Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the IP-based mobile wireless technology that all internet service providers are planning to deploy beginning next year. LTE will provide wireless speeds beyond 10 Mbps from a user’s handset, laptop and all sorts of other wireless devices. LTE is based on the standards developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP); hundreds of companies all across the globe have participated in developing these standards.

The LTE network is a very complex network comprised of many different types of network equipment. An LTE network has three primary components: user devices (phone, laptop, etc.), radio access nodes (base station) and infrastructure nodes (LTE core). Additionally for smooth transition from the current voice and data network, we need to provide a seamless mechanism so that both IP and non-IP based networks coexist for many years in the future.

When LTE development started a couple of years ago, vendors were looking for a hardware platform for the backbone of the LTE core network. They found AdvancedTCA, standardized by industry standards consortium PICMG. ATCA met all of their requirements for LTE, and ATCA’s success can be attributed to three main features:
 
•    High Availability (99.999 % up time)
•    Modular design and open hardware architecture (mix-and-match reducing cost)
•    Interoperability between components from different vendors (promoted by CP-TA)
   
The lifecycle of ATCA-based equipment ranges from 8-10 years, thereby reducing maintenance expenses. The ATCA platform is highly energy efficient, completely meets heat dissipation requirements, and helps operators deploy a green, energy efficient network. Overall, the flexible architecture of ATCA promises horizontal expansion: in a redundantly designed system, cards and blades may be added, removed, and relocated with virtually no loss of service. Carriers will be able to retain the value of their initial investment well into the future with this architecture in place.

RadiSys, one of the leading ATCA vendors, says, “RadiSys’ LTE solutions bring together best-of-breed building blocks in one pre-packaged integrated platform to deliver high performance LTE EPC node elements such as Serving Gateway, Packet Gateway and Mobility Management Entity. RadiSys’ LTE solutions integrate market-proven RadiSys’ ATCA Promentum platforms, with a comprehensive LTE stack framework from Aricent, and efficient Datapath software (6WINDGate™) from 6WIND, thereby lowering development risk for TEMs and reducing time-to-market by as much as 18 months.” RadiSys has successfully integrated software and hardware from many vendors in creating their LTE-ready ATCA platforms.

As part of the eco-system and as a global leader in embedded computing technology, Kontron is providing ATCA and microTCA building blocks and pre-integrated systems to the telecom and military market.
Together with leading partners in the eco-system such as Cavium and Intel, Kontron provides pre-integrated LTE eNodeB hardware platforms based on microTCA and also 40G-enabled pre-integrated ATCA platforms from a low scale 2U platform for MME nodes to a full-scaled 13U LTE ready platform.
“ATCA is currently the only standards-based hardware architecture that is capable of scaling between a 1G, 10G and 40G solution.” says Sven Freudenfeld, Director of Business Development Telecom at Kontron.  “No other standards-based hardware is capable of managing 40GbE backplane connectivity combined with the cooling capabilities and power budget to leverage on Network processors dedicated for LTE applications.”

Continuous Computing is another leading ATCA vendor and prominent Trillium LTE protocol software developer. “As a standards-based telecom infrastructure solution for accelerating network equipment providers’ time to market, Continuous Computing’s FlexTCA 40G Wireless platforms offer all the advantages of AdvancedTCA hardware and Service Availability Forum middleware in one complete, pre-integrated package. FlexTCA leverages a robust, fault-tolerant architecture built from the ground up for carrier-grade 99.999% availability” says Brian Wood, VP of marketing at Continuous Computing. “This ‘freedom of choice’ is precisely why our customers choose ATCA for Long Term Evolution (LTE) and other network infrastructure – the ability to avoid vendor lock-in while simultaneously enjoying the cost, innovation and supply chain advantages of multiple competitive vendors.”

As for Network Equipment Providers, Nokia Siemens Networks is launching two new products – the Flexi Network Server (MME) and the Flexi Network Gateway (System Architecture Evolution Gateway (SAE)) that will make up the key elements of its Evolved Packet Core (EPC) network solution for LTE using the same ATCA-based platform.

Similarly, Alcatel Lucent’s 7750 edge router is used for its EPC products like Serving Gateway and PDN Gateway, while an ATCA platform is used for the Mobility Management Entity (MME). Lastly, Huawei is planning to introduce an NE-series router platform for Serving Gateway and PDN Gateway and an ATCA platform for an MME element, and Cisco (Starent Networks) uses an ATCA-based LTE solution too.

Poulomi Roy is the Business Development Manager for Polaris Networks’ xTCA Test products. She can be reached at poulomi_roy@polarisnetworks.net