Ciena, the network specialist, today announced the expansion of its Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery (CESD) portfolio with the addition of new switching products designed to address LTE backhaul networking requirements. Featuring flexible connectivity options and traffic-type awareness, the new platforms are said to empower service providers to meet the rapidly growing demand for data services with speed, scalability and resiliency, while reducing network complexity and lowering operating costs.
It is widely accepted that the proliferation of next-generation mobile devices and associated data applications is forcing network operators to invest in additional capacity and move to 4G technologies to accommodate growth and support new service demands. To do that, service providers are increasingly turning to high speed, low latency LTE technologies that improve network performance and lower operating costs while supporting the need for additional bandwidth all within their existing spectrum. As a result, however, operators are facing more pressure on the critical wireless backhaul portion of the network that ensures the traffic flows between cell towers and the terrestrial core network.Â
When planning the migration to 4G, service providers must ensure their backhaul networks contain these three design attributes: scalability to ensure rapid response to evolving bandwidth needs, partially driven by an increase of IP-connected devices; management to allocate capacity and prioritize different data traffic types to meet performance demands of a variety of end-users; and quality of service control to optimize bandwidth availability and reliability and ensure timely application delivery – an increasingly complex task due to unpredictable traffic spikes from applications like streaming video or music and ongoing maintenance complexities.
The company claims that, by deploying Ciena’s Carrier Ethernet solutions for LTE wireless backhaul, wholesale capacity suppliers and mobile network operators can realize up to 30 percent savings in capital expenses and up to 80 percent reduction in turn-up times at a base stations as compared to alternative packet technologies1. Ciena’s portfolio offers a number of architectural advantages, including:
 a.. sophisticated network resource provisioning and optimization to more efficiently control, manage and monetize unpredictable traffic over the network;
 b.. MEF-compliant Carrier-Ethernet based infrastructure options for network access, coupled with scalable, converged optical Ethernet solutions to simplify transport in aggregation or metro core networks and configure the backhaul network to be transparent to the wireless layer’s IP protocols;
 c.. a common service-aware operating system to address a multitude of backhaul scenarios – depending on the availability of fiber, the degree of multi-tenancy, and various generations of radio base stations – for greater cost and resource savings; and,
 d.. state-of-the-art protection capabilities for detecting and recovering from network disruptions to ensure high network availability and seamless service delivery.Â