Optical Fronthaul Options for Meeting 5G Requirements

Abstract

New functional splits for the 5G Radio Access Network have been identified so that fronthaul will no longer need to transport sampled time-domain waveforms. However, the different functional split points place differing demands on the fronthaul transport, while also posing different constraints to 5G techniques, such as massive MIMO. According to these conflicting demands, it is likely that in many cases, more than one split point may be needed in the same radio access network.