Mobile backhaul is by far the biggest market for point to point radios. It is estimated that 70-75% of microwave radios are sold to mobile operators.
Mobile backhaul is the part of mobile network, where data from individual Base Stations or Node Bs is transported to Radio Network Controller (RNC) points, aggregated there and transmitted to Mobile Switching Centres (MSC). While the data transmission requirements for LTE, UMB or 802.16m from individual Node B to RNC is between 50-300 Mbps, the requirements towards aggregated capacity is scaling up fast and reaches 1-3 Gbps during the next couple of years. From 2012 onwards, 10 Gbps is expected to become the norm for such links, and it is these aggregation points that are becoming the wireless network bottleneck.
According to numberous market researches, point to point microwave radio accounts for ca 50% of backhaul connections today. The rest of connections are split between copper and fiber connections. It is expected that copper will loose market share fast due to limited capacity it can sustain, and fiber will take over. However, around half of all connections will still be based on point to point microwave due the high trenching cost of fiber, as well as time-to-market. The rising capacity at decreasing unit cost of wireless bridge will sustain a strong presence of microwave point to point radios in mobile backhaul infrastrucutre.
Mobile networks are part of critical infrastructure, which makes the reliability, quality and reach very important. Also, as vast investments into previous generation of networks are done, the new solutions have to sustain compatibility with legacy networks.
Modesat offers modem IPs for all different network configurations, such as:
Due to used FPGA platform, Modesat also offers Pay as you Grow options for upgrading radios while already installed on the field. This enables 60-70% decrease on CAPEX per individual installed radio bridge. The feature is not dependant on initial radio design as for instance software keys in ASIC, as it is possible to upgrade the radio with the new generation of modem features as soon as these are released.
Key benefits
Modesat modem IPs for mobile backhaul incorporate features required to support future IP services as well as bridge legacy networks with LTE. Key benefits of using our point to point modem IPs are:
