Abstract

The increasing demand for wireless services is calling attention to perceived weaknesses in the tower backhaul. Wireless service providers place the blame for 60% - 80% of service outages on problems with the backhaul. Optical fiber offers an immediate solution to performance and operational issues. Advances in optical fiber cable and equipment have reduced the cost of deploying optical fiber links while still providing backwards compatibility with existing fiber infrastructure and forward compatibility with 3G wireless systems.

© 2006 Optical Society of America