A Performance Analysis of 5G Fronthaul Networks for Long-Distance Communications

Cloud-radio access networks (C-RANs) are the evolving mobile communication architectures to support high data rates and low latencies in 5G networks. Fronthaul link is an obstacle in C-RANs implementation, due to its high cost and stringent requirements. The optical links are the most appropriate option to realize the fronthaul networks, but it increases the cost, and stringent performance requirements limit the link length to a few kilometers. To tackle these issues, extensive efforts have been devoted to designing the proficient fronthaul networks by applying the compression algorithms, software-defined techniques, and CPRI over Ethernet based solutions. In this paper, we evaluated the performance of passive optical networks (PON) based links for long-distance communications in fronthaul systems. We also determine the optimized location for adding the amplifiers in long-distance fronthaul links to connect the source and destination nodes without violating the performance requirements which results in the cost reduction. The simulation results showed the improvement in the long-distance PON-based fronthaul networks with the placement of the amplifier at an optimized location.