D-RoF and A-RoF Interfaces in an All-Optical Fronthaul of 5G Mobile Systems

Abstract

This paper presents a solution for enabling the coexistence of digitized radio-over-fiber (D-RoF) and analog radio-over-fiber (A-RoF) interfaces operating in the optical fronthaul of 5G mobile systems. In the first section, we formulate the need to introduce new technologies to the cloud/centralized radio access network (C-RAN) (Next Generation RAN (NG-RAN) in 5G systems). A proposition of construction of the optical remote radio head (O-RRH)/gNodeB—distributed unit (gNB-DU), which will enable the operation of digital Splits/Options and new proposed analog Splits/Options, is presented. The methods performing calculations of bit rate and optical bandwidth demand in the fronthaul/midhaul, with reference to the parameters of the new-radio-release-15 (NR-Rel-15) wireless interface and subsequent releases, towards the next generations, are presented. The bandwidth demands were calculated for selected Splits/Options, and the results are shown in diagrams. A special section is devoted to description of the results achieved and presenting potential applications of the proposed construction of a radio-photonic device as well as new Splits/Options of the next generation fronthaul/midhaul.

Keywords

• fronthaul
• midhaul
• radio-over-fiber
• optical gnb-du
• rrh
• a-rof
• d-rof
• ecpri
• bbu
• all-optical network