A practical experience on radio backhaul for small cells

Small Cell deployments will only be a reality if the cost of their backhaul can be kept low enough. Backhaul traffic aggregation on wireless links is the favored approach by the telecom operators, which demand minimum radio planning and unlicensed or light-licensed frequency of operation. In such conditions Non-Line-of-Sight links which support the traffic from many Small Cells will be common. However, the authors have tested that current under-6 GHz wireless backhaul solutions performance is in some circumstances poor, in particular in the case Non-Line-of-Sight propagation or when the link is interfered by other users operating in the same band. This paper highlights the need of improving the physical and medium access control layers of the wireless backhaul interfaces, and properly tuning the interference detection and channel selection procedures, in order meet telecom industry reliability and quality of service demands.