Is microwave backhaul up to the 4G task?

With the evolution toward the fourth generation of mobile networks, the backhaul network that portion of the network infrastructure that provides interconnectivity between the base stations and the core network is expected to come under intense pressure as capacity requirements increase to support new mobile broadband services. As a key technology used in backhaul networks around the world, point-to-point microwave is rapidly evolving to support this increasing capacity demand, improve network efficiency, and allow operators to reduce network operational costs. This article details how recent developments in the microwave industry support both the lowest cost per Mb/s transport and also the maximum Mb/s/MHz. These developments embrace the dramatic shift to support Internet protocol (IP) network convergence, including the key features to enable link capacities not previously seen in the industry, and the new methods developed to enable every last drop to be squeezed out of the finite resource that is the available frequency spectrum.