"wireless communication" posts

    Wireless Transmission Blog 2012 in Review

    Happy New Year and thank you to the avid readers of the Wireless Transmission Blog! We had readers from 186 countries (out of the official 192) during 2012! You’ll find other interesting statistics in the 2012 annual report WordPress has prepared below.

    Wireless Transmission Blog 2012 in Review

    Here’s an excerpt:

    4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 40,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 9 Film Festivals. Click here to see the complete report.

    Below under “Related articles” are some our most popular blog entries for 2012. We invite you to browse them if you haven’t already done so. Overall, it was a very successful year for one of the few blogs focused on backhaul and related topics—and perhaps the only one devoted to microwave backhaul.

    We’ll continue our journey in 2013 as we examine areas of wireless communication including LTE backhaul, microwave networking, low latency applications and small cell backhaul. Good reading!

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    Coverage Maps for New Wireless Spectrum Available to Fixed Services

    United States radio spectrum frequency allocat...

    United States radio spectrum frequency allocations chart. The FCC has freed 650 MHz of spectrum to increase sharing possibilities for 7GHz and 13GHz bands. (Photo credit: United States Department of Commerce employee via Wikipedia)

    As we blogged last summer, the FCC has released 650 MHz of new wireless technology spectrum for Fixed Service wireless communication technology operators. Now Comsearch, a leading provider of spectrum management and wireless engineering services in the US, has highlighted this issue in its latest online newsletter, with an article that includes some very informative coverage maps showing the zones where the new bandwidth is available.

    These maps are excellent at conveying the limitations of the newly released spectrum for microwave link applications in the 7 GHz (6.875–7.125) and 13 GHz (12.7–13.1) bands. After taking into account the zones that are reserved for existing Fixed and Mobile Broadcast Auxiliary Service (BAS) and the Cable TV Relay Service (CARS) users, these new bands are only available in about 50 percent of the US land mass covering only 10 percent of the population.

    What do you think? Should the FCC loosen the spectrum sharing rules even more for 7GHz and 13GHz bands? Take our poll and tell us:

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    The Impact of Streaming Video on Wireless Network Services

    Video call between Sweden and Singapore, on So...

    Sustained video streaming, such as a video call over a mobile network, strains the stat mux paradigm of oversubscribing Ethernet microwave backhaul. However, proper management can ensure a consistent, high-quality user experience can be maintained. Image via Wikipedia (author: Kalleboo)

    Mobile backhaul networks today support Ethernet microwave transport for 3G and 4G wireless technology services alongside legacy 2G and 3G TDM-based microwave equipment. However, as late as 2009 these wireless network services were solely TDM transport. One of the primary benefits of moving to Ethernet microwave transport has been the inherent statistical multiplexing (stat mux) gains. Stat mux relies on the fact that not everyone is “talking” at the same time and when they do, their IP radio packet sizes are variable, whereas networks based on TDM have to be provisioned statically for peak rates to individual wireless microwave sites.

    With the advent of Ethernet, the typical practice is to oversubscribe all the wireless network services (based on individual peak rates) knowing that there is a statistical improbability of hitting the peak rate across all your wireless communication towers at the same exact moment.

    Now enter video streaming where data is “streamed” between two wireless communication points over a sustained period (e.g., 30-second YouTube video clips, Skype HD Video Conferencing, Netflix movies). The sustained aspect of these video streams begins to strain the overall stat mux paradigm. Not only does video remain sustained but also it uses large-size IP radio packets that do not vary greatly. VoIP does the same thing, but the effect is much less significant as the overall bandwidth utilization is much lower.

    Oversubscription becomes more challenging the more active video streaming is at any given moment. Imagine a scenario where the latest cat-playing-a-piano video gets posted online and everyone starts viewing it at virtually the same time. For a large swath of bandwidth, stat mux will reach zero for approximately four minutes. The upside is that you can add more bandwidth and/or offer differentiated wireless network services levels that guarantee certain bandwidth or application performance. Even so, video streaming does not totally negate the benefits of an Ethernet microwave transport, it just needs to be properly understood and managed to ensure a consistent user experience across all applications and services for your global wireless solutions.

    Steve Loebrich
    Director of Product and Solutions Marketing
    Aviat Networks

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