Mobile Backhaul

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What's Up With Gilat Satellite Network This April

The worldwide leader in satellite networking technology, solutions and services, Gilat Satellite Network Ltd., announced the company will present its cellular backhaul solutions at several key industry events this April. This, according to the company, is part of its objective to address the growing need of mobile operators for efficient and profitable service expansion.

Designed to assist mobile operators generate new revenue streams, Gilat's cellular backhaul also aims to generate growth for the business and comply with emerging government regulations. The following are the solution's key advantages:

Flexible access methods that support small cells and large macro cells

Reduced OPEX with maximum bandwidth efficiency (TDMA)

Dedicated channels for high throughput (SCPC)

Heterogeneous network support - 2G, 3G, LTE

To be presented at:

Transport Networks for Mobile Operators (TNMO)

Date: April 22-24, 2013

Location: Hotel Russell, 1-8 Russell Square, Bloomsbury, London

Stand: #6

Presentation: April 23, 15:00 // Gilat presentation entitled “Small Cells for Rural Areas and Developing Markets”

Mobile Backhaul Asia

Date: April 23-25, 2013

Location: Conrad Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand

Stand: #10

Presentation: April 24, 15:55 // Gilat presentation entitled “Utilizing VSAT for Next Gen Cellular Backhaul Applications”

  See also: DMCii Helps ASAL In Predicting The Spread Of Locust Plagues Across North Africa

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Thuraya Supports Freelance Journalist Sebastian Meyer

The  world-leading mobile satellite service provider of voice, data, maritime, rural telephony, fleet management and other telecommunication solutions in remote areas, Thuraya Telecommunications Company and the non-profit organization, Rory Peck Trust, partner to sponsor Sebastian Meyer, an award-winning freelance journalist.

“Thuraya is proud to sponsor Sebastian and his work. In tough environments where he operates, communications infrastructure can be unreliable or insecure. Many leading global news organisations currently rely on Thuraya’s technology to deliver breaking news," said Thuraya's Vice-President and Marketing. "We believe that the Thuraya IP+ will provide Sebastian with an added layer of security and protection, in addition to facilitating his work by allowing him to file breaking news stories with videos and photos on time. The Thuraya IP+’s “always-on’ mobile broadband access and asymmetric streaming capabilities allows him to stay in close contact with his loved ones too.”

As a co-founder of Iraq's first and only photo agency, Metrography, Sebastian Meyer said, “Infrastructure here in Iraq is in terrible shape with electricity cuts part of our daily life. For reporters and photographers who need to file their work on time, this can be a serious problem as communication lines often fail. Thuraya’s IP+ satellite broadband terminal for Metrography will be a significant help in delivering stories from corners of the country often cut off from electricity and the internet.”

“Safety and security are of utmost importance for freelance journalists today. We are pleased to partner with Thuraya in providing mobile satellite connectivity to Sebastian to help him in stay connected and support his work in delivering important stories from the region,” said Rory Peck Trust's Director, Tina Carr.

See also: Innovative Technology To Be Launched By Eutelsat and One Access

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[mobilebackhaultech-blog]

[mobilebackhaultech-blog]

17 Mobile Carriers Set To Adopt Mozilla FirefoxOS

As Mozilla Firefox, one of the world's leading free and open source web browser, announces its venture towards providing its own operating system in Android phones, it has been getting a lot of buzz these days. And, just a couple of days ago, the company announced that there are at least 17 carriers worldwide that will commit to carrying FirefoxOS-based mobile smartphones. The carriers include: 

América Móvil;

China Unicom;

Deutsche Telekom;

Etisalat;

Hutchison Three Group;

KDDI;

KT;

MegaFon;

Qtel;

SingTel;

Smart;

Sprint;

Telecom Italia Group;

Telefónica;

Telenor;

TMN and

VimpelCom.

Manufacturers such as Alcatel (TCL), LG, ZTE, and Huawei are all building smartphones with FirefoxOS. In addition to that, Brendan Eich, Mozilla's CTO separated FirefoxOS over its direct competitors (Google Android & Apple) by stating that "[FirefoxOS] is all about HTML5 and JavaScript," instead of treating the web as a second-class citizen.

Eich adds, “We have very fast platform because we don't need the extra layers.”

See also: Apple Rumors: New iPhone Version Will Be "Bigger, Thicker, Cheaper & Plastic"

[mobilebackhaultech-blog]

[mobilebackhaultech-blog]

The World's First Smartphone-Operated Satellite

Developed by the University of Surrey's Surrey Space Centre (SSC) and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), the United Kingdom is to send the world's first smartphone-operated satellite orbit in February 25th of this year.

The said UK innovative satellite, STRaND-1 (the Surrey Training, Research and Nanosatellite Demonstrator), is a 30cm CubeSat weighing 4.3kg. Being the UK's first CubeSat to be launched, the satellite "has been developed by talented space engineers and researchers at Surrey with the majority of the design and developmental work being carried out in their spare time." Building and testing of such satellite was completed in a span of three months.

STRaND-1's core is a Google Nexus One Smartphone with Android OS. “We haven't gutted the Nexus. We've done lots and lots of tests on it; we've put our own software on it. But we've essentially got a regular phone, connected up the USB to it and put it in the satellite,” Dr. Chris Bridges, Surrey Space Center's lead engineer for this project, told the BBC. The smartphone's camera (5MP) is to take pictures of the Earth and the moon.

The first smartphone-operated satellite's mission has two phases. The first phase will concentrate on using a number of trial Apps to collect data "whilst a new high-speed linux-based CubeSat computer developed by SSC takes care of the satellite." The second phase will be the team's plan of switching  the satellite’s in-orbit operations to the smartphone, thereby testing the capabilities of a number of standard smartphone components for a space environment.

“A smartphone on a satellite like this has never been launched before but our tests have been pretty thorough, subjecting the phone to oven and freezer temperatures, to a vacuum and blasting it with radiation. It has a good chance of working as it should, but you can never make true design evolutions or foster innovation without taking a few risks: STRaND is cool because it allows us to do just that,” adds Bridges.

The satellite will be operated from the Surrey Space Centre's ground station at the University of Surrey.

  See also: More Countries Dropping 4G Services Tariffs

[mobilebackhaultech-blog]

A Definition of Backhauling

The backhaul portion of the network comprises in the intermediate links between: the core network, the central part of a telecommunication network that provides various services to customers who are connected by the access network; or backbone network, a part of computer network infrastructure that interconnects various pieces of network, providing a path for the exchange of information between different LANs or subnetworks; and the small subnetwork at the "edge" of the entire hierarchical network. That is, in a hierarchical telecommunications network, a collection of terminals, links and nodes which connect to enable communication between sets of the terminals. Visualizing the entire hierarchical network as a human skeleton, the core network, or the central part of a telecommunication network that provides various services who are connected by the access network, would represent the spine, the backhaul links would be the limbs, the edge networks would be the hands and feet, and the individual links within those edge networks would be the fingers and toes. Other examples include: connecting wireless base stations to the corresponding base station controllers, or "base station subsystem," the section of a traditional cellular telephone network which is responsible for handling traffic and signaling between a mobile phone and the network switching subsystem; connecting DSLAMs ("digital subscriber line access multiplexer; often pronounced "dee-slam"), a network device, often located in the telephone exchanges of the telecommunications operators, to the nearest ATM--"Asynchronous Transfer Mode," which is according to the ATM Forum, "a telecommunications concept defined by ANSI and ITU (formerly CCITT) standards for carriage of a complete range of user traffic, including voice, data, and video signals," and is designed to unify telecommunication and computer networks--or Ethernet aggregation node, a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks (LANs); connecting a large company's site to a "metropolitan-area (metro) Ethernet network, or "Ethernet MAN," a metropolitan area network (MAN) that is based on Ethernet networks; connecting a cable laid on the seabed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across the stretches of ocean, or submarine communications cable system landing point, the location where a submarine or other underwater cable makes landfall (which is usually in a remote location) with the main terrestrial telecommunications network of the country that the cable serves.

See: Terrestrial Backhauling for Businesses

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Experts say that the small cell backhaul market could possibly hit the $5 billion mark by 2016. Research Infonetics have also studies the market and reports that the figures will be in addition to the nearly $45 billion accumulated from the macrocell backhaul equipment market.

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According to an announcement by Comtech EF Data Corporation, the Company retained its position as the market leader of the Single Channel per Carrier (SCPC) equipment for satellite mobile backhaul.

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Wireless backhaul solutions provider Ceragon Networks announced on Tuesday that it had signed deals worth $28 for two customers in the region of Sub-Saharan Africa. In the said deal, the Israel-based company will be providing $15 million for the expansion of one of the customer’s high-capacity network.

[mobilebackhaultech-blog]

Mesh networks for wireless backhaul

As data increases, the range of wireless network coverage is reduced, raising investment costs for building infrastructure with access points to cover service areas. Mesh networks, a type of networking where each node must not only capture and disseminate its own data, but also serve as a relay for other nodes, that is, it must collaborate to propagate the data in the network, are unique enablers that can reduce this cost due to their flexible architecture.

With mesh networking, access points are connected wirelessly and exchange data frames with each other to forward and from a gateway point. Since a mesh requires no costly cable constructions for its backhaul network, it reduces total investment cost. Mesh technology’s capabilities boost extending coverage of service areas easily and flexibly.

For further cost reduction, a large-scale high-capacity mesh is desirable, e.g, the Mimo-Mesh Project from Kyushu University (Kyudai), the largest public university on the island of Kyushu, based in Fukuoka City, situated on the northern shore of the island and the capital city of the Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. It has developed and put into use new technology for building high capacity mesh infrastructure. A key component is called IPT, intermittent periodic transmit, a proprietary packet-forwarding scheme that is designed to reduce radio interference in the forwarding path of mesh networks.

In 2010, hundreds of wireless LAN access points incorporating the technology were installed in the commercial shopping and entertainment complex, Canal City Hakata, a large shopping and entertainment complex in Fukuoka, Japan, resulting in the successful operation of one of the world’s largest indoor wireless multi-hop backhauls. That network uses a wireless multi-hop relay of up to 11 access points while delivering high bandwidth to end users. Actual throughput is double that of standard mesh network systems using conventional packet forwarding. Latency, a in all multi-hop relays, suffers, but not to degree that it compromises voice over IP (Internet Protocol), or VoIP communications, commonly refers to the communication protocols, technologies, methodologies, and transmission techniques involved in the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet.

See: The Functions of a Military Personnel

[mobilebackhaultech-blog]

According to an announcement by VT iDirect, Inc., international telecom provider K-NET has combined iDirect’s satellite platform and Altobridge small cell technology to create a low-cost satellite backhaul network that will deliver mobile voice and broadband connectivity to rural communities in Ghana.

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MRV will be providing its OS904-MBH-4 timing and synchronization gateway with circuit emulation services (CES) and the OS9124-410G first mile packet-optical aggregation platform.

[cellularbackhaul-blog]

Alcatel introduced comprehensive backhaul portfolio

With a total value of $44 billion, the backhaul market is seeing robust growth as well as increased competition as global data traffic surges. Mobile operators have been looking for ways to meet the growing traffic, and Alcatel-Lucent is optimistic their new, comprehensive backhaul portfolio will be the perfect solution for mobile operators. The Paris-based global telecommunications company has unveiled new products which combine technologies such as macro and micro cells, and pico cells which can be installed on any convenient structure to deliver Wi-Fi services. Mobile operators expect traffic demands to grow up to ten times, and Alcatel is offering their products to help decongest high traffic areas. These new products are introduced across three categories: backhaul over microwave, backhaul over fibre, and copper. The expanded backhaul solutions include the IightRadio: a base station technology which can be deployed either as picocells or stacked as micro or macro cells. According to Alcatel, the new products will allow mobile operators to manage their networks more efficiently, and address the massive demand for bandwidth.

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Tellabs delivers smart backhaul solutions