An economic approach to assess the need for AAL2 multiplexing and switching in the UTRAN

With the advance in wireless technology, the amount of wireless traffic has increased significantly over the past few years. Currently most of the traffic is voice with only small amounts of data traffic. However, the demand for data traffic is expected to increase many-fold in the next few years due to the increasing use of the wireless network for activities such as Web accessing, Email, file transfer and MMS (multimedia message service). The challenge for the network operators, therefore, is how to provide the best bandwidth management for the wireless network to accommodate both voice and data traffic. Currently, AAL2 multiplexing at NodeB and switching at the concentrator could both be employed in a UTRAN (UMTS terrestrial radio access network) network to provide bandwidth gains to accommodate more users. This paper shows that the additional benefits from AAL2 switching in a UTRAN ring or meshed network will no longer justify the cost of the additional AAL2 switching equipment. The need for AAL2 switching at the concentrator can be eliminated by advancing the bandwidth increase of the concentrator to RNC link. This eliminates the initial investment of the AAL2 switching equipment and therefore provides a significant saving to the service provider. The results of this study will help to drive the architecture design, or the upgrade of the wireless facilities and to determine the best operating conditions for the networks.