Microwave QAM Capacity Set To Double This Year

Sometime during the second half of this year, NEC Corp. will implement 2048 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (2048 QAM) within its iPASOLINK product family.

Claiming to be the first microwave radio system provider to introduce 2048 QAM, NEC says it can deliver as much as a 40-percent-per-channel capacity increase to its customers, relative to the systems commonly in operation today that use as much as 256 QAM.

“Furthermore, NEC’s design also supports a full sequence of Adaptive Modulation in all steps from 2048 QAM down to QPSK (Quadrature Phase-Shift Keying),” it says. “This feature allows scalable addition of capacity without compromising the reach and availability of transmission links deployed in the network.”

High modulation is the key component in enabling high capacity and to eventually delivering 10 Gbps microwave transmission in combination with such multiplexing techniques as XPIC (Cross Polarization Interference Cancellation), RTA (Radio Traffic Aggregation) and MIMO (Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output), NEC adds, explaining,

“Microwave capacities are not only comparative to those of optical access technologies, they can also be deployed on-demand, a critical attribute for the economical deployment of backhaul for LTE, digital broadcast, TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) and other types of communication networks.”

In related backhaul news, Ceragon Networks Ltd. added 1024 QAM modulation to its Evolution IP Long-Haul, making it “the first in the industry to offer this long-haul innovation,” the company says, adding “1024 QAM is now the most advanced modulation technology for microwave communications and boosts capacity by as much as 25 percent over the widely implemented 256 QAM.”