Techno-economic analysis of backbone infrastructures for metropolitan micro/pico-cellular mobile networks

A techno-economic analysis of the installation, operation, administration, maintenance, and upgrade of backbone infrastructures for micro/pico-cellular networks is presented. Star, tree, and ring topologies are evaluated for twisted copper pair, fiber-optic, and microwave radio transmission technologies. It is shown that today, fiber-optic solutions in general are more expensive to install than twisted copper pair and microwave radio solutions. However, as shown, OAM and future bit rate upgrades change this situation depending on the specific application scenario, the prospective network lifetime, and the time of upgrade.