c



   


Upon completion of this chapter the student will be able to:

a? Yescribe the transport technologies used in GSM/WCYMA networks

a? ¦etain basic understanding on ATM
a? Yescribe the IP packet layout
a? Understand the Frame ¦elay functionality
a? Yescribe the MPLS
a? Yescribe the routing principles and protocols in WCYMA
a? Yescribe the different Layer 1 transport methods

½ 
WCYMA introduces a new architecture that implements different transport technologies such as
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), and Internet Protocol (IP) and Frame ¦elay (F¦). The
Transport Network can be considered as a Œbit pipeŒ, that is, a transport mechanism
independent of the transported information, whether it is voice, data or multimedia. It
implements both IP and ATM transport technologies.

WCYMA integrates IP technology and voice capability, in other words, eliminating the
distinction between Internet and telephony services. Therefore, WCYMA ensures
interoperability between existing and future wireless devices and establishes a backward-
compatible upgrade path for 2G networks.
The GSM network convergence to a multi service backbone makes it possible to use the same
transport network as the WCYMA network. This GSM/WCYMA Transport network is divided
in the following functional parts:

a? Access Transport Network

a? Core Transport Network
a? Service Transport Network

These Transport sub-networks are described in the following modules.

3G networks must be able to offer services with new features, for example, high bit rates (up to 2
Mbit/s) and of course be backward service compatible . The requirements of modern networking
involve:

a? andling multiple types of traffic

a? ¦eliability and flexibility of the communications links

½ 
-oice, video and data traffic all have individual characteristics. These multiple types of traffic
make very different demands on the communications channel and these demands can sometimes
be completely opposed to each other.
The biggest problem is that transmissions occur at statistically random intervals. Take voice for
example: The generation of voice is asynchronous (a speaker may speak anytime). owever, the
transmission of voice must be synchronous (once the message starts, it must flow continuously
as it is spoken). So, what is to be done if one wants to combine data, voice and video on the same
links? The solution is to use fixed and relatively short packets. This way the delays produced by
each packet are short and probably fixed; so, if voice and video traffic can be assured priority
handling, they can be mixed with data without diminishing any reception quality.

The user-generated traffic is transported from node to node using the available transport network.
The transport networks provide bearer services to the user. The handling of bearer services is a
function present in all involved nodes in the transport path. It is realized in layers corresponding
to layer 1 to 3 in the OSI model as shown in the figure below.

OSI, ATM, IP, F¦

The user traffic is adapted to the lower layer and the transported using proper L1 transport. The
simplified figure below shows a summary of GSM/WCYMA transport using ATM, IP and
Frame ¦elay.

This module is aimed to present all the transport techniques used in the GSM and/or WCYMA
Networks. Before showing the Frame ¦elay, ATM and the IP transport solutions different Layer
one techniques will be described.



Initially 3GPP standardized ATM as the backbone network solution for WCYMA evolving later
to IP. In the figure below such a solution is presented . The ATM backbone provides the bearer
for all service classes (conversational, streaming, interactive and background).

ATM is a transmission technology that uses fixed-size packets called cells. A cell is a 53-byte
packet with 5 bytes of header/descriptor and 48 bytes of payload, or user traffic - voice, data, or
video.

In the EricssonŒs WCYMA, ATM links are used between several nodes in the radio and core
transport networks.



p


The cornerstone of ATM is the cell. The information flow, with different and varying bit rates, is
uniformly organized into cells which consist of a cell header of five octets and a user part of 48
octets; 53 octets in all. ATM is a packet mode technique, but the delay in the network can be
kept to a minimum because the cells have a fixed length.
The cell header is divided into different fields. The most important one is the address field,
which ± in the form of a logical channel number (-irtual Path Identifier (-PI) and -irtual
Channel Identifier (-CI)) ± identifies the circuit and provides a unique link address between two
network nodes.

The PTI (Payload Type Identifier) specifies whether the cell contains user information or
information to be used by the network itself for operation and maintenance, for example.

CLP (Cell Loss Priority) specifies the priority level of the cell (out of two possible levels) if
there is not enough space for all cells. EC (eader Error Control) contains a check value that is
used by nodes in the network and at the receiving end to detect any distortion of the header (bit
error).

‰
 
 


ATM may well be the first transfer mode capable of handling all services, which means that it
must be possible to transport voice traffic as well as data and video information in cells with a
fixed length of 53 bytes. The intensity of cells that belong to a specific circuit depends on the
instantaneous need of bandwidth.





 
An ATM network consists of ATM nodes and links. A constant stream of ATM cells that carry
information for the corresponding services is transferred in each link. Unused space in the cell
stream consists of empty cells or idle cells. See figure below.




 
-    -   

The ATM cell flow on a physical link is logically organized in -irtual Paths which are identified
by -irtual Path Identifiers (-PI) and -irtual Channels which are identified by the combination
of a -PI and a -irtual Channel Identifier (-CI). A -irtual Path is a bundle of -irtual Channels,
all of which are switched transparently across the ATM network on the basis of the common
-PI. There are maybe one or several -irtual Channels in one -irtual Path and one or several
-irtual Paths on a physical link.

Figure below shows a link with -irtual Paths each containing several -Cs.




 
p
  


Each -irtual Path contains -irtual Channels with different numbers. The fields -CI and -PI in
the cell header indicate to which -irtual Channel and -irtual Path an ATM cell belongs. The
-CI values are unique within a -irtual Path and the -PI values are unique within a physical link.

The basic operation of an ATM switch is straightforward: the cell is received across a link on a
known -CI or -PI value. The switch looks up the connection value in a local translation table to
determine the outgoing port (or ports) of the connection and the new -PI/-CI value of the
connection on that link. The switch then retransmits the cell on that outgoing link with the
appropriate connection identifiers.

Because all -CIs and -PIs have only local significance across a particular link, these values are
remapped, as necessary, at each switch.

The Figure below illustrates the principle showing a simple ATM switch with its corresponding
local translation table. The -CI values from the table can easily be associated to the ATM cells
on the different links of the switch.





 
When both -CI and -PI values are translated in a switching node, it is called a -C-switching
node. It is also possible to have -P-switching nodes where only the -PI values are changed and
the -CI values are always left unchanged. Figure above shows an example of a node with the
capability to perform both -C and -P switching while figure below shows only a -P switch.