GSM Transport Evolution: Background Technical Overview, Packet Abis
GSM Transport Evolution: Background Technical Overview, Packet Abis
GSM Transport Evolution: Background Technical Overview, Packet Abis
Per Ola Andersson, Hkan Asp, Aldo Bolle, Harry Leino, Peter Seybolt and Richard Swardh
The success of GSM to date has been nothing short of sensational. What previously used to maintain a constant bit
is more, its future continues to hold great promise. However, two important rate to fit the PDH channel format) are no
challenges must yet be resolved to make GSM the mobile communica- longer inserted.
tions system for the next billion users and to guarantee the commercial Ericsson has integrated the Abis Optimization
success of its mobile data services: focus on low total cost of ownership solution into its base station subsystem (BSS).
(TCO), and deployment of enhanced GPRS (EGPRS) in every network. In The Abis Optimization feature is based on a
addressing these challenges, GSM transport or backhaul constitutes one software upgrade of the RBS, and the intro-
very interesting and dynamic area of development. duction of a packet gateway (PGW) in the
BSC, to terminate the Packet Abis protocol.
To save even more bandwidth, one may add a
Background Technical overview, Packet site integration unit (SIU) at RBS sites to ex-
ploit statistical multiplexing gains between
Transmission to radio base station (RBS) sites Abis RBSs.
accounts for a large part of the cost of operat- Packet Abis, Ericssons collective solution for
ing radio access networks. Where operators these developments (Figure 2), includes a Dimensioning example, Abis Optimization
have built their own transport networks, new protocol for transferring data over the The number of E1/T1 links required per site
transmission also represents substantial in- Abis link. Simply put, from the air inter- with Abis Optimization depends on site con-
vestment (Figure 1). face the solution sends all traffic (voice, data figurations and traffic mix. In T1 markets,
Traditional transmission from RBSs to and signaling) in packets over Abis with a one RBS 2106/2206 with up to 12 TRXs can
a base station controller (BSC) is realized minimum of repacking and reformatting. cover three sectors with only one T1. With
using static time-division multiplexing The solution can be used over TDM trans- classic Abis, two T1s would be required for
(TDM) circuits. This technology has not port networks as well as with IP or Ethernet this configuration.
been optimized for efficient transmission of transport services. Ericssons Packet Abis so- In E1 markets, one E1 can support two
bursty data traffic, however. Nor is it easily lution is built around two main features: RBSs with up to 18 TRXs. For standard base
adapted to the low-cost transport technolo- Abis Optimization; and station configurations, this could translate
gies, such as IP and Ethernet, which are be- Abis over IP. into a savings of up to 50%.
ing rolled out over copper, fiber, and micro-
wave networks. Low TCO using TDM transport Low TCO with Packet Abis using IP or
The good news is that recent develop- networks Ethernet transport services
ments in GSM transport and switching Abis Optimization, which is Ericssons solu- The Abis over IP solution enables operators
technologies promise to overcome these is- tion for delivering Packet Abis over TDM to use IP and Ethernet transport networks
sues, making GSM suitable to provide ser- transport networks, saves bandwidth by to connect RBSs to the BSC and thereby
vices both to low-revenue users and to users solely transferring bits that contain data. benefit from the lower costs of IP- and
of high-speed data services. All other bits (for example, those that were Ethernet-based transport services. The solu-
tion also opens the door to shared transport
with WCDMA and to integrated transport
Figure 1 solutions for RBS sites.
Breakdown of the costs of operating radio access networks. The solution is fully interoperable with
Ericssons other products. At an RBS site,
HeVgZh!hjeedgi!igV^c^c\ all IP features are implemented in the new
IgVchb^hh^dc STN function, connecting the site to IP or
Ethernet transport networks. The STN is a
software function that can be implemented
G6CZfj^ebZci in Ericssons base stations.
The site transport node is implemented
on a family of platforms that have been op-
EdlZg timized to fit pico, micro, and macro RBSs.
The packet-switched termination unit
H^iZgZciVa
(PSTU) platform for micro RBSs, for in-
stance, has been completely integrated into
Ericssons micro RBS.
H^iZZfj^ebZci In macro RBSs, Ericsson has integrated
the STN into the site integration unit (SIU),
which is designed to serve as a single point
DeZgVi^dcVcY of connection that supports common, inte-
bV^ciZcVcXZ grated transport to the RBS site. With the
SIU (Figure 3), one can efficiently manage
8^k^aldg`h CGD and share backhaul transport for GSM RBSs,
O&M security
Because O&M traffic is particularly sensitive
from a security viewpoint, all O&M traffic coverage and services to small or medium- nection that provides point-to-point connec-
that runs over IP is realized using secure sized enterprises, which benefit from dedi- tivity. Transmission for these sites is expen-
socket shell (SSH) and secured FTP (SFTP). cated GSM telephony. In this scenario, op- sive because the satellite connection requires
Likewise, user authentication is mandatory erators could even offer special tariffs when the full SCPC bandwidth even when there is
for all O&M connections. The system logs an users are in the office. This solution repre- no traffic from the site.
audit trail of operator activity and periodi- sents a replacement to fixed phones. Previ- Today, however, the introduction of Abis
cally uploads it to the OSS. ously, the backhaul cost of an E1 prohibited over IP and advances in satellite modem
these types of solutions, but with Abis over IP technology make it possible to reduce trans-
Protection of insecure transmission and a cheaper DSL type of backhaul (or even mission expenses for remote sites. Advanced
If the access IP network is untrusted that the corporate LAN itself), the Pico solution modulation techniques increase the bit rate
is, if it is shared or public then IPsec should becomes economically feasible. per hertz, and bandwidth-sharing technolo-
always be used to prevent wiretapping and Femto cell solutions give operators similar gy allows sites to share satellite bandwidth
traffic manipulation. A typical example opportunities to go after the home market by means of point-to-multipoint connections
would be pico base stations, such as the RBS with an offer of inexpensive (or free) calls at and a resources-in-pool concept.
2409 (Figure 6), which target low-power fre- home using any standard GSM or WCDMA With current satellite bandwidth pric-
quency licenses for the enterprise market. phone. The Femto runs Abis over IP to the
BSC/RNC using the home broadband IP
Pico and Femto base connection for backhaul. Special optimiza- Figure 6
tions handle low-cost, low-bandwidth ADSL
stations links. Abis over IP thus creates a completely
Pico base station, RBS 2409.
In addition, the new architecture opens up new business opportunity by giving opera-
completely new business segments. Abis over tors an entirely new way of building GSM
IP yields cost-effective transport for base sta- networks where end-users introduce new
tions with low traffic, enabling operators to cells into the network.
address Pico and Femto-types of solutions
(small base stations that require data rates
of up to a few hundred kilobits per second
Satellites
between the RBS and BSC). Satellites have been used for a number of
The Pico cell solution, for example, is a years to provide connectivity with base
complete RBS 2000 base station with one station sites in remote locations. Single-
TRX. Among other things, operators can channel-per-carrier (SCPC) connections have
use this solution to offer dedicated capacity, traditionally served as a leased E1/T1 con-