Service and network management strategies for ATM in wireless networks

Backhaul facilities collectively represent a major expense item for a wirel ess service provider. Today, backhaul facilities based on time division mul tiplexing (TDM) are the most common way to connect base stations and mobile switching centers (MSCs) to transport bearer traffic, signaling, and maint enance data. Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology makes it possible for wireless networks to integrate voice and data transmission, to offer fa st, simplified multiservice provisioning, and to consolidate facilities eff iciently. However, because of its logical and physical characteristics, ATM can make network management significantly more complex. Therefore, a servi ce provider may want to consider outsourcing ATM service to a separate wide area network (WAN) business unit or to an outside carrier. This paper desc ribes a non-disruptive approach to managing ATM services for wireless equip ment, using a wireless element management system (EMS) as the control point in a market domain. ATM services are represented in the EMS as virtual clo uds within each market domain.