Post-Conference Morning Workshop E – Thursday 20th May 2010

LTE Backhaul: Meeting Operator Requirements
Led by RAD Data

Workshop  Overview:

LTE is widely accepted as the global 4G standard; however, transport providers face substantial challenges in realizing LTE’s business and technological potential. Some of these challenges are also common to operators with self-built networks:  Ensuring accurate timing and synchronization over packet networks; smartly  managing traffic in LTE’s flat architecture; providing adequate resiliency for  4G critical applications; and enabling backward compatibility to ensure service  continuity for legacy 2G and 3G traffic are a few examples of the critical  issues that need addressing. Nevertheless, backhaul providers need to address  additional issues that are related to multi-operator co-location and customized  backhaul SLAs.

This workshop reviews the implications of LTE’s “intelligence crunch” for backhaul providers and  discusses how Carrier Ethernet can be used to smartly overcome migration hurdles.

Who Will Benefit From  Taking Part?

This workshop is for anyone involved in making decisions about the future of the backhaul network, from engineers to CTO’s from fixed, mobile operators and  internet service providers. Managed service providers and vendors would also benefit from learning about the future possibilities with LTE backhaul.

Agenda:

New Challenges for Transport Providers: The LTE Backhaul Intelligence Crunch

• Using a flat partial mesh backhaul network for LTE
• How the LTE architecture’s flat topology represents a departure from the hierarchical networks of earlier generations.
• Ensuring careful planning to guarantee effective and scalable inter-eNodeB communications
• Efficiently provisioning and maintaining a multitude of connections over diverse infrastructure.

Service Capabilities and performance management

• Differentiated backhaul services with hard QoS that meet performance criteria, such as packet loss, delay, jitter, and availability.
• Examining how traffic security, service resiliency, synchronization, clocking accuracy and OAM diagnostics are mandatory for operators who wish to offer mobile users rich content and other value-added applications over packet-based transport

Backhaul Sharing

• Reducing the cost of the LTE backhaul by outsourcing some or all backhaul services to the fixed-line transport providers or by consolidating their networks with other operators
• Challenges relating to network service delivery with backhaul  sharing
• The need to support multiple operators with differentiated  SLAs while keeping access rate fairness among operators
• SLA assurance, performance monitoring and diagnostic capabilities in a multi-domain environment

Carrier Ethernet at the Transport Layer

• Simplicity, scalability and cost-effectiveness of Carrier Ethernet
• Use of smart gateways to connect LTE elements with the backhaul network
• Examples of backhaul topologies using Carrier Ethernet
• Sophisticated service handling functionalities for service delivery and SLA assurance