Today, it’s hard to imagine our daily life without online connections. Searching for information and entertainment, playing, watching movies, and keeping in touch with each other — these activities are increasingly taking place online. This is especially true during the coronavirus pandemic, when both work and education rely on broadband connections to ensure and support social distancing.
That is why it is more important than ever to provide a fast and reliable mobile network infrastructure, not only in big cities but also in remote rural regions, where it is not possible to connect the base stations via optical connections. At mobile service providers, the distribution of microwave and wired (optical) networks is usually 50-70 percent.
Therefore, fast, reliable, and state-of-the-art microwave devices are a lot more appreciated, and Ericsson’s MINI-LINK microwave transmitter family fits the criteria perfectly. It is moving the network boundaries to areas where the construction of the optical infrastructure would be difficult or too expensive, for example, rural or hard-to-reach areas, such as the MINI-LINK devices operating in some areas of Alaska. To mention an example closer to us, the base stations are connected to the service providers’ backbone networks through MINI-LINK devices in most of the Croatian islands.
Made in Hungary
The capabilities of the MINI-LINK systems, used by hundreds of operators around the world, are also the achievement of Hungarian experts. The development of the product family is currently divided between Hungary and Sweden — the latter being responsible for radio developments, and Hungary for the development of software network functions.
Among others, the Ethernet and IP functions as well as network synchronization are being developed by Ericsson’s Hungarian developers. They are also responsible for QoS (Quality of Service), and for advanced solutions like NETCONF/YANG support, Hierarchical Radio Link Bonding (hRLB), or Segment Routing. Furthermore, the Hungarian experts support the development of new HW boards to meet functional and capacity-related requirements of Ericsson’s modular MINI-LINK system.
It is worth separately mentioning hRLB. The technology, developed entirely by teams in Hungary, can provide a significant network capacity increase with no impact on reliability. Conventional microwave data transmission usually uses low frequencies, allowing very stable connections. As it moves to higher frequencies, the capacity increases, but the range and the reliability of the radio connection is impaired. Our hRLB technology combines the two solutions: the system communicates at high frequencies most of the time, but, in case of any issues or environmental effects, it is able to go back to the low, reliable band. Although the capacity will decrease, a stable connection can be ensured even in harsh conditions in return.
Microwave transmission also plays a key role in the expansion of 5G, since it can be built much faster and cheaper than optics. Some of the 5G-related features are also delivered by the Hungarian teams.
The Hungarian experts’ developments in the MINI-LINK devices are used by a large number of people worldwide, even if they are not aware of it. Globally, there are more than four million devices installed in 180 countries, extending the networks of more than 800 clients (most of whom are mobile service providers), which provide online connection to hundreds of millions of users.
