Analogue Radio Over Fiber for Next-Generation RAN: Challenges and Opportunities

TL;DR

This paper critically evaluates analogue radio over fiber (A-RoF) for next-generation radio access networks, highlighting its potential to overcome bandwidth and power limitations of traditional digitized systems in advanced 5G and beyond networks.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview and performance comparison of A-RoF and D-RoF, emphasizing the advantages of A-RoF for future high-capacity RANs.

Findings

A-RoF offers significant bandwidth benefits over D-RoF.

A-RoF can reduce power consumption in RAN backhaul.

Potential for cost-effective deployment in 5G and beyond.

Abstract

The radio access network (RAN) connects the users to the core networks, where typically digitised radio over fiber (D-RoF) links are employed. The data rate of the RAN is limited by the hardware constraints of the D-RoF-based backhaul and fronthaul. In order to break this bottleneck, the potential of the analogue radio over fiber (A-RoF) based RAN techniques are critically appraised for employment in the next-generation systems, where increased-rate massive multiple-input-multiple-output (massive-MIMO) and millimeter wave (mmWave) techniques will be implemented. We demonstrate that huge bandwidth and power-consumption cost benefits may accrue upon using A-RoF for next-generation RANs. We provide an overview of the recent A-RoF research and a performance comparison of A-RoF and D-RoF, concluding with further insights on the future potential of A-RoF.