Joint Fiber and Free Space Optical Infrastructure Planning for Hybrid Integrated Access and Backhaul Networks

TL;DR

This paper explores hybrid fiber and free-space optical infrastructure planning for 5G/6G integrated access and backhaul networks, demonstrating cost-effective strategies that enhance coverage, energy efficiency, and overall network performance.

Contribution

It introduces a network planning framework that optimizes hybrid fiber/FSO deployments, addressing cost constraints and improving coverage and efficiency in IAB networks.

Findings

Hybrid fiber/FSO deployment reduces costs significantly.

Proper planning improves coverage and energy efficiency.

Trade-offs between fiber and FSO links optimize performance.

Abstract

Integrated access and backhaul (IAB) is one of the promising techniques for 5G networks and beyond (6G), in which the same node/hardware is used to provide both backhaul and cellular services in a multi-hop architecture. Due to the sensitivity of the backhaul links with high rate/reliability demands, proper network planning is needed to ensure the IAB network performs with the desired performance levels. In this paper, we study the effect of infrastructure planning and optimization on the coverage of IAB networks. We concentrate on the cases where the fiber connectivity to the nodes is constrained due to cost. Thereby, we study the performance gains and energy efficiency in the presence of free-space optical (FSO) communication links. Our results indicate hybrid fiber/FSO deployments offer substantial cost savings compared to fully fibered networks, suggesting a beneficial trade-off for strategic link deployment while improving the service coverage probability. As we show, with proper network planning, the service coverage, energy efficiency, and cost efficiency can be improved.