DOK Ltd, ELVA’s manufacturing partner in Russia has deployed a 40 Gbps radio channel across the Yenisei River as a wireless backup option for an existing 40GE fiber channel backhaul solution. This solution has been integrated for Norilsk Nickel, a leader in the mining and metallurgical industry in Russia. This is the first time a commercial 40 Gbps wireless channel has been deployed at unprecedented distance of 11 km (~7 miles) in Igarka city, Siberia.
The cross-country 956 km fiber backhaul was laid through Russian Arctic regions to Norilsk city. The fiber has 40 Gbps bandwidth similar to installed radio link and is intended for the operation of the Norilsk Nickel Group enterprises, local mobile operators, and state and municipal services.
This installation of E-band radios (PPC-10G-E/2+0) from ELVA-1 was done by DOK Ltd engineers jointly with specialists of Edinstvo Ltd, a subsidiary of Norilsky Nickel, who is responsible for the telecommunications of the holding. This project is a significant technological achievement and it marks the world record for combining ultra-gigabit overall bandwidth of the E-band radio communications with the unprecedented distance range.
In fact, the 40 Gbps wireless channel is a new technology that has the potential for developing telecommunications infrastructure for large businesses. A particularly difficult section of Norilsk Nickel’s fiber backhaul is considered to be laying cables at the bottom of Yenisei River. Extraordinary climate conditions of the Polar Circle make it impossible to repair fiber cables under the iced waters for most of the year. This is why Edinstvo Ltd ventured out to build a backup wireless channel with a capacity of 40 Gbps over the Yenisei River.
The points of deployment of the 40 Gbps wireless channel were done at antenna masts in Igarka and Priluki cities, located on different banks of the Yenisei river at a distance of 11 km. They used two paired radio bridges from ELVA-1 - PPC-10G-E-HP / 2+0 model. These are four parallel independent 10 Gbps radio channels aggregated into total capacity of 40 Gbps. Such a scheme provides increased reliability of the wireless channel, as each 10 Gbps transceiver has an independent connection to a power supply and external network equipment. Max latency measured at 11 km distance was 72 microseconds. These numbers show that E-band radios can bring the data capacity and latency needs of 5G networks as well.
With this project, it was confirmed that 70/80 GHz E-band 10GE radio links could be successfully used for replacement or as a backup for any hi-end fiber backhaul. There are many territories in the world where the laying of fiber optic links is complicated and costs a lot of money. As an alternative to fiber or as a backup line, the 70/80 GHz PPC radios provide short deployment time at an affordable cost.
PPC-10G-E-HP / 2+0 operates in the frequency range 70/80 GHz and has two independent 10 Gigabit Ethernet channels. Two PPC-10G-E-HP / 2 + 0 radio bridges with various center frequency and cross-polarization of the signal allows to get 40 Gbps aggregate total bandwidth.
