Method and apparatus for improving quality of service over meshed bachaul facilities in a wireless network
View Patent ↗Redundant wireless links in a meshed backhaul network may be used to improve quality of service on the backhaul network by confining knowledge of the duality to the attached network elements. Globally, an aggregate bandwidth of the redundant wireless links may be advertised to allow network level routing to treat the redundant links as a single logical link. At the link level, however, the network elements may differentiate between different types of traffic to provide preferential service to particular types of traffic. By using different physical links within the logical link for particular types of traffic, the quality of service for that type of traffic may be improved by not causing different types of traffic to compete for the same bandwidth. The redundant links may be interfaced using a tower network including a radio accessed router optionally powered using solar power, to isolate the tower network from ground equipment.
1. A communication network, comprising:
a wireless network formed from a plurality of base transceiver stations configured to operate according to a wireless network technology; and
a meshed backhaul network configured to carry backhaul traffic for said cellular network from the base transceiver stations to an aggregation point, said meshed backhaul network comprising links between the base transceiver stations and between the base transceiver stations and the aggregation point;
wherein at least one of the links is a dual redundant wireless link interconnecting two network elements, said two network elements comprising two of the base transceiver stations or a base transceiver station and an aggregation point;
wherein the dual redundant wireless link includes at least two individual wireless links, and wherein knowledge of the at least two wireless links is limited to the two network elements interconnected by the at least two wireless links; and
wherein the network elements are configured to advertise an aggregate bandwidth available on the at least two wireless links as a single available bandwidth to the base transceiver stations on the network.
2. The communication network of claim 1 , wherein the communication network is configured to handle at least two types of network traffic, and wherein the network elements are configured to use a first of the at least two wireless links to transport a first of the types of network traffic and are configured to use another of the wireless links to transport at least a second of the types of network traffic.
3. The communication network of claim 1 , wherein the meshed backhaul network comprises a plurality of dual or multiple redundant wireless links interconnecting sets of base transceiver stations.
4. The communication network of claim 1 , wherein the aggregation point is a central office, and wherein the meshed backhaul network comprises a plurality of dual or multiple redundant wireless links interconnecting base transceiver stations with the central office.
5. The communication network of claim 4 , further comprising a wireless backhaul aggregation point configured to interface with at least one of the base transceiver stations and forming part of the backhaul network, but which is not configured to interface with subscribers of the cellular network.
6. The communication network of claim 1 , wherein the wireless network includes a wireless subscriber cellular network and a wireless subscriber data network separate from the wireless subscriber cellular network and formed from a plurality of wireless subscriber network transceivers configured to operate according to a wireless networking technology other than a cellular wireless networking technology; and wherein the backhaul network is further configured to carry traffic from the plurality of wireless subscriber network transceivers.