A FierceWireless eBrief

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BACKHAUL, FRONTHAUL, AND

THE NETWORK OF THE FUTURE

INSIDE TODAY’S BACKHAUL LANDSCAPE

By Daniel Kobialka and Mike Dano

Backhaul remains a critical element of a mobile between that tower and a carrier’s switching system,
network, and it’s a technology that has undergone where those communications can then be connected
dramatic changes as wireless data traffic has to the internet, to another carrier’s system, to other
exploded. subscribers on that same operator, or elsewhere.

Backhaul is basically the connection between a cell
tower and the nation’s core telecommunications
infrastructure. Communications generated inside
the coverage area of a cellular base station are
collected into that tower’s networking system and
then backhauled – or routed – through a connection
Not surprisingly, backhaul links can sometimes
represent the chokepoint between a high-
speed wireless network and the world’s wider
telecommunications system. If backhaul connections
can’t keep pace with wireless users’ demands,
customers’ connections can slow.

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 BACKHAUL, FRONTHAUL, AND
THE NETWORK OF THE FUTURE
As a result, backhaul connections have evolved
at the same rapid pace as wireless technology
in general. For example, in the early days of the
cellular industry, backhaul connections needed to
do little more than transmit voice calls. But those
slow-speed connections were quickly replaced with
backhaul that could handle more and more traffic
as the wireless industry evolved from 2G to 3G
and now to 4G LTE. At high-traffic locations like
sports stadiums, for instance, vendors generally have
upgraded connections from simple T1 lines to high-
capacity Ethernet lines today.
A COMPLEX, GROWING SECTOR
Richard Webb, research director of mobile backhaul
and smart cells at IHS Market, has predicted the
global mobile backhaul equipment market will grow
3 percent from 2016 to 2020. Also, he pointed out
the sector could be worth $8.76 billion by 2020.
“The small cell backhaul opportunity plays a part in
this, as we expect many small cells to be aggregated
to a macrocell site, driving increased macro backhaul
capacity,” Webb said in a recent statement from the
company.
Overall, IHS forecasts that the global wireless
industry will spend a total of $51 billion between
2015 and 2020 on mobile backhaul gear. The
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A FierceWireless eBrief
firm said that figure would be driven by backhaul
capacity upgrades for LTE-Advanced and,
eventually, 5G.
The backhaul market is broken into a few key
areas. First, carriers must purchase the physical
equipment needed to route backhaul traffic.
Vendors ranging from Nokia to Ericsson sell such
backhaul equipment. Then, carriers must pay for
the connections they use to route backhauled traffic
onto the nation’s telecommunications grid. In
some cases, carriers work directly with wholesale
backhaul providers like Zayo or Comcast for those
connections, and in other cases they purchase
backhaul connections directly from third-party cell
tower operators and other networking companies.
Joe Madden, principal analyst at market research
and forecast firm Mobile Experts, explained that
wireless network operators often pay monthly rental
fees for backhaul connections.
BACKHAUL OPTIONS FROM MICROWAVE
TO FIBER
There are a wide range of technologies that can be
used for backhaul, depending on the speed, capacity,
price and environment carriers require. Technologies
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 BACKHAUL, FRONTHAUL, AND
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range from microwave to satellite to DSL to T1 to
Ethernet connections.
As IHS pointed out, the largest mobile backhaul
equipment spending category in 2015 was
microwave radio, comprising 44 percent of
worldwide revenue.
Sprint remains one of the biggest domestic
supporters of microwave backhaul technology.
John Saw, chief technology officer at Sprint, said
his company operates one of the largest microwave
networks in the world: Sprint has deployed
microwave backhaul links across spectrum bands
including 11 GHz, 28 GHz and 80 GHz.
And microwave will remain an important part of
Sprint’s backhaul portfolio, Saw said. “Microwave
is a very efficient and reliable alternative when
planned in the right small ring structures,” he said.
“With microwave backhaul, we are not limited by
the cost and availability of fiber.”
“Microwave is a very
efficient and reliable
alternative when planned
in the right small ring
structures.”
— John Saw, CTO, Sprint
Saw added, however, that Sprint uses multiple
backhaul solutions. “We evaluate the best backhaul
option among Ethernet, fiber and microwave for
each deployment. We also use satellite backhaul,
primarily in hard-to-reach rural locations,” he said.
Backhaul equipment vendor Nokia also
sees strong support for microwave backhaul
connections. Olivier Gueret, microwave product
marketing manager of mobile networks at Nokia,
said microwave serves as the backhaul “solution
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A FierceWireless eBrief
of choice” for his company. “Today, more than
50 percent of the base stations worldwide are
connected to the network with microwave, and
we at Nokia believe, like many players in this
industry, that this ratio will increase in the coming
years,” he said.
Indeed, Nokia offers a range of backhaul products
including Packet Microwave Mobile Backhaul
(designed to deliver backhaul connectivity to areas
where fiber is unavailable) alongside other offerings
for fiber, IP/MPLS and packet optical backhaul.
Nokia isn’t alone, of course. Ericsson also offers
microwave backhaul products spanning frequencies
from sub-6 GHz to 80 GHz. An Ericsson
spokesperson said the company believes microwave
backhaul will continue to stand as a popular choice
for service providers. “As the networks get denser,
the number of small cell deployments will increase
exponentially. This will lead to an increased need
for microwave backhaul, as fiber may not be readily
available everywhere,” the spokesperson noted.
THE GROWING ROLE OF FIBER IN
BACKHAUL
However, many in the industry believe fiber
connections will rise in importance as the wireless
industry moves from LTE to LTE-Advanced to
5G. As service providers offer increasingly speedy
and capable wireless connections, backhaul links
too will need to be able to transmit ever greater
amounts of traffic at a quicker pace – and that’s
where fiber may shine.
Already, IHS said the microwave radio segment
will decline as carriers increasingly turn to fiber and
wireline Ethernet backhaul connections. Indeed,
the firm said growing LTE and LTE-Advanced
deployments are fueling Ethernet macrocell
backhaul spending, “with the market dominated by
Ethernet over fiber or microwave.”
Fiber provider Zayo Group boasts roughly 8,000
towers connected to its 114,500-mile fiber network
in North American and Europe. Dave Jones, Zayo’s
executive vice president of dark fiber services, stated
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 BACKHAUL, FRONTHAUL, AND
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his company has enjoyed steady growth thanks
in part to its backhaul business. “[Our] backhaul
business is definitely growing faster than our
aggregate business,” he said.
Jones pointed out that Zayo’s mobile infrastructure
revenue – including the company’s fiber and
“[Our] backhaul
business is definitely
growing faster than our
aggregate business.”
— Dave Jones, executive
vice president of dark fiber
services, Zayo
December 2016
A FierceWireless eBrief
network connectivity solutions – represented 8
percent of the company’s total revenue in the third
quarter of 2016. Although Zayo anticipates its
mobile infrastructure revenue will continue to grow,
Jones noted the push for lit fiber solutions may
exceed the demand for the company’s dark fiber
offerings for backhaul.
In a lit fiber agreement, Zayo or another service
provider owns and maintains the Ethernet switches
and other equipment needed to provide backhaul.
Comparatively, a dark fiber lease requires the
wireless carrier to provide and maintain backhaul
equipment, and the service provider remains
responsible for maintaining the fiber.
According to Jones, Zayo has seen rising demand
for lit fiber solutions over the past few years and
expects the push for these solutions to further
increase. “There is density with lit solutions, and
we’ll often create a core Ethernet network that
is very high density and connects the points of
presence (PoPs) … of the wireless carriers that we’re
serving,” he stated.
“Fiber has become the clear favorite in the backhaul
market, with the rise of centralized baseband
processing driving a need for high levels of
throughput and low latency in backhaul,” agreed
Mobile Experts’ Madden.
But there remain challenges in the space. “The first
choice for wireless carriers is fiber for backhaul.
However, fiber can be expensive, as it can be costly
to install,” said Iain Gillott, president of mobile and
wireless industry research firm iGR.
“We believe microwave will continue to play a
significant role going forward, especially in the
context of 5G. However, constant innovation is
needed to keep up with the stringent requirements
in terms of capacity, latency and flexibility,” Nokia’s
Gueret noted. l
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 BACKHAUL, FRONTHAUL, AND
THE NETWORK OF THE FUTURE
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December 2016
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 BACKHAUL, FRONTHAUL, AND
THE NETWORK OF THE FUTURE
C-RAN, SMALL CELLS, 5G AND THE NEW TRANSPORT
By Tara Seals
As mobile network operators eye a raft of new
opportunities across the consumer broadband and
Internet of Things (IoT) spaces, it’s becoming clear
that demands on the network are becoming more
complex, with a growing multiplicity of deployment
scenarios and service requirements. For instance,
connected cars may need large pipes, but smart-city
deployments are all about long battery life and cost
efficiency. Operators need to address both – and
everything in between – and they need to do it
efficiently and flexibly.
Supporting this multiservice world means re-
architecting the radio access network (RAN), which
in turn presents significant new requirements for
both fronthaul and backhaul transport networks.
SMALL CELLS AND C-RAN
In response to increasing coverage and capacity
requirements, operators are in the process of
densifying their networks with small cells. Moving
from macrocell sites that cover whole neighborhoods
to small cells that cover mere blocks brings the
network much closer to the user, and, networked
together, they create a high-capacity framework that
can substantially increase user speeds and network
capacity.
While the radio and baseband processing
functionality are integrated with the base station in
traditional networks, new small-cell-centric designs
rely on separating the radio elements from the
baseband controller to reduce cost and power usage.
But the requirements for fronthaul – the connection
between the baseband controller and the remote
radio heads – can increase dramatically.
“Fronthaul between the small cells and a nearby
remote radio head is a critical piece of this,” said
Wayne Leuck, director of small cells and DAS
operations at Zayo, a company that operates a fiber
network across large portions of the United States.
Other fiber providers include Level 3, Comcast and
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A FierceWireless eBrief
others. “The baseband unit is usually in a centralized
location – so there may be 15 small cells, and they
all go back to one macro site. The capacity needs
can be significant. You need about 2.5 GB to
support one 2x2 MIMO antenna, and in a 4x4 or
massive MIMO scenario, that grows exponentially.
Operators require quite a bit of bandwidth in the
fronthaul for that architecture to work, which is why
many of them are moving to dark fiber and WDM
[wavelength-division multiplexing] to support that.”
Further, all of that traffic being aggregated from
fronthaul systems needs to then be connected back
to the long-haul transport infrastructure as well.
“As carriers are looking to upgrade the backhaul to
a given macrosite, they need to weigh the amount of
data they’re carrying today, and how much it costs to
support that – and how future investments will affect
that equation,” Leuck said. “They want low latency
and capacity and flexibility, and they want to be able
to move in whatever direction they need to in the
next few years. Future-proofing is a requirement.”
On top of this, wireless network operators
are increasingly eyeing cloud RAN (C-RAN)
deployments, which promise a converged, cloud-
based approach to orchestrating the complexity of
multiple nodes. C-RAN network designs allow for
programmability in bandwidth management, while
a combination of network functions virtualization
(NFV), software-defined networking (SDN)
techniques and data center processing capabilities
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 BACKHAUL, FRONTHAUL, AND
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will allow for resource pooling, scalability, layer
interworking and greater spectral efficiency.
“We see the evolution of mobile transport being
comprised of a smart networking fabric which
interconnects users and devices from their ultra-
broadband access node (fixed, wireless, cable) with
any number of virtualized service gateways located
anywhere in the cloud,” said Jim Guillet, who works
in the IP/optical network business at infrastructure
vendor Nokia. Other major infrastructure and
backhaul equipment vendors include Ericsson,
Huawei and others. “Carrier SDN provides the
dynamic provisioning and optimization of this
fabric.”
C-RAN architectures also require a functional split
between the radio and the baseband processing at
the base station—which can also dramatically impact
both fronthaul and backhaul requirements.
“Depending on where the split is done in the
protocol stack (either at the RF layer or at Layers 1
or 2), the transport impacts of this new interface are
different,” explained Guillet.
If done at the RF layer, the interface is typically
Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) fronthaul,
which uses optical fiber solutions. CPRI fronthaul
has been deployed for several years, led initially by
Japan, Korea, China and the U.S., and it is now
being adopted throughout the world generally and
where cost-effective fiber is available in particular.
“A three-sector, three-carrier cell site would require
nine CPRI connections of 10 Gbps or more,”
Guillet explained. “This wavelength service requires
a significant evolution of the network architecture,
and in most cases necessitates DWDM [dense
wavelength division multiplexing] transport
solutions.”
Meanwhile, if the split is performed at Layer 1
or 2, then the capacity and latency requirements
are relaxed, and the interface is usually Ethernet.
In most cases, this allows the re-use of traditional
backhaul infrastructure.
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A FierceWireless eBrief
From Verizon’s point of view, the industry needs
to build consensus around these kinds of network
architecture decisions.
“Operators are facing definitive need for
standardized RAN architecture splits and open
interfaces to accomplish their goals,” said Sanyogita
Shamsunder, director of network infrastructure
planning at Verizon, the largest wireless carrier in
the United States in terms of subscribers, ahead of
AT&T, T-Mobile and others. “Right now, we’re
just in the proof of concept (PoC)/standardization
phase.”
“Operators are facing
definitive need for
standardized RAN
architecture splits and
open interfaces to
accomplish their goals.”
— Sanyogita Shamsunder, director of network
infrastructure planning, Verizon
She added that work is being done to define
next-gen network architectures: “There are active
discussions in the 3GPP RAN3 on RAN split
architecture options, including Radio Over
Ethernet standardization in IEEE 1914.3, and Next
Generation Fronthaul Interface in IEEE 1914.1.
M-CORD is looking to develop PoC based on an
open nFAPI interface, and there’s been an enhanced
CPRI (eCPRI) announcement.”
A few standardized splits could cover the majority of
5G/LTE-Advanced use cases, said Shamsunder.
ENABLING PROGRAMMABILITY
Another aspect to next-gen backhaul and fronthaul
is the programmability of the transport network.
Some of the value of C-RAN lies in its ability to
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 BACKHAUL, FRONTHAUL, AND
THE NETWORK OF THE FUTURE
dynamically adapt to changing demands. In the
same way, transport networks will have to adapt
dynamically to support that.
“One of the main promises of the telco cloud is the
optimal usage of resource (virtual functions) thanks
to their dynamic allocation to match the demand in
an optimized way,” Nokia’s Guillet said. “This also
means that the transport network will have to adapt
in real-time to support this moving architecture.
The key here is carrier SDN. Operators will have
to ensure that their underlay transport network
(optical, IP, microwave, fixed) can be managed and
orchestrated by a common carrier SDN solution.”
The ultimate goal is to create an effective, single,
orchestrated cloud that enables operators to flexibly
deploy virtualized RAN functions. Deployments
can be based on functional requirements (such as
bandwidth or latency towards cell sites), the operator’s
available assets (such as suitable aggregation sites and
transport infrastructure), and operator deployment
strategy (such as considerations of resiliency).
Managing all network layers and technologies under
a common IP operational model could ultimately
simplify fronthaul and backhaul networks.
“Ultimately, mobile transport networks are becoming
more everything-to-everything [E2E] and less
point-to-point,” said Guillet. “E2E networks allow
more diverse load sharing, multi-layer resiliency
options and the programmable flexibility to
provision and optimize them dynamically. This is key
for many operators as they seek to achieve real cloud
RAN savings.”
5G AND BEYOND
As the industry moves towards 5G, new
architectures are being pioneered to ensure that
transport – backhaul and fronthaul – can keep up
with capacity and service agility demands, which are
expected to change dramatically in a 5G world.
“5G enables a wide variety of use cases, including
fixed wireless access (FWA), enhanced mobile
broadband (eMBB), massive machine-type
communications (mMTC), IoT, and ultra-reliable
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A FierceWireless eBrief
low latency communications,” said Verizon’s
Shamsunder. “5G provides an opportunity to drive
standardization and re-architect RAN/transport to
cater to these multiple use cases.”
For example, implementing carrier aggregation
technology in various microwave backhaul spectrum
bands could increase reliability.
Meanwhile, fixed networks, including both GPON
and xDSL, offer Ethernet transport solutions
that often overlap mobile coverage areas. This
is particularly useful for the diverse deployment
requirements of indoor and outdoor small cells and
their need for flexible transport solutions.
And optical fronthaul could offer cost-effective
DWDM solutions with value-added capabilities
including performance monitoring, color translation,
protection switching and purpose-built, multi-
function platforms, according to Guillet. Carrier
Ethernet and metro optical solutions provide a
common aggregation infrastructure and are an
important step toward a converged services future.
Bottom line? Facing fundamental change, the mobile
industry is in need of new, more flexible ways to
deliver a much wider range of services. The demands
on operators are growing – according to Ericsson,
LTE subscriptions alone will grow at a compound
annual growth rate of 20 percent through 2022.
“In transport networks specifically, we are in a period
of massive change,” said Guillet. “The networks built
in the past 10-20 years were designed for a more
static environment. They must evolve to deliver
the cloud applications whose traffic dominates
today’s networks. While continuous investment is
required to increase capacity and performance in IP,
optical, microwave and fixed technologies, so too is
investment required in next generation SDN and
virtualization technologies. This requires tremendous
technology depth and expertise, and all are essential
to help operators evolve their networks quickly,
appropriately and at the lowest cost per bit for
whichever direction the industry moves.” l
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