4G Wireless Backhaul

Infrastructure Using Carrier Ethernet

Transport Technologies
Introduction
The telecommunications industry is evolving rapidly. Wireline
carriers are making significant investments in fiber infrastructures
to deliver business, transport and residential services, and
Carrier Ethernet is emerging as an important access and
backhaul technology around the globe.

100M

4G

UMB
WiMAX
iBurst
LTE
HIPERMAN
WiBro

50M
25M

UPLINK

Wireless carriers are scrambling to keep pace with a growing

demand for mobile Internet services, and wireless equipment
vendors are developing fourth generation (4G) technologies
that can provide IP-based, high-speed broadband services for
fixed, nomadic and mobile users.

conferencing, image sharing, video, and high-speed data,

strains the infrastructure. The generations of wireless standards
are shown in Figure 1.

UMTS-TDD
HSPA+

3G

HSDPA/HSUPA

10M

1xEV-DO
UMTS/W-CDMA

1M
100K
10K
0K

PHS
CDMA2000
EDGE/
iDEN WiDEN
EGPRS
GSM
CSD PDC
D-AMPS
CDPD GPRS IS-95
HSCSD
DataTAC
Mobitex
AMPS
NMT

2G

GAN/UMA
TD-SCDMA

1G

10K

100K

1M

10M

25M

50M

100M

DOWNLINK

Figure 1. Wireless standards evolution

As wireless carriers move to 4G mobile technology, huge

demands are being placed on carrier backhaul infrastructure.
The multiple, high-bandwidth, quality-sensitive services that
carriers have planned for 4G technology require an
infrastructure that is packet-based, scalable and resilient, as well
as cost-effective to install, operate and manage.
An innovative, connection-oriented Ethernet technology, Provider
Backbone Bridging-Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE) 802.1Qay, is
emerging as a key solution for addressing the enormous 4G
backhaul infrastructure challenge. Currently being standardized by
the IEEE, PBB-TE promises to provide the resiliency, scalability and
operational efficiency that wireless carriers require.

First generation (1G) mobile systems were analog and focused

only on voice traffic. Second generation (2G) marked the
transition from analog to digital systems. Third generation (3G)
mobile systems evolved to support more bandwidth-hungry
services, such as email, text messaging and image sharing.
Typically, 3G mobile networks require two parallel backbone
infrastructuresone consisting of circuit-switched nodes and one
consisting of packet-based nodes. This network infrastructure
doubles the capital and operational expenses associated with
deploying, maintaining and operating 3G mobile networks.
4G mobile networks require a single, all-IP, packet-based
backhaul infrastructure, providing carriers with a significant cost
advantage. However, the number of mobile devices and
multitude of services, such as traditional voice, voice

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Several 4G network characteristics have been established by

international standards development organizations and forums.
These requirements and performance targets are shown in
Figure 2, along with their impact on air interface and/or
infrastructure equipment. Generally, 4G standards are
characterized by superior bandwidth, which sacrifices some of
the mobility attributes.

802.11
SPEED

Wireless Evolution to 4G

4G Network Characteristics and Requirements

4G

3G

2G

1G

MOBILITY

Figure 2. 4G requirements and performance targets

While most of the target 4G characteristics directly relate to the

family of air interface standards, many directly influence the
backhaul infrastructure requirements. These include:
Scalability
Resiliency
Topological flexibility
Improved economics

4G Wireless Backhaul

Pre-defined failover actions

Legacy Ethernets connectionless nature weakens bandwidth
and Quality of Service (QoS) configurability.

Scalability Requirements
Improved customer scalability
Each successive wireless generation has experienced significant
customer growth. Some early 4G network markets have seen
end station counts (measured in Media Access Control [MAC]
addresses) that are two to five times higher than initial
estimates. Therefore, the 4G wireless backhaul infrastructure
must be able to support tens to hundreds of thousands of MAC
addresses per market.

Topological flexibility requirements

Base station site interconnect technology
Wireless and mobile operators face myriad challenges when
interconnecting base stations. In some cases, copper or fiber access
is available. In many instances, microwave links are more economical
and readily deployable. 4G mobile backhaul infrastructure must
have the flexibility to accommodate wireline copper, fiber, or
wireless microwave and free space optical connectivity.

IP transport
IPv6 is an important network layer technology for 4G networks
given the number of wireless and mobile devices moving to IPbased services. A Layer 2 transport backhaul infrastructure using
IPv4 for management enables use of IPv6 network layer scalability
without requiring Network Address Translation (NAT).

Economic requirements
Cost effective
Given the competitive nature of wireline and wireless operators,
the backhaul infrastructure solution must be cost effective to
deploy, maintain and operate.

Base stations
Markets require diverse numbers of base stations/towers. The
4G wireless backhaul infrastructure must be able to handle
growing base station counts while retaining address and
customer scalability.

Resiliency Requirements

Simplified provisioning
Since mobile networks are constantly evolving through expanding
markets, growing numbers of base stations, and customers,
network and service provisioning must be simple yet powerful.

Stability
As 4G networks are deployed and expanded, the stability during
backhaul infrastructure expansion and maintenance is a critical
issue. Current stopgap implementations are prone to misconfiguration, causing traffic storms and costly network outages.
There must be resilient, reliable backhaul infrastructure stability.

Automated network monitoring

While many legacy technologies like TDM contain
extensive monitoring capabilities, traditional Ethernet
lacks troubleshooting and fault detection. 4G wireless backhaul
infrastructure requires network and service monitoring, as well
as fault detection, isolation, repair, and verification capabilities.

Predictable low-latency data transmission

Voice and other services reliant on fixed circuit-switched
network delay require packet-based, low-latency, predictable
data transmission.

Using PBB-TE in 4G Wireless Backhaul Networks

In early 2007, IEEE 802.1 commissioned a project to standardize
Provider Backbone Transport (PBT) as PBB-TE. Known as IEEE
802.1Qay, the effort will produce a standard that defines
enhanced Ethernet-based techniques for transporting services
across diverse network topologies using MAC header
encapsulation. PBB-TE, shown in Figure 3, has emerged to
address current Layer 2 bridging limitations that relate to
resiliency and scalability.

Multi-vendor interoperability
Legacy Ethernet implementations often use vendor-specific
proprietary control plane protocols to attempt to solve diverse
backhaul architectures.
Optimized bandwidth plan
Traditional Ethernet backhaul technologies use loop prevention
control plane protocols, such as IEEE 802.1w Rapid Spanning
Tree (RST). Often, half of the backhaul capacity/paths are
disabled when these protocols are used. In order to maximize
backhaul utilization, enhanced techniques to manage redundant
paths and overall bandwidth engineering are required.

Internet
POP

Deterministic bandwidth guarantees

Some network redundancy schemes result in overloaded paths
during fault conditions. To provide deterministic bandwidth, 4G
wireless backhaul infrastructure must have predictable failover
and resiliency schemes.

Figure 3. Mobile Backhaul using IEEE 802.1Qay PBB-TE

4G Wireless Backhaul

U NIQ UE F EATURES AND B ENEFITS OF

C IENA W IRELESS B ACKHAUL S OLUTION S
Ciena Feature

Benefit

Improved resiliency

No customer MAC address

learning in backhaul infrastructure
No flooding of unknown MAC
addresses
Reduced likelihood of traffic storm
Standards-based control plane =
IEEE 802.1ag CFM, ITV-T Y.1731

Improved scalability

Explicit primary and backup

paths

Enables fast and predictable

failover

Figure 4. Redundant PBB-TE tunnels

The topological flexibility associated with PBB-TE enables 4G

cells to grow and expand as market penetration and customer
acquisition dictates. A logical view of the same 4G market is
shown in Figure 5. In this example, each base station has a
primary and backup tunnel configured back to the POP.

Switches at each base station only

learn attached customer MAC
addresses and backhaul addresses
(not transiting customer MACs)
Only the POP-located backbone
edge bridge, which terminates
PBB-TE tunnels, learns all customer
MACs

Improved service
predictability

True traffic engineering

Since 4G networks have
configurable channel bandwidth,
PBB-TE tunnels can accommodate a
wide range of service types and
bandwidth plans

Figure 5. Redundant 4G PBB-TE tunnels

Configurable bandwidth for

services and tunnels

Base station traffic is forwarded along the primary tunnel. Each

primary tunnel is protected by one or more backup tunnels.
Multiple techniques are used to provide efficient tunnel failover
and service restoration in the event the backhaul infrastructure
links become unreliable or inoperable.

Committed Information Rate,

Excess Information Rate

Improves network utilization

Optimized paths minimize
frame delay

Interoperable,
standards-based

Data plane = IEEE 802.1Qay PBBTE

Tunnel Resiliency Techniques

Control plane = IEEE 802.1ag

CFM, ITV-T Y.1731

PBB-TE provides a variety of tunnel resiliency techniques. One

technique involves IEEE 802.1ag Connectivity Fault
Management (CFM) frames, which are known as Continuity
Check Messages (CCMs). CFM provides network, path and
service-level in-band management capabilities. Primary and
backup tunnels are monitored using CFM CCM frames. Each
tunnel endpoint sends CCMs at preconfigured intervals to
monitor the status of the tunnel. A disruption in the reception
of CCMs causes tunnel failover to occur. Base station traffic is
then automatically switched to the backup tunnel.

Eliminates use of proprietary,

vendor-specific protocols

PBB-TE eliminates the need for non-edge switches to perform

MAC address learning and unknown address flooding. Instead,
point-to-point tunnels are provisioned using a comprehensive
management platform. Rather than using conventional Ethernet
control plane protocols such as IEEE 802.1w RSTP and IEEE
802.1s MSTP to prevent loops and provide resiliency, the
management platform traffic engineers the operators network,
which utilizes more capacity, pre-defines failover scenarios and
optimizes service performance and assurance.

Another technique involves ITU-T Recommendation

G.8031/Y.1342, which defines Ethernet Protection Switching
(EPS). This recommendation defines point-to-point Virtual Local
Area Network (VLAN)-based protection schemes including 1+1
and 1:1 protection switching architectures. The 1+1 protection
scheme implies the base station traffic is permanently sent
across the primary and backup tunnels. The tunnel endpoint
discards the backup tunnel traffic until detection of a primary
tunnel failure. The Automatic Protection Switching (APS)

Figure 4 depicts PBB-TE equipment located at the Point of

Presence (POP) and at each base station location. Redundant
PBB-TE tunnels take divergent paths back to the POP to provide
deterministic, reliable failover.

4G Wireless Backhaul

protocol synchronizes the two tunnel endpoints. The 1:1

protection scheme signifies that the base station traffic is only
sent across the backup tunnel upon detection of a failure.
Again, the APS protocol synchronizes the tunnel endpoints.
While this recommendation is useful for basic point-to-point
topologies, it is not intended for more complex topologies like
multiple rings or mesh architectures and will have limited
applicability in 4G mobile backhaul infrastructures.
While the CFM resiliency technique has advantages, such
as the ability to work across multiple rings and mesh
architectures, its inherent scalability is often challenged. In order
to achieve rapid failover in the 50-100 ms range, the CCM
interval must be ~10 ms. Depending on the number of tunnels
and services, a small CCM interval may overwhelm some
networking equipment. Some implementations, in
order to satisfy a given CCM interval demanded by the failover
requirement, may sacrifice management plane responsiveness,
such as provisioning, traffic statistics collection and other
important tasks. Derivations of the CFM CCM approach include
path-based failure detection and propagation. Such schemes
may improve failover determinism without causing undue stress
on the networking equipment.
Relevant 4G Mobile Standards
The following 4G mobile standards will benefit from utilizing
IEEE 802.1Qay PBB-TE as a component of the wireless backhaul
infrastructure:
IEEE 802.16 Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
(WiMAX)

iBurst
Uses technology known as High Capacity Spatial Division
Multiple Access (HC-SDMA), recently standardized by
Alliance of Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS)
Long Term Evolution (LTE) also known as UMTS release 8
UMTS-based wireless broadband Internet system with voice
and other services added
Ultra Mobile Broadband
Improved CDMA2000 mobile phone standard for next
generation applications and requirements
WiBro
Service name for mobile WiMAX in Korea market

Summary
Wireless carriers around the globe are faced with increasing
demands for new mobile Internet services. These growing
service demands are driving a move to IP-based, high-speed
broadband services that only new 4G technologies can provide.
However, wireless carriers implementing 4G mobile
technologies are realizing these new technologies place huge
demands on their backhaul infrastructure. Carrier Ethernets
innovative new connection-oriented technology, PBB-TE, is
emerging as the ideal solution for meeting the demands of 4G
technologies. With PBB-TE, 4G mobile operators can create a
robust, packet-based backhaul infrastructure that is scalable,
resilient and more cost-effective to install, operate and manage.

Fixed, nomadic, portable, and mobile wireless broadband

connectivity without the need for direct line-of-sight to a
base station
HiperMAN
WiMAX variation created by the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Broadband
Radio Access Networks (BRAN) group
Operates in the 2-11GHz range and is seamlessly
interoperable with subset of IEEE 802.16a-2003

Specialists in enabling new

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Forum. 2008 Ciena Corporation. WP058 7.2008