RAD Unveils Unique Enhancements for Maximizing Cellular Backhaul Traffic over Satellite Links

November 29, 2005: RAD Data Communications has announced that at GSM Africa 2005, to be held November 30-December 1 in Cape Town, it will unveil several unique solutions for reducing carrier expenses by maximizing cellular backhaul traffic over expensive satellite links.

"In many areas of the world, the rapid growth of voice and data communications usage has outpaced the deployment of network infrastructures," states Gaby Junowicz, Business Development Director at RAD Data Communications. "This is especially true in Africa, where for reasons of geography, history and topography, the laying of copper or fiber landlines has been slow and in many cases, prohibitively expensive," he adds. "To overcome this situation, many local carriers and enterprises in Africa resort to satellite links for their communications transport needs."

Satellite networks are an effective way to quickly open reliable lines of communications over great distances, but satellite time is expensive. It is also billed according to the quantity of bandwidth consumed, so cellular operators that have opted for such satellite resources are under ceaseless pressure to implement whatever measures are available to maximize bandwidth efficiencies. The cellular backhaul links utilize A-bis and A-ter protocols, which incorporate compressed voice. Additional compression to further minimize bandwidth, therefore, is not a viable option. "Cellular operators are looking for a solution that maximizes the amount of voice traffic that can be transported over the available satellite bandwidth, yet still support the necessary features to preserve high voice quality and associated signaling," Junowicz explains.

"RAD's Vmux-400 A-bis and A-ter Optimization Gateway is the ideal product solution," notes Toby Korall, Senior Product Line Manager at RAD. "Having been successfully deployed in several applications in Africa and interoperable with equipment from other major vendors, the Vmux-400 ensures that satellite links are utilized as efficiently as possible by eliminating inefficiencies by not transmitting idle and silent frames," he continues. "In this way, the Vmux-400 can reduce satellite bandwidth by 50 percent and more, enabling satellite service providers to offer their customers a more attractive complete solution."

Product functions, moreover, have been tested in various codec environments, including HR (half rate), FR (full rate), EFR (enhanced full rate), and AMR (adaptive multiple rates) – the codec used in 3G cellular applications. The Vmux-400, in fact, features a number of unique enhancements that make it ideal for cellular operators bridging both 2.5G GSM/GPRS and 3G EDGE environments. It supports, for example, both A-bis and A-ter protocols, and offers a unique, cost-cutting solution for supporting both GPRS and EDGE data traffic over multiple timeslots. The product is exceptionally suitability for cellular applications over IP networks. "Since cellular networks are synchronic, clock regeneration over asynchronous IP transport networks represents a challenge," Korall concludes. "RAD, however, has solved this problem with advanced clock recovery algorithms that have been implemented in the Vmux-400."