Wireless mesh backhauling for LTE/LTE-A networks

It has been recognized that effective communications and the ability to share various media are keys to a successful operation in public safety and military applications. LTE (Long Term Evolution) is becoming the most widely deployed broadband communication technology making it the technology of choice for public safety to replace TETRA and similar networks. However, LTE is a cellular network by design in that it has planned and fixed antenna locations, and is connected to a common packet core network. Even though the LTE self-organized operation makes the planning, configuration, management, optimization and healing of the network simpler and faster, LTE networks are not well-suited for the moving cell, particularly to establish the backhaul link among the base stations. In this paper we present a novel concept of enhanced evolved Node B (e2NB) to enable meshing of the neighboring e2NBs and maintain the LTE-compliant communication service with the legacy terminals reusing the LTE air interface while moving. We evaluate the performance of the e2NB in terms of backhaul link performance and end-to-end communication using the OpenAirInterface (OAI) LTE implementation. Emulation results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach to build a self-organized mesh network over LTE/LTE-A. They also show that LTE quality-of-service requirements can be maintained in multi-hop networks subject to resource allocation across multiple e2NBs.