 2G,
3G, WiFi, WiMAX, DVBT/DVBH or
others. The network challenge, which
becomes the vendors challenge, is to provide the technology to support any service that an operator wishes to offer, as
well as providing the most adequate
transport technology. Alcatel is wellpositioned to answer this challenge, due to its
experience in mobile and fixed networks, its large customer base, and its

position as a supplier of both mobile

infrastructure and transport technology.
Microwave radio is a broadband
enabler, and becomes a key transport
asset when it is positioned between the
metro and access networks. Using
microwave transmission, operators will
enhance the access infrastructure, and
therefore the user experience.
Alcatel is firmly convinced that
microwave represents the backhauling
solution for tomorrows networks, enabling
increased revenues and reduce fixed
costs in a single solution.

Giacomo Mirelli
is Head of Solution Strategy and
Marketing in Alcatels Wireless
Transmission Division. He has been
a Regular Member of the Alcatel
Technical Academy since 2003, and is based
in Vimercate, Italy.
giacomo.mirelli@alcatel.it

Fabio Gavioli
is a Marketing and Business
Development Manager in the
Wireless Transmission Division,
located in Vimercate, Italy.
fabio.gavioli@alcatel.it

3 rd Quarter 2006 - Alcatel Telecommunications Review -

MICROWAVE TAKES A LEAP INTO A NEW DIMENSION: PACKET RADIO

Glossary
ATM
BSC
CAPEX
CBR
CES
DVBH
FMC
OPEX
PWE
RNC
TDM
VBR

Asynchronous Transfer Mode

Base Station Controller
Capital Expenditure
Constant Bit Rate
Circuit Emulation Service
Digital Video Broadcast
Handheld
Fixed/Mobile Convergence
Operational Expenditure
PseudoWire Emulation
Radio Network Controller
Time Division Multiplexing
Variable Bit Rate

- Alcatel Telecommunications Review - 3 rd Quarter 2006

www.alcatel.com/atr

Alcatel and the Alcatel logo are registered trademarks of Alcatel. All other trademarks
are the property of their respective owners. Alcatel assumes no responsibility for the
accuracy of the information presented, which is subject to change without notice.
09
03 2006
2005 Alcatel. All rights reserved. 3GQ 00016
10001 0013
0024 TQZZA Ed.01