Abstract:
A system is provided for making connections in a telecommunications system that includes a network for transporting communications between selected subscriber connections, and a wireless network for coupling connections to the network. The network and wireless network are interfaced with a traffic management element and at least one radio controller shared by connections, with the traffic management element and the radio controller forming a single integrated network element. Connections are routed from the wireless network to the network via the single integrated network element.

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
       [0001]    This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/788,390 filed Mar. 31, 2006 and U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/796,492 filed May 1, 2006. 
     
    
     FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
       [0002]    The present invention generally relates to Ethernet access and, in particular, to bandwidth efficient Ethernet grid networking systems. 
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0003]    Ethernet is rapidly becoming the protocol of choice for consumer, enterprise and carrier networks. It is expected that most networks will evolve such that Ethernet will be the technology used to transport all the multimedia applications including, for example, triple-play, fixed-mobile-convergence (FMC), and IP multimedia sub-systems (IMS). Existing network elements which offer network access using Ethernet technology are not designed to make maximum use of the legacy network links existing at the edge of the carrier networks. The edge of the network is quickly becoming a bottleneck as the new applications are becoming more and more demanding for bandwidth. 
         [0004]    Telecommunications carriers are constantly looking for new revenue sources. They need to be able to deploy rapidly a wide ranging variety of services and applications without the need to constantly modify the network infrastructure. Ethernet is a promising technology that is able to support a variety of application requiring different quality of service (QoS) from the network. The technology is now being standardized to offer different types of services which have different combinations of quality objectives, such as loss, delay and bandwidth. Bandwidth objectives are defined in terms of committed information rate (CIR) or excess information rate (EIR). The CIR guarantees bandwidth to a connection, while the EIR allows operation at higher bandwidth when available. 
       RF Switch 
       [0005]    In order to increase their revenue potential, the carriers need a cost effective way to reach new customers which cannot currently serviced because there is no practical way of providing them with a broadband physical connection. New high bandwidth wireless technology, such as WiMAX or high speed RF technology allows the carrier to reach a new customer or a customer that is not currently serviced with high bandwidth without the high cost of deploying new fiber routes. The following description uses Wimax as an example, but any point-to-point RF technology could be used. By deploying WiMAX at the access of the network, the carriers can rapidly open up new markets. However, currently the Ethernet access solutions using WiMAX technology are costly, from both operating cost (OPEX) and capital cost (CAPEX) standpoints, as each access point requires a combination of a WiMAX base-station  10  with a router  11  ( FIG. 1 ). Although WiMAX operates at higher speed, it is still important to maximize the use of its bandwidth since spectrum is a limited resource. But because the (WiMAX radio  105  and the router  102 ) are separate, the router has no knowledge of the radio status, it is difficult to make maximum use of the wireless bandwidth. WiMAX currently allows for multiple users to share a base station. If a subscriber does not reach the base station directly, it can tunnel through another subscriber which has connectivity. This architecture allows multiple subscribers to reach a base station which is connected to the wired network. One major issue with this architecture is that the bandwidth consumed by the tunneled subscriber is not managed and can affect the bandwidth and QoS of the service of the subscriber which is sharing the connectivity to the base station. Such architecture, which limits the subscribers to being not farther than two hops from the base station, is targeted for residential customers with less stringent QoS requirements. It is not well suited for designing enterprise networks or carrier infrastructure. 
       Anticipating Radio Link Performance Changes 
       [0006]    Compared to optical transmission, wireless links are regularly subjected to impairments due to weather or other interferences. These impairments temporarily affect the bandwidth transmitted on the link. Since the base station  105  ( FIG. 1 ) is temporarily decoupled from the switching network, there is no mechanism for the network elements to take into account link degradation and to manage the flow of data on the network. This will typically result in a large amount of packets being dropped at the WiMAX radio  105  as the Switch/Router  102  only knows if the Ethernet connector  103  is up or down and will send more packets than the radio can handle. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0007]    One embodiment of this invention provides a system for making connections in a telecommunications system that includes a network for transporting communications between selected subscriber connections, and a wireless network for coupling connections to the network. The network and wireless network are interfaced with a traffic management element and at least one radio controller shared by connections, with the traffic management element and the radio controller forming a single integrated network element. Connections are routed from the wireless network to the network via the single integrated network element. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0008]    The invention will be better understood from the following description of preferred embodiments together with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: 
           [0009]      FIG. 1  is a diagram illustrating existing network architecture with separate WiMAX base station and routers. 
           [0010]      FIG. 2  illustrates an integrated network element containing a WiMAX base station with an Ethernet switch networked and managed with a VMS 
           [0011]      FIG. 3  illustrates one implementation for performing the switching in the WiMAX switch in the integrated network element of  FIG. 2 . 
           [0012]      FIG. 4  illustrates a logical view of the traffic management bloc. 
           [0013]      FIG. 5  illustrates a radio impairment detection mechanism. 
           [0014]      FIG. 6  illustrates one implementation of an algorithm that detects radio impairments. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     RF Switch 
       [0015]    Existing Ethernet over WiMAX solutions as illustrated in  FIG. 1  require a separate packet switch  10  such as an Ethernet switch, MPLS switch or router to switch traffic between WiMAX radios  105  and client interfaces  100 . The WiMAX (or other point-to-point RF) radio  105  connects Ethernet from the Ethernet switch or IP router  102  and converts it into the WiMAX standard, then transmitted over a antenna connector  106 , then to the antenna  123 , and then over the airways to the receiving antenna. Integrating the switching and WiMAX radio functions reduces operational costs and improves monitoring and control of WiMAX radios. 
         [0016]    Integration of the switching of service traffic among WiMAX radio links and access interfaces into a single network element, which is referred to as a WiMAX switch  107 , is depicted in  FIG. 2 . The switching can be accomplished by using Ethernet switching, MPLS label switching or routing technology. One embodiment integrates only the control  107   c  of the radio with an external radio controller with the switching function to prevent loosing packets between the switch and the radio controller when the radio bandwidth degrades. In this model, the external radio controller provides periodical information about the status of the wireless link and thus acts as an integrated radio controller. The client application  100 , connects to the switch  107  based on the service interface type  101  and is switched to the appropriate antenna connector  121  then to the antenna  123 . The configuration of the switch is done by a management device called the VMS  124 . 
         [0017]      FIG. 3  provides an example of an implementation for the switching. The network element  107  includes one or more radio controllers  120  or external radio controllers  120   a  fully within the control of the network element and it can add/drop traffic to/from different types of interfaces  101  including but not limited to any number of Ethernet, ATM or T1/E1 interfaces. Different types of network trunks can also be added using optical links or other types of high speed links  122 . The packet forwarding is connection-oriented and can be done using simple labels such as multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) labels, Ethernet VLAN-ID or 802.16 connection ID (CID) labels. Connections are established by a traffic engineering element referred to as the value management system (VMS)  124 , which is a network management system. The VMS manages all the connections such that the QoS and path protection requirements are met. 
         [0018]    The WiMAX switch includes amongst other components, a data plane  110 , which includes packet forwarding  111  and traffic management  112 . The packet forwarding,  111  receives packets and performs classification to select which interface  101 , trunk connector  116  or wired trunk connector,  109  to queue the packet. The traffic management  112  manages all the queues and the scheduling. It can also implement traffic shaping and flow control. The network and link configurations are sent to the Process controller  113  and stored in persistent storage  114 . The Process controller configures the Packet Forwarding  111 , the Traffic Management  112  and the Radio Controller  120  using the Control Bus  115 . One logical implementation is shown in  FIG. 4 . There is one traffic shaper  130  per connection. The traffic shaper can be optionally set up to react to flow control information from the network. The scheduler  132  is responsible for selecting which packet to transmit next from any of the connections that are ready to send on the outgoing connector (NNI, UNI or Trunk). Intermediate queues  131  can be optionally used to store shaped packets that are awaiting transmission on the link. These queues can be subject to congestion and can implement flow control notification. 
         [0019]    The radio controller is monitored via the process controller to be immediately notified of its state and operating speed. 
         [0020]    Using a WiMAX switch, a grid network topology can be implemented which permits the optimized use of the bandwidth as each subscriber&#39;s traffic is controlled from end-to-end. This topology alleviates the need for subscribers to tunnel through another subscriber and therefore removes the one-hop limitation. 
       Anticipating Radio Link Performance Changes 
       [0021]    In one embodiment, the radio is integrated with the switching layer ( FIG. 3 ). Since the two elements are integrated within the same system, the radio status information is conveyed on a regular basis to the process controller  113  which can evaluate impending degradation of the link and take proactive actions, such as priority discards, flow control, protection switching etc. The objective is to avoid loss between the traffic management  112  and the radio controller  120  when the link speed is reduced due to performance degradations. 
         [0022]    The sceduler  132  as seen in  FIG. 4  matches any change in throughput as a result of expected changing transmission speeds (e.g. drop from QAM 64 to QAM 16). One algorithm that estimates the link performance is as follows:
       1. If the link performance is impaired, the scheduler  132  limits the rate of traffic forwarded to the radio controller  120  and buffers this traffic as necessary in queues  131  or  130  ( FIG. 4 ).   2. If the link performance is improved, the scheduler  132  increases the rate of traffic forwarded to the radio controller  120  and draining the traffic buffered in queues  131  or  130  ( FIG. 4 ).       
 
         [0025]    The radio controller  120  is responsible to commute traffic between the trunk connector  116  and the antenna connector  121 . The process includes  3  functions:
       3. A radio media access controller  117  which controls how packets are transmitted over the radio. It performs access control and negotiation for transmission of packets.   4. A modulator  118  which prepares packets for transmission over the air. It converts packets into a set of symbols to be transmitted over the air. It also mitigates the “over-the-air” impairments.   5. A RF amplifier which takes the modulated symbols and passes these to the antenna  123  over the antenna connector  121 .
 
An example algorithm to anticipate radio link performance is shown in  FIG. 5 . In this example, the process controller  113  is responsible for handling the detection of radio performance  140 . It starts by retrieving  141  performance statistics from elements in the radio controller  120 . The process controller  113  needs to look at data from the media access controller  117  which includes radio grant times, retransmissions, packet drops, etc. From the modulator  118 , the process controller retrieves the overall performance of the transmission of symbols across the air interface. The process controller  113  also looks at the RF layer  119  to look at the current signal to noise ratio and other radio parameters. Changes in these levels can indicate changes in modulation are required.
       
 
         [0029]    Once the process controller  113  has the current performance data, it is processed to produce the current trend data  142 . Examples of these trends can be:
       1. average rate of retransmission. When the measure reaches a particular threshold for a period of time, it can indicate drop in the RF modem rate is required to increase reliability.   2. RF noise floor level has raised itself for a period of time.       
 
       Once the trends have been calculated  143 , the process controller  113  stores this in persistent storage  114 . The process controller then retrieves the historical data  144  and compares the current trends to the historical trends  145 . 
       [0032]    Based upon this comparison, the process controller  113  decides whether the current trends will result in a change in radio performance  146 . If the radio will be impaired, the process controller  113  adjusts the scheduler  132  in traffic Management  112  to reduce/increase the amount of traffic  150  supplied to radio controller  120 . 
         [0033]    If the current trends have not resulted in a change radio performance, the service provider still may want to change the amount of traffic traversing the link. To implement this, the process controller  113  retrieves the radio impairment policy  147  from persistent Storage  114 . The Process Controller compares the current trends against the policy  148 . If this is not considered a change radio performance  149 , the process ends  151 . If this is considered a change radio performance  149 , the process controller  113  adjusts the scheduler  132  in Traffic management  112  to reduce/increase  150  the amount of traffic supplied to radio controller  120 . 
         [0034]    The effect of a reduction in the scheduler transmission may cause the queues  130  or  131  to grow. This can result in the execution of different local mechanisms such as priority discards, random early discards. It can also tie to end-to-end mechanisms such as flow control to reduce the rate of transmission at the source of the traffic. The degradation can also reach a level where process controller  113  triggers a protection switching on some of the traffic going on the degraded link. 
         [0035]    The effect of an increase in the scheduler transmission may cause the queues  130  or  131  to empty thus underutilizing the link. This phenomena can tie to an end-to-end mechanisms such as flow control to increase the rate of transmission at the source of the traffic. 
         [0036]    Those skilled in the art will recognize that various modifications and changes could be made to the invention without departing from the spirit and scope thereof. It should therefore be understood that the claims are not to be considered as being limited to the precise embodiments set forth above, in the absence of specific limitations directed to each embodiment.