The Effect of System Architecture on Net Spectral Efficiency for Fixed Services

This white paper analyses the spectral efficiencies of point-to-point (PTP) and point-to-multipoint (PMP) fixed service architectures for mobile broadband backhaul.

The properties of mobile broadband backhaul traffic are examined with reference to a network case study.

The analysis shows that a PMP topology increases spectral utilisation significantly, resulting in a modal increase in net spectral efficiency of 50%.

Considering the projected growth in mobile data consumption, we argue that the gains possible with a point-to-multipoint architecture are increasing with trends in RAN design towards high peak rates and small serving cells.