Key Microwave-Photonics Technologies for Next-Generation Cloud-Based Radio Access Networks

Multimode fibers in millimeter-wave evolution for 5G cellular networks

“…Those cloud-RoF systems are capable of delivering different generations of wireless techniques carried on different radio frequencies in a shared infrastructure. The band-mapped mm-wave RoF scheme [4] fully utilizes the wide 7-GHz bandwidth centered at 60 GHz, and divides it into several subbands to deliver band-mapped existing services and high-speed data services in On the other hand, different operators can coexist and share a broadband fiber access infrastructure. Fiber-optic networks can be used as high capacity fronthaul/backhaul networks for high-speed multimedia access services and, at the same time, high speed wireless access based on small cells and mm-wave radio.…”

“…Wireless backhaul and access are proposed in those small cell networks and measurements of system bandwidth in excess of 500 MHz at 28 GHz are reported [3]. Fiber-optic networks can also be used as mobile backhaul/fronthaul networks for conventional macro-cells and emerging small-cell cloud-RAN systems to meet the capacity demand of those future wireless access networks [4]. One challenge of cloud-RAN deployment is the cost and availability of fiber-optic backhaul/fronthaul networks that connect many remote antenna units (RAUs) with the digital baseband processing units (BBU) pools, mainly in the small-cell environment.…”

Reconfigurable Radio Access Networks Using Multicore Fibers

“…This figure can grow up to almost 50 Gb/s/sector if the capacity is increased by means of exploiting, for instance, 8x8 MIMO. To solve this limitation some contributions have suggested the direct use of analog Radio over Fiber (RoF) between the BBU and the RRHs [5], [6]. The second challenge is related to fiber availability.…”

Review of physical layer networking for optical-wireless integration

“…Much research has been targeted toward wireless distribution over passive optical networks (PONs) and various wireless standards including 3G, 3,4 LTE-A, 5 WiFi, [6][7][8] WiMAX, [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] and UWB [16][17][18][19] have been demonstrated overlaying on PON infrastructure. In addition to these wireless standards, a significant amount of work has also been targeted toward millimeter-wave (mm-wave) wireless signals' distribution.…”

“…In addition to these wireless standards, a significant amount of work has also been targeted toward millimeter-wave (mm-wave) wireless signals' distribution. 7,17,[20][21][22][23] Although the integration of optical and wireless technologies is able to simplify the backhaul infrastructure for the wireless networks, the implementation of this hybrid infrastructure is not straightforward. There are a number of issues regarding wireless signal transport, network layout, integration with existing infrastructure, and energy efficiency that have to be addressed.…”