TWEETHER Future Generation W-band backhaul and access network infrastructure and technology

Point to multipoint (PmP) distribution at millimeter wave is a frontier so far not yet crossed due to the formidable technological challenge that the high atmospheric attenuation poses. The transmission power at level of tens of Watts required at millimeter wave for a reference range of 1 km is not available by any commercial or laboratory solid state devices. However, the availability of PmP with multigigabit data rate is pivotal for the new high density small cell networks for 4G and 5G and to solve the digital divide in areas where fiber is not convenient or possible to be deployed. In this paper, the advancements of the novel approach proposed by the EU Horizon 2020 TWEETHER project to create the first and fastest outdoor W-band (92 – 95 GHz) PmP wireless network are described. For the first time a new generation W-band traveling wave tube high power amplifier is introduced in the transmission hub to provide the enabling power for a wide area distribution

TWEETHER Future Generation W-band backhaul and access network infrastructure and technology

Point to multipoint (PmP) distribution at millimeter wave is a frontier so far not yet crossed due to the formidable technological challenge that the high atmospheric attenuation poses. The transmission power at level of tens of Watts required at millimeter wave for a reference range of 1 km is not available by any commercial or laboratory solid state devices. However, the availability of PmP with multigigabit data rate is pivotal for the new high density small cell networks for 4G and 5G and to solve the digital divide in areas where fiber is not convenient or possible to be deployed. In this paper, the advancements of the novel approach proposed by the EU Horizon 2020 TWEETHER project to create the first and fastest outdoor W-band (92 – 95 GHz) PmP wireless network are described. For the first time a new generation W-band traveling wave tube high power amplifier is introduced in the transmission hub to provide the enabling power for a wide area distribution

Millimeter wave wireless system based on point to multipoint transmissions

The continuously growing traffic demand has motivated the exploration of underutilized millimeter wave frequency spectrum for future mobile broadband communication networks. Research activities focus mainly on the use of the V-band (59 - 64 GHz) and E-band (71 - 76 & 81 - 84 GHz) to offer multi-gigabit point to point transmissions. This paper describes an innovative W-band (92-95 GHz) point to multipoint wireless network for high capacity access and backhaul applications. Point to multipoint wireless networks suffer from limited RF power available. The proposed network is based on a high power, wide band traveling wave tube of new generation and an affordable high performance transceiver. These new devices enable a new transmission paradigm and overcome the relevant technological challenges imposed by the high atmosphere attenuation and the presently lack of power amplification required to provide adequate coverage at millimeter waves

TWEETHER project for W-band wireless networks

The European Horizon 2020 project TWEETHER aims to make a breakthrough in wireless networks to overcome the congestion of the actual mobile networks and foster the new 5G networks. A European Consortium including four universities and five companies from four European countries is devoting a relevant effort to realize novel terminals and transmission hubs to operate in the W-band (93 – 95 GHz). This paper will describe the advancement of the project

Point to Multipoint at Millimetre Waves Above 90 GHz

The Point to multipoint wireless distribution is the most effective and affordable modality to deliver data to a high number of terminals distributed randomly in a wide area. The use of high density small cells, mandatory to increase the throughput per users, maintaining terminals at sub-6 GHz frequency, needs capillary backhaul networks that fibers cannot effectively provide. The TWEETHER project for point to multipoint at W-band is opening the route to a new generation of millimeter wave wireless networks for an affordable and easy to deploy backhaul and access with high capacity. The perspectives offered by the full millimeter wave spectrum provide a solution to the increasing data rate request

Millimeter Wave Point to Multipoint for Affordable High Capacity Backhaul of Dense Cell Networks

The economic impact of millimeter wave wireless networks is a key parameter for the future deployment of novel high capacity network architectures. The future deployment of high density small cells needs a flexible and affordable backhaul. The techno-economic analysis of two different wireless backhaul architectures at millimeter waves, in Point to Multipoint and Point to Point, will be discussed. The EU Commission H2020 TWEETHER “Travelling wave tube based W-band wireless networks with high data rate distribution, spectrum & energy efficiency” project aims to realize the first Point to Multipoint backhaul system at W-band (92-95 GHz) to providing a cost- effective solution for new generation networks. This paper will discuss and demonstrate the advantages of millimeter wave Point to Multipoint in term of Total Cost of Ownership and flexibility of deployment

Transmisson Hub and Terminals for Point to Multipoint W-band TWEETHER System

The European Commission Horizon 2020 TWEETHER project will conclude the activity on September 2018 with the release of one transmission hub and three network terminal equipment for enabling the first W -band, 92–95 GHz, point to multipoint system, for high capacity backhaul and fixed access. The ambition of the project is to develop the European technology for a breakthrough in millimeter wave wireless networks, by introducing the use of traveling wave tubes to achieve the required transmission power for covering, by low-gain antennas, wide area sectors with radius longer than 1 km. The lack of transmission power has so far prevented the use of point to multipoint distribution at millimeter waves. At W -band, the 3 GHz bandwidth provides more than 10 Gbps capacity, and 4 Cbps/km 2 area capacity for small cells backhaul, with flexible allocation of the base stations and low total cost of operation. The TWEETHER system is also designed to provide high throughput fixed access. This paper will describe the latest results and the technological advancements the project generated, bringing Europe at the state of the art for point to multipoint millimeter wave wireless networks

Toward 100 Gbps wireless networks enabled by millimeter wave traveling wave tubes

New generation networks for 5G need a breakthrough to support the unstoppable increase of internet traffic. Millimeter waves offer multi-GHz bandwidth for multigigabit per second data rate. For the full exploitation of the millimeter wave spectrum, due to the high atmosphere attenuation, high transmission power is needed, not available by solid state devices. Traveling wave tubes are the only enabling devices to create ultracapacity layers to distribute data with data rate at fiber level over wide areas. This paper presents the aims of a new European Commission Horizon 2020 project, ULTRAWAVE, to create for the first time a data layer with area capacity toward 100 Gbps/km2, combining D-band and G-band internet distribution enabled by millimeter wave traveling wave tubes

Low Cost Fabrication for W-band Slow Wave Structures for Wireless Communications Travelling Wave Tubes

The fabrication of slow wave structures for millimeter wave Traveling Wave Tubes (TWT) poses significant difficulties and requires high accuracy processes. The EU H2020 TWEETHER project proposes a Point to Multipoint (PmP) distribution wireless W-band (92 -95 GHz) system for backhaul for small cells in the future 5G scenario and fixed access, based on a folded waveguide W-band TWT. The cost of TWTs and feasible high volume production are key parameters for millimeter wave network front ends. This paper explores possible new approaches for reducing the fabrication cost of millimeter wave slow wave structures for TWTs based on the SU-8 casting and low cost CNC milling process

Modeling and Analysis of Point-to-Multipoint Millimeter-Wave Backhaul Networks

A tractable stochastic geometry model is proposed to characterize the performance of the novel point-to-multipoint (P2MP) assisted backhaul networks with millimeter wave (mmWave) capability. The novel performance analysis is studied based on the general backhaul network (GBN) and the simplified backhaul network (SBN) models. To analyze the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) coverage probability of the backhaul networks, a range of the exact- and closed-form expressions are derived for both the GBN and SBN models. With the aid of the tractable model, the optimal power control algorithm is proposed for maximizing the trade-off between energy-efficiency (EE) and area spectral-efficiency (ASE) for the mmWave backhaul networks. The analytical results of the SINR coverage probability are validated, and they can match those obtained from Monte-Carlo experiments. Our numerical results for ASE performance demonstrate the significant effectiveness of our P2MP architecture over the traditional point-to-point (P2P) setup. Moreover, our P2MP mmWave backhaul networks are able to achieve dramatically higher rate performance than that obtained by the ultra high frequency (UHF) networks. Furthermore, to achieve the optimal EE and ASE trade-off, the mmWave backhaul networks should be designed to limit the link distances and line-of-sight (LOS) interferences while optimizing the transmission power