Cosmote has completed a trial of “super dual band” microwave backhaul on its network, which it said could help meet long-term increases in mobile broadband use.
The Greek operator worked with Huawei on the trial, which was first launched in January. It said it needed to find a way of improving on conventional microwave backhaul, which has issues meeting multi-giga bandwidth over long distances. To overcome this, throughput links need a variety of different types of hardware, large antennas and spectrum, which causes a drag on an operator’s total cost of ownership.
Huawei’s alternative brings together the 6-42GHz band with the E-Band (71-86GHz), which it said offers increased protection to operators through link aggregation and “advanced quality of service mechanisms”.
By aggregating traditional mobile frequencies together with the large capacity E-band, Huawei said it could guarantee transmission over distances of more than seven kilometres.
George Tsonis, OTE Group Fixed & Mobile Network Planning and Development Executive Director, said: “The growing capacity demands for fixed and mobile backhaul require innovative solutions on wireless backhaul technologies. The combination of E-Band and traditional microwave frequency spectrum could play a significant role on this direction.”
Bob Chen, President of Huawei Microwave Product Line, said: “Huawei has started microwave cooperation with the OTE Group, member of Deutsche Telekom Group, since 2009. Deutsche Telekom and Huawei will jointly focus on potential microwave innovation technology looking forward to LTE-Evo and even 5G.”