Multi-Band – The Future of 5G Transport

The Problem

E-Band Lacks Availability in Some Cases

For years, E-Band has been touted as the next big thing. Likewise, 80GHz technology and solutions have been around for several years, yet the demand has not taken off. Why is that? Well, there are a few excellent reasons:

–Dell’Oro Group. (2019, July 23) Packet Microwave Projected to Grow at a 10 Percent CAGR. Retrieved from https://www.delloro.com/news/17-billion-of-microwave-transmission-equipment-needed-over-five-years/.

• Limited reach of 80GHz – maximum link distances only up to 2 or 3 km, or less
• Risk of outage – high precipitation can take down an 80GHz link for an extended period
• Difficult to align E-Band antennas – raises installation complexity and costs
• E-Band is susceptible to pole sway, due to narrow antenna beam-width – more outage risk

Traditional Microwave (15/18/23GHz) Lacks Capacity in Some Cases

While traditional microwave has been a valuable backhaul alternative for years, the spectrum availability and channel widths inherently mean these bands will have difficulty scaling capacity to meet the needs of 5G – approaching and exceeding 10Gbps.

More Availability is Needed – Especially for the Future of 5G

5G is all about use cases which promise to be new revenue streams for the operator and are critical for operator financial success. Many of these use cases deal with critical applications (connected/autonomous cars, industrial IOT, M2M, public safety applications, etc.), which require very high availability from the transport networks. Due to the above issues, many people question whether or not E-Band has the availability to ubiquitously support 5G and its mission critical use cases.

The solution: Multi-Band

What is Multi-Band?

Multi-Band involves combining E-Band (70-80GHz) with traditional microwave (6-42GHz) on a single microwave link, usually with a single antenna on each end. Multi-Band drastically improves availability and distance of E-Band links and addresses other issues like pole sway and antenna alignment.

Multi-Band as an Alternative to E-Band

For such critical, high capacity 5G links, poor availability is not acceptable. Multi-Band offers a promising solution to address the shortcomings of E-Band and deliver a high capacity, reliable option for 5G transport. Benefits of Multi-Band include:

• Multi-Band realizes capacity benefits of E-Band, & solves shortcomings
• Your most important traffic is now immune to outages due to rain and pole sway – 99.999% availability, up to 2.5 Gbps
• With Multi-Band, you can extend the reach of your E-Band links up to 6, 8, maybe 10 km
• Multi-Band enables simplified antenna alignment – essentially the same alignment experience as a regular microwave link

Multi-Band as an Alternative to Traditional Microwave (15/18/23GHz)

Multi-band also offers a solution to address the shortcomings of traditional microwave (15/18/23GHz) where current capacity levels are not sufficient. Benefits of Multi-Band include:

• Multi-Band improves capacity of traditional microwave by adding a high capacity E-Band channel in parallel
• Improve link capacities with multi-band by up to 10x the capacity of a standalone 15/18/23GHz solution
• You can add the capacity right away or just leave the E-Band available and turn it on via software when you’re ready for more capacity