End-to-end Delay Performance of Analog Fiber Wireless architecture for 5G NR fronthaul

The convergence of fiber and wireless systems based on millimiter-wave (mmWave) bands seems to be a promising fronthaul solution for the fifth generation (5G) centralized radio access network (C-RAN) deployments. The 5G fronthaul allows the flexible splitting of functionalities between centralized and remote units but requires high data rates. These can be achieved by combining the traits of analog radio-over-fiber (RoF) communication, the wide mmWave spectrum and the availability of different functional splits. To that end, we focus on a novel RoF fronthaul architecture and evaluate its performance in terms of end-to-end packet delay under different network setups. Our simulation results show that the experienced delay is affected by the fronthaul load but remains below 100 μs in most cases.Grant numbers : SPOT5G - Single Point of attachment communications heterogeneous mobile data networks ( TEC2017-87456-P). © 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works