LG Uplus, Korea’s third-largest mobile carrier, and Huawei, a Chinese telecommunication equipment and solutions provider, said Wednesday that they have made a technical breakthrough allowing for more efficient and reliable Long Term Evolution-Advanced network transmission.

The two firms said they would use WDM/OTN technology for common public radio interface (CPRI) backhaul on LG Uplus’ LTE-A network.
This is a world first in the field of LTE-A backhaul technology, they said.

The CPRI-over-WDM/OTN solution reduces the need for transmission fibers and improves network reliability in pooled baseband processing.

LG Uplus extensively adopts pooled baseband processing for distributed base stations on its LTE-A network, to maximize bandwidth and spectrum efficiency, minimize interference caused by coverage overlaps, and reduce static.

It is estimated that a new centralized baseband processing pool in dense metropolitan areas can connect to more than 100 remote radio units.

Traditionally, the remote radio units are directly connected to the pool using fibers. This requires considerable resources and does not allow service protection configurations.

Since last year the Korean mobile carrier and the Chinese firm have been working on a series of deals on network equipment for LG’s base stations.

However, their relations have drawn criticism due largely to rumors that Huawei’s network equipment is vulnerable to security threats and that it could be used by the Chinese government for spying.

By Park Hyong-ki and Kim Young-won
(hkp@heraldcorp.com) (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)