Abstract

Centralized processing is expected to bring about substantial benefits for wireless networks both on the technical side and on the economic side. While this concept is considered an important part of future radio access network architectures, it is more and more recognized that the current approach to fronthauling by employing the Common Public Radio Interface protocol will be inefficient for large-scale network deployments in many respects, and particularly for the new radio network generation 5G. In this paper, an overview is given of currently available optical fronthaul technologies, and of recently started activities toward more efficient and scalable solutions, and finally an outlook is given into which 5G specific service characteristics may further impact future backhaul, midhaul, and fronthaul networks.

© 2015 Optical Society of America

Mobile Fronthaul Architecture and Technologies: A RAN Equipment Assessment [Invited]

P. Chanclou, L. Anet Neto, K. Grzybowski, Z. Tayq, F. Saliou, and N. Genay
J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 10(1) A1-A7 (2018)

Advanced optical access technologies for next-generation (5G) mobile networks [Invited]

Jim (Shihuan) Zou, Silviu Adrian Sasu, Mirko Lawin, Annika Dochhan, Jörg-Peter Elbers, and Michael Eiselt
J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 12(10) D86-D98 (2020)

Reconfigurable Optical Mobile Fronthaul Networks for Coordinated Multipoint Transmission and Reception in 5G

Jiawei Zhang, Yuefeng Ji, Songhao Jia, Hui Li, Xiaosong Yu, and Xinbo Wang
J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 9(6) 489-497 (2017)

Fixed and Mobile Convergence: Which Role for Optical Networks?

Stéphane Gosselin, Anna Pizzinat, Xavier Grall, Dirk Breuer, Eckard Bogenfeld, Sandro Krauß, Jose Alfonso Torrijos Gijón, Ali Hamidian, Neiva Fonseca, and Björn Skubic
J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 7(11) 1075-1083 (2015)

Towards 6G: fast and self-adaptive dynamic bandwidth allocation for next-generation mobile fronthaul [Invited]

Elaine Wong and Lihua Ruan
J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 15(8) C203-C211 (2023)