Licensed wireless: Breaking the Gigabit barrier
For most enterprise needs today, bandwidth of hundreds of megabits per
second is ample. But looking ahead, it's realistic to expect that
Gigabit speeds will become increasingly in demand as cloud and
network-based computing, ICT centralisation and rich media services
become more commonplace across enterprise networks. Continued
development in the labs is ensuring that licensed wireless is up to the
Gigabit challenge, and more.
The microwave radio technology that powers licensed wireless networks has come a long way since its inception, and today comfortably delivers speeds ranging from 100 Mb per second to 800 Mb per second for enterprises across Ireland.
Most recently, industry watchers were interested to see licensed wireless break the 1 Gbps threshold, as microwave radio vendors leveraged higher modulation schemes at 256 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation). Gigabit speed levels are typically achieved by utilizing two cross polarized radio carriers of 55 MHz bandwidth. This enables the delivery of 2 x 500Mbps radio channels on a single Gigabit Ethernet interface (or dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces for additional redundancy).
The development of Gigabit speed licensed wireless connectivity offers a dual benefit, in terms of bandwidth and resiliency. As well as highly scalable bandwidth, the 1Gbps licensed wireless network offers full resilience in the event of hardware failure, as each 500Mbps radio carrier is hardware independent of the other.
Comparable to fibre?
Gigabit licensed wireless holds up well in comparison to fibre for performance levels, matching the speed and latency of similar 1 Gbps fibre access links, with latency of 0.2mseconds per radio link. Gigabit licensed wireless can also exceed the availability of traditional fibre access links, thanks to its in-built hardware and system redundancy.
As fibre customers will be aware, a cut in a fibre access link into a building can lead to downtimes of 24 hours or more. With Gigabit licensed wireless, business continuity enjoys greater protection: availability is safeguarded by hardware redundancy on the access link and by ring protection from the telecom tower site to the core network.
New Irish spectrum opens new possibilities
There was good news on the spectrum front in Ireland last year when the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) opened the 80 GHz band for commercial usage. This means licensed wireless is now permitted to operate beyond the standard radio frequencies into what's classed as millimetre-wave spectrum. Although the new spectrum has a limitation of shorter range, it offers significant channel bandwidth which enables delivery of up to 1.25Gbps on currently available hardware, and all major hardware vendors have signaled future plans to support 2.5Gbps.
Microwave radio technology developments are continuing in earnest in the lab. Tests reported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008 recorded data speeds of 10.6Gbps at millimetre wave-length across an 800 metre radio link. These results were topped recently in lab tests where speeds up to 20Gbps were achieved.
In Ireland licensed wireless customers are set to benefit from the millimetre spectrum opportunity thanks to continued investment in bandwith-enhancing infrastructure. Although millimetre-wave spectrum is typically limited to a short range of 1 km to 2 km, operators like AirSpeed Telecom are making additional investments in fibre connectivity at the tower site, which will provide customers with cost-effective access to unprecedented wireless bandwidths.
Do you have a question about the core technology behind licensed wireless networks? Contact AirSpeed Telecom Technical Director Peter Hendrick at phendrick@airspeed.ie
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