Optical Access Technologies for Next-Gen Mobile Applications

As 5G rollout accelerates globally, the mobile network operators are facing more heavy lifting over the fixed transport infrastructure, carrying not only broadband but also time-critical traffic between the data center and antenna sites. With optical fiber being the predominant transport medium for 5G radio access networks, existing and emerging optical transport technologies can be leveraged to provide a cost-saving and future-proof RAN architecture. This chapter covers optical 5G transport challenges and feasible solutions, and how the optical underlay and the transport protocol can be used to consolidate future front- and backhaul traffic on an optical network infrastructure.