Integrated fiber-wireless access architecture for mobile backhaul and fronthaul in 5G wireless data networks

Abstract

Recent rapid proliferation of smart mobile devices using 4G LTE-A and beyond wireless communications technologies is driving a near term, 10-fold increase in mobile data traffic that requires a build-up of wireless cell sites to support near term evolution fiber-optic based backhaul and fronthaul architecture. Optical fiber access transport needs to be scalable to support the projected 5G deployment goals by 2020: 1-10Gb/s at the user terminal; 100Gb/s for the backhaul truck; 1Tb/s for metro transport and 1Pb/s for the core transport. In order to provide multi-gigabit wireless link rate to mobile data users, one has to rely on efficient use of the available RF bandwidth and explore the wireless transmission technology at millimeter wave bands (30-300GHz) in addition to the deployment of small-cell architecture in an integrated optical and wireless access network platform. Due to the conflict between drastic growth of mobile data traffic and the limited wireless spectral resources at conventional RF bands for both cellular and WiFi networks, more aggressive spectral reuse and new spectral exploration at higher RF bands and cooperative multipoint operation among the remote radio heads (RRHs) are the three main directions for high-speed and high capacity wireless access networks. By reducing the cell size, limited spectral resources can be reused among small cells more frequently, thus enhancing the total system capacity. Due to the limited transmission range at higher RF bands, the combination of small-cell architecture and higher RF bands provides a promising solution to drastically increase the mobile data system capacity through new frequency band exploitation, frequency reuse and coordinated multi-point (CoMP) technologies.