For information on testing E1 links The E1 interface operates at 2 Mbps over coax cables, compliant with ATM Forum

UNI specifications. It supports both PLCP and direct cell mapping and complies with the following standards: G.704, G.706, G.732. The interface has BNC connectors. The E1 transmission link consists of 32 transmission channels (0-31), each of which is 64 Kbits/sec. The overall transmission rate is 2.048 Mbits/sec. Channels 0 and 16 are reserved for transmission management, while all other channels are used for payload. The payload bandwidth is thus 1.920 Mbits/sec. Since ATM uses 48 out of the possible 53 bytes for payload transmission, the net transmission rate becomes 1.738 Mbits/sec. Channel 0 carries F3-OAM information, signals loss of frame or synchronization, and is responsible for transferring FERF and LOC messages. Channel 16 is reserved for signalling.

Direct Mapping
The direct mapping of ATM cells onto E1 transmission frames is specified in CCITT recommendation G.804. This specifies that ATM cells are to be carried in bits 9-28 and 137-256 (corresponding to channels 1-15 and 17-31). The following is an illustration of the E1 frame format when direct mapping of ATM cells is used. The 53 byte ATM cell begins with a header and wraps around consecutive E1 frames. Channel 0 Channel 16 for signalling 256 bits/125 sec <--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> Header Header Header Channels 1-15 <-----------------------------------> Channels 17-31 <----------------------------------->

E1 frame structure - direct mapping

PLCP Cell Mapping

The PLCP format for E1 is described in ETSI document ETS 300 213, where an E1 PLCP frame is specified as consisting of ten rows of 57 bytes each. Four bytes are added to the cell length of 53 bytes to provide the various overhead functions. The E1 frame structure with PLCP cell mapping is illustrated in the following diagram: 1 1 1 <--> <--> <--> A1 A1 A1 A1 A1 A1 A1 A1 A1 A1 A2 A2 A2 A2 A2 A2 A2 A2 A2 A2 P9 P8 P7 P6 P5 P4 P3 P2 P1 P0 1 <--> Z4 Z3 Z2 Z1 F1 B1 G1 M2 M1 C1 53 bytes <---------------------------------------------------------> First ATM Cell ATM Cell ATM Cell ATM Cell ATM Cell ATM Cell ATM Cell ATM Cell ATM Cell Last ATM Cell

E1 frame structure -PLCP cell mapping

E0 64 kbit/s E1 2.048 Mbit/s E2 8.448 Mbit/s E3 34.368 Mbit/s E4 139.264 Mbit/s E5 564.992 Mbit/s

An E1 link operates over two separate sets of wires, usually twisted pair cable. A nominal 3 volt peak signal is encoded with pulses using a method that avoids long periods without polarity changes. The line data rate is 2.048 Mbit/s (full duplex, i.e. 2.048 Mbit/s downstream and 2.048 Mbit/s upstream) which is split into 32 timeslots, each being allocated 8 bits in turn. Thus each timeslot sends and receives an 8-bit PCM sample, usually encoded according to A-law algorithm, 8000 times per second (8 x 8000 x 32 = 2,048,000). This is ideal for voice telephone calls where the voice is sampled into an 8 bit number at that data rate and reconstructed at the other end. The timeslots are numbered from 0 to 31.

SONET/SDH Designations and bandwidths SONET Optical Carrier Level OC-1 OC-3 OC-12 OC-24 OC-48 OC-192 OC-768 SONET Frame Format STS-1 STS-3 STS-12 STS-24 STS-48 STS-192 STS-768 SDH level and Frame Format STM-0 STM-1 STM-4 STM-16 STM-64 STM-256 Payload bandwidth[nb 3] (kbit/s) 50,112 150,336 601,344 1,202,688 2,405,376 9,621,504 38,486,016 Line Rate (kbit/s) 51,840 155,520 622,080 1,244,160 2,488,320 9,953,280 39,813,120