Skip to main content

Microwave Backhaul Connects American Samoa

Earlier this year, Ericsson published an interesting case study about American Samoa. Quoting from the report:

American Samoa Telecommunications Authority, ASTCA, supplies telecommunication services to the residents of the American Samoan islands, a territory of the United States, which are found in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean. The primary backhaul system between the islands consists of fiber-optic cables and satellite connections. Over Independence Day weekend 2021, the undersea fiber-optic cable linking the Tutuila and Manu’a Islands failed, completely stranding the Manu’a Islands from all telecommunication services.

ASTCA selected Ericsson in 2019 to provide a high-capacity wireless backup system to the existing fiber-optic network between the islands. One of the planned microwave links was to connect the island Tutuila to the Manu’a Islands with a challenging distance of 84.23 miles (135.55 km). To put this into perspective, it’s the same distance as between New York City and Philadelphia.

Adding to the challenge was the fact that more than 95 percent of the link was over water with a high probability of multipath reflections that could degrade link performance. The solution was to use MINI-LINK 6291, a long haul split-mount system, with 6L GHz frequency, 2+0 with space diversity and with ACCP.

The MINI-LINK 6200 microwave product family combines multiple channels to create a trunk radio link while keeping low loss on the link budget. With low losses, the link can achieve long distances with high microwave capacity of up to 10Gbps while maintaining high availability.

Ericsson’s long-haul systems utilize the frequency range of 6-13 GHz, providing best-in-class spectrum efficiency and maximizing available frequency spectrum.

Ericsson received an urgent call on July 4 to get the microwave link between Tutuila to the Manu’a Islands up and running immediately – well ahead of the planned schedule. This was a challenge as the American Samoa islands are very remote and COVID-19 travelling restrictions were enforced. As much of the preparations were already in place, the Ericsson team could get the link installed with the local ASTCA team providing the installation of the microwave dishes and alignment with Ericsson’s remote support and guidance. Telecommunication services was then restored to the people of Manu’a islands. The link is now providing a steady 1Gbps backhaul most of the time of the year with 600Mbps at four 9’s availability, over this extremely long distance.

You can also download Ericsson Microwave Outlook report 2022 report here.

Related Posts: 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Laser Inter-Satellite Links (LISLs) in a Starlink Constellation

When we first talked about Starlink back in 2019 , we saw in the video that the concept involved laser communication to communicate between the satellites. While the initially launched satellites did not have the laser communication mechanism built in, it looks like they are being added to the newer ones.  A report from Fast Company in late 2021 said: One of the next big upgrades in telecom will involve satellites firing lasers at each other—to beam data, not blow stuff up. The upside of replacing traditional radio-frequency communication with lasers, that encode data as pulses of light, can be much like that of deploying fiber-optic cable for terrestrial broadband: much faster speeds and much lower latency. “Laser links in orbit can reduce long-distance latency by as much as 50%, due to higher speed of light in vacuum & shorter path than undersea fiber,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted in July about the upgrade now beginning for that firm’s Starlink satellite constellation. ...
1 comment
Read more

IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability (UHR), a.k.a. Wi-Fi 8

Back in 2020 we looked at the introductory post of Wi-Fi 7 which was followed up by a more detailed post in Feb 2022. We are now following on with an introductory post on the next generation Wi-Fi.  A new paper on arXiv explores the journey towards IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability (UHR), the amendment that will form the basis of Wi-Fi 8. Quoting selected items from the paper  below: After providing an overview of the nearly completed Wi-Fi 7 standard, we present new use cases calling for further Wi-Fi evolution. We also outline current standardization, certification, and spectrum allocation activities, sharing updates from the newly formed UHR Study Group. We then introduce the disruptive new features envisioned for Wi-Fi 8 and discuss the associated research challenges. Among those, we focus on access point coordination and demonstrate that it could build upon 802.11be multi-link operation to make Ultra High Reliability a reality in Wi-Fi 8. The IEEE 802.11bn UHR: Whose ...
Post a Comment
Read more

NTT Docomo's Disaster Countermeasures to Keep People Connected

Recently I blogged about Disaster Roaming in 3GPP Release-17. While this will take time to be implemented worldwide, it is already available in Japan, maybe not in the 3GPP standardised way. Similarly, back in 2011, I blogged about Earthquake and Tsunami Warning service (ETWS) from NTT Docomo's Journal, it was two days before the  2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami hit. Japan is no stranger to earthquakes, typhoons, and other natural disasters, which can have a devastating effect on infrastructure. To ensure that the mobile networks keep functioning, operators work extremely hard to ensure people remain connected one way or another. NTT Docomo has released a video detailing the countermeasures to keep everyone connected in case of emergencies. The following detail is provided with the video: DOCOMO's network is no exception, and our services could get cut off by a base station power outage, disconnected fiber-optic cable, or other malfunctions. DOCOMO established the three p...
Post a Comment
Read more