Microwave Management
Issues Facing Carriers Today
One scenario occurs in diagnosing problems that come up in microwave transport. Both wireline and wireless carriers will deploy microwave in areas where fiber access is difficult or expensive,in areas that are underserved by transport carriers,or in areas where the cost of installing microwave is less than the cost of deploying transport carrier services. Most microwave radios offer excellent diagnostic capabilities. The trick is providing a technician with access to this diagnostic capability. When trouble occurs,the technician must drive to the nearest site where access to the microwave network is available,plug into the microwave radio,and run diagnostics. Further,the source of the problem is not always apparent. Is the problem associated with the transmission at site A or the signal reception at site B? It may take more than one trip to find out.
In some cases,the problem may originate in one of the microwave site's ancillary pieces of equipment,such as a multiplexer. If so,the source of the problem may not be visible from the microwave's internal diagnostics. The technician would have to plug his laptop into the multiplexer to check out any problems that may originate within the MUX.
The Solution to the Problem
TelStrat's Platform for Unified Management Access (PUMA) offers a solution to these problems. Installing PUMA SC-8100 into a microwave network will enable cell techs to diagnose the exact cause and location of the problem without having to travel to the affected site. And when a trip to repair the problem is necessary,the cell tech will be dispatched to the correct site with foreknowledge of how to repair the problem. Again,this significantly reduces the time it takes to diagnose and repair an outage.
The PUMA platform allows up to 512 simultaneous users to perform Operations,Administration,Maintenance,and Provisioning (OAM&P) of remote network elements all by accessing a single IP address.
The TelStrat PUMA system consists of two elements:
- One or more Central Controllers (CC-9000)
- A Site Controller (SC-8100) at each cell site.
The CC-9000 serves as PUMA's central command center,communicating directly with each SC-8100 Site Controller,and focusing the power of remote SC-8100 units into a single,unified point of network status information and network ele¬ment management. Multiple CC-9000's can be located in regional centers or management offices,as well as at NOC centers.
The SC-8100's are located at each cell site. The SC-8100 provides physical connections to all remote network elements,whether by serial or IP (Ethernet) connections,normally open or normally closed alarm monitoring inputs,form C relay outputs,or analog inputs (0-10V or 4-20 ma). (See Network Diagram below.) Each SC-8100 can support up to 128 individual network elements,and each CC-9000 can support up to 4,096 SC-8100's,and up to 500 simultaneous users.
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