Scenarios and Economic Analysis of Fronthaul in 5G Optical Networks

This paper presents a technoeconomical comparison between different emerging architectural approaches for 5G networks: C-RAN, centralized, where a BBU hotel collects several fronthauling streams, able to meet challenging requirements imposed by emerging 5G technology and DA-RAN, considered as an evolution of C-RAN, where resources are disaggregated in order to satisfy the requirements of different applications. Main results, obtained by an analytical evaluation of the cost of a metropolitan area network, show that disaggregating the hardware and software radio access network brings architectural and functional advantages, able to better meet the bandwidth and latency requirements imposed by the 5G verticals. Once analyzed the validness of the solution, we provide a cost analysis that firstly demonstrates that DA-RAN also brings economic advantages w.r.t. C-RAN. Furthermore, observing that the predominant share of the cost of the solution is given by the fiber of the local loop, we evaluate the introduction of TWDM PON in this area in order to share the fiber and reduce the cost of the network.