# On the Transport Capability of LAN Cables in All-Analog MIMO-RoC Fronthaul

## TL;DR

This paper assesses the capacity of LAN cables to transport multiple baseband signals in all-analog MIMO-RoC fronthaul systems, aiming to reuse existing copper infrastructure for 5G networks.

## Contribution

It evaluates the number of independent signals that can be transported over multi-pair LAN cables while maintaining signal quality, proposing a practical alternative to fiber optics.

## Key findings

- Multi-pair LAN cables can support multiple independent BB signals within specified degradation limits.
- MIMO-RoC is effective for last 200m fronthaul, leveraging existing LAN infrastructure.
- Reuses LAN cables for power and data, reducing deployment costs.

## Abstract

Centralized Radio Access Network (C-RAN) architecture is the only viable solution to handle the complex interference scenario generated by massive antennas and small cells deployment as required by next generation (5G) mobile networks. In conventional C-RAN, the fronthaul links used to exchange the signal between Base Band Units (BBUs) and Remote Antenna Units (RAUs) are based on digital baseband (BB) signals over optical fibers due to the huge bandwidth required. In this paper we evaluate the transport capability of copper-based all-analog fronthaul architecture called Radio over Copper (RoC) that leverages on the pre-existing LAN cables that are already deployed in buildings and enterprises. In particular, the main contribution of the paper is to evaluate the number of independent BB signals for multiple antennas system that can be transported over multi-pair Cat-5/6/7 cables under a predefined fronthauling transparency condition in terms of maximum BB signal degradation. The MIMO-RoC proves to be a complementary solution to optical fiber for the last 200m toward the RAUs, mostly to reuse the existing LAN cables and to power-supply the RAUs over the same cable.