Latency-driven transport for 5G

A transport network is a key component for enabling future fifth-generation (5G) network deployments. The transport network will be under demand to support current and future radio access technologies (RATs), along with the various schemes for splitting radio functions, that should be supported with statistical multiplexing strategies compatible with the tight requirements of latency and bandwidth expected in 5G. In this paper, a different perspective is considered with respect to the conventional method proposed in the literature, where transport design is largely based on some radio design parameters that are vendor specific. This paper, applied to a network architecture named eXHaul, proposes a novel strategy for consistent bandwidth savings in the transport segment considering both the limitations of the optical transmission technology and the radio design requirements in a set of scenarios that vary in terms of distance between the antenna site and the baseband site, rate of the transport channels, end-to-end latency imposed by radio needs, and radio time transmission interval. The deployment in a real scenario, provided by Telefonica and referring to the urban area of Tijuana (Mexico), has also been evaluated to provide an indication in a real case.