ACE-3220 Product Presentation

Slide # 1

Hello and welcome to RAD’s product presentation series. In this presentation, we’ll introduce the ACE-3220: The best of breed cell-site gateway.

Slide # 2

We will begin by reviewing the design and features of RAD’s latest multiservice cell-site gateway, and explain how these features are setting new standards for mobile backhaul devices. We will also show examples of implementation scenarios and highlight the key benefits the ACE-3220 offers to mobile operators and transport providers.

Slide # 3

Radio access networks, or RANs, have been undergoing tremendous changes in recent years. New mobile generations and transport technologies are being introduced although older generations are still years away from phase-out. This co-existence is accompanied by escalating cost pressures that are forcing operators and transport providers to make the most of their pre-installed infrastructure, while planning their transition to economical packet networks. These trends have created a growing need for high-performance, multiservice cell-site gateways.

Slide # 4

Ideally, such devices can aggregate traffic from several cell-sites and transport it over the RAN to the relevant controllers. The ACE-3220’s value proposition lies in its ability to provide top-performance in a single box, delivering traffic from practically every generation over a packet switched network, or a PSN, using any available access infrastructure. It can simultaneously handle GSM, CDMA and UMTS traffic, together with next-generation LTE and WiMAX transmissions. This way, operators and providers converge all their services over unified, low-cost backhaul instead of maintaining multiple dedicated networks in parallel or investing in expensive overlays

The ability to deliver voice and data services over IP transport while ensuring the stringent quality requirements of cellular networks is very much dependent on the extent to which the cell-site gateway supports different flavors of pseudowire emulation and accurate clock recovery over the IP, MPLS or Ethernet network. In both respects, the ACE-3220 brings state-of-the-art capabilities, with the most comprehensive pseudowire and synchronization feature set available in the market today. As the best-of breed cell-site gateway, the ACE-3220 is also fully interoperable with aggregation gateways from leading vendors, which concentrate controller traffic on the other end of the PSN.

Slide # 5

Now let’s take a closer look at the ACE-3220 and understand what makes it so unique.

Slide # 6

The unit’s carrier-class design features a combination of fixed and modular interfaces

The fixed ports include eight or 16 E1 or T1 ports, all supporting ATM, IMA or CES modes; four fast Ethernet ports; an STM 1 or OC 3 SFP port; and a 2 MHz clock input interface.

In addition, the unit houses two modules, each includes four SHDSL.bis ports, two ADSL2+ ports or a Gigabit Ethernet SFP and RJ 45 combo port.

Purposely built for carrier standards, the ACE-3220 is equipped with AC or DC power supply, both with redundancy options to ensure service resiliency and a choice of voltage options.

Another aspect that operators and transport providers are struggling with relates to the limited available space in cell towers. The ACE-3220 form factor is optimized for cell-site environments to ensure easy installation in limited space. Eliminating the need for multiple box stacks, the ACE-3220 generates substantial savings in space, electricity and cooling expenses.

Lastly, the ACE-3220 features a hardened enclosure for outdoor cabinets, designed to withstand extreme temperatures from minus 20 to 65 degrees centigrade.

Slide # 7

The ACE-3220 provides maximum flexibility to meet changing requirements. Its modular design enables easy changes as backhaul technology evolves, by allowing operators to add or change interfaces without requiring forklift upgrades or massive overhauls to their networks.

Featuring plug and play simplicity, DSL or Gigabit Ethernet modules can be easily inserted or extracted with hardware installation involving nothing more than turning two screws per module. To allow operators the freedom to choose any transport technology that fits their needs, the ACE-3220 is already designed to support multiple Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, as well as GPON.

Slide # 8

The ACE-3220 allows operators to take full advantage of widespread copper DSL infrastructure to access the packet network, with multiple bonding options to maximize throughput and a variety of xDSL flavors for increased flexibility.
For example, the SHDSL module features four pairs of SHDSL.bis interfaces and supports all bonding modes, including IMA, M-pair and EFM.

As different DSL flavors fit different types of traffic, the ACE-3220 enables operators to use a hybrid of DSL links to optimize their transport-to-traffic match. This way data traffic can be carried over the ADSL2+ connection, while real-time services such as voice can be directed to the bonded SHDSL group. In addition, the ACE-3220 is hardware ready for ADSL2+ bonding and for new VDSL2 links.

Slide # 9

The comprehensive multiservice support offered by the ACE-3220 is designed to provide operators a smooth migration path to all-IP cellular networks, allowing them to choose the transition scenario that fits their needs best:

• By simultaneously delivering traffic of multiple generations, operators can avoid additional capital investments in dedicated infrastructure equipment, as we’ve already mentioned. It also allows transport providers to serve multiple operators at the same tower, each with their own service level agreement attributes.
• It also allows operators to continue delivering their on-going services at the same quality while introducing newer mobile broadband offerings. Such support is only available by robust pseudowire and synchronization capabilities.
• The transition to packet backhaul can take many forms as operators may opt to implement multiple PSN layers, depending on the services they run, their equipment installed base and chosen technology path. To accommodate such needs, the ACE-3220 supports a variety of PSN formats, including MPLS over IP or GRE, point-to-point protocol, or PPP, over Ethernet for ADSL services, and UDP over IP.
• Lastly, the ACE-3220 features carrier-grade capabilities that allow operators to streamline all services in a single network environment with unified management procedures and diagnostic tools.

Slide # 10

The key enabler for cross-generation support is pseudowire emulation, which encapsulates data streams in logical links across the packet network. Pseudowire emulation enables TDM and ATM traffic to be delivered transparently over packet without the complexities of translating signaling data, while ensuring minimal processing delay.

RAD has been the pioneering author of various TDM over packet standards and a leader in the field of pseudowires since 1999, and its vast capabilities in the field are manifested in the advanced pseudowire attributes of the ACE-3220. It supports a wide range of encapsulation standards to ensure seamless delivery of TDM and ATM traffic over the PSN, including ATM over PSN in various formats, CES over PSN and SATOP.

In addition, Ethernet pseudowire over MPLS networks are supported per RFC 4448.

Slide # 11

Another, closely related issue is timing over packet. Minimal latency and accurate timing recovery are crucial to avoid dropped calls during handoff in cellular networks, making synchronization one of the biggest challenges in the migration to IP backhaul. Since packet switched networks are asynchronous by nature, they introduce inaccuracies, such as packet delay, delay variation and packet loss. These inaccuracies vary in importance, depending on the technology used and services involved.

Harnessing RAD’s extensive expertise and experience in timing over packet solutions, the ACE-3220 is equipped with a full range of highly accurate, standard synchronization options. These are designed to support multiple mobile operators, each with their own clock source, as well as provide excellent holdover and definite frequency accuracy limits for various services, including 50 parts per billion, or ppb, for GSM and 16 ppb for CDMA and UMTS.

For backhaul networks with SDH or SONET segments, the clock can be physically transmitted over a native TDM tributary, providing an external and highly accurate clock source.

For PSN segments, the ACE-3220 supports high-performance Adaptive Clock Recovery, where the clock is distributed over the PSN as an inband TDM stream and regenerated using the packets’ time-of-arrival information, independently of the physical layer. The clock stream format is a standard pseudowire flow and bandwidth consumption can be minimized by using a multicast pseudowire for clock distribution

The ACE-3220 is also designed for clock recovery and distribution according to the latest IEEE standard 1588, also known as Precision Time Protocol, or PTP. This method is based on timestamp information exchange in a master-slave hierarchy

Another synchronization method that the ACE-3220 can employ is Synchronous Ethernet, or Sync-E, which uses the Ethernet physical layer to accurately distribute frequency, using clock mechanisms similar to those of SDH or SONET

For SHDSL segments, the ACE-3220 supports NTR, or network timing reference, a method in which a network reference clock is distributed from the DSLAM the cell-site gateway by mapping its clock information to the DSL modem transmission

Network operators are likely to combine several methodologies. For example, the ACE-3220 can use 1588 to receive the clock from the network then distribute it to the cell-site using Sync-E or TDM timing.

Slide # 12

The ACE-3220 can be managed remotely or locally, either inband or out-of-band. It features a wide choice of access channels, including SNMP, Telnet and TFTP, as well as a range of security features, including SSH, Radius, SNMPV3 and SFTP.

RAD’s carrier-grade element management system, RADview, provides extensive management capabilities through an intuitive GUI agent. These include:

• FCAPS functionality, for integrated management of faults, device configuration, accounting, performance and security
• Distributed client-server architecture for high flexibility and scalability
• A variety of Northbound interfaces for easy integration with operator OSS and umbrella management systems, and
• Inventory management with statistics collection
  As a fully interoperable solution, the ACE-3220 has been integrated with management systems from Cisco, Nortel and Alcatel-Lucent.

Slide # 13

Having learned the extent of the ACE-3220 advanced capabilities, let’s discuss how they are implemented by operators and transport providers.

Slide # 14

This is an example of a live deployment, in which the ACE-3220 is used to backhaul 2G and 3G voice and data traffic over packet transport. This requires pseudowire emulation to be implemented end-to-end, starting at the cell-site, both over fiber-based IP links and over copper DSL.

The copper section involves a hybrid of ADSL 2+ and SHDSL.bis, the former is used to transport HSDPA data traffic and the latter for R99 voice traffic, as well as for HSUPA applications. Both DSL modes are served by a single ACE-3220 unit. The cell-site gateways are working seamlessly opposite a third-party aggregation gateway and ensure accurate synchronization to maintain required voice quality.

Slide # 15

Here, too, the ACE-3220 converges multi-generation traffic over unified packet backhaul, only in this case the backhaul connections are microwave-based. Ethernet radios are becoming increasingly popular, as they offer the bandwidth capacity that goes with mobile broadband and 4G services and at the same time enable quick rollouts and lower installation costs compared to wireline transport.

The ACE-3220 links base stations of earlier generations and packet microwave, providing end-to-end pseudowire emulation with connectivity verification diagnostic tools. This simplifies the transition to Ethernet radios and enables substantial cost savings through cell-site colocation.

As we can see in this slide, the ACE-3220 installed at the cell-site aggregation point collects traffic from several multi-generation towers and encapsulates it in relevant pseudowires. The pseudowire is then transmitted over the Ethernet microwave link to the hub-site, where another ACE gateway encapsulates data from nearby towers and sends it through the radio unit to the aggregation site through the PSN.

Slide # 16

While the ultimate vision of LTE networks involves flat 4G architecture, 2G BTSs, 3G Node Bs and their respective controllers still have some service years ahead of them. The ACE-3220 enables a gradual transition to LTE, supporting all relevant air interface protocols and transport technologies to help network operators avoid investing in separate build-outs. In addition to supporting packet transport with the relevant uplink interfaces, pseudowire capabilities and timing over packet modes, the ACE-3220 is also LTE-ready, designed to support the X2 user and control plane interface for inter-eNode B handoff, as well as the S1 control plane interface between cell-sites and the new access gateways.

Slide # 17

Although the ACE-3220 is a new addition to RAD’s portfolio of multiservice RAN gateways, the industry is already recognizing its powerful capabilities. It is already deployed by tier-1 mobile operators and boasts a proven interoperability with RAN elements, DSLAMs and pseudowire aggregation gateways from the market’s leading vendors.

Slide # 18

In summary, the ACE-3220 provides a cost-effective solution for mobile broadband services and helps operators lower their total cost of ownership, or TCO, for IP RANs by supporting a gradual migration to PSN backhaul. Its large variety of pseudowire flavors and synchronization methods allow operators to leverage their investments in existing infrastructure and maintain revenue generating services of earlier generations without compromising quality.

By simultaneously delivering 2G, 3G and 4G Ethernet traffic, the ACE-3220 also supports multi-generation cell-site colocation and allows transport providers to serve multiple operators, each with their own quality of service and synchronization requirements.

And, lastly, the ACE-3220 allows operators maximum flexibility in their deployment plans by ensuring full interoperability with aggregation nodes and their management systems from leading vendors.

Slide # 19

This has been an introduction to RAD’s ACE-3220 multiservice cell-site gateway. Thank you for joining us and please visit www.rad-cellular.com for more information on our mobile backhaul solutions.