ERON: an energy-efficient and elastic RF-optical architecture for mmWave 5G radio access networks

This paper proposes an elastic RF-optical networking (ERON) architecture solution for millimeter wave (mmWave) 5G radio access networks. The ERON architecture achieves energy efficiency and throughput elasticity using photonic-enhanced multibeam mmWave spatial multiplexing capability at the radio units. The centralization of the hardware resources and the converged management of the RF and optical resources in the data units offer high resource pooling gain. A numerical study on the energy efficiency of ERON’s photonic-enabled mmWave 5G system reveals that ERON is 5× more energy efficient than both conventional digital and hybrid RF beam-forming implementations. We also conducted a user mobility-aware network resources study, and the results show a 10 dB network resource pooling gain when compared to classic radio access network implementations.

[1]  Weisheng Hu,et al.  Low-cost WDM fronthaul enabled by partitioned asymmetric AWGR with simultaneous flexible transceiver assignment and chirp management , 2017, IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.

[2]  Biswanath Mukherjee,et al.  Low-latency and energy-efficient BBU placement and VPON formation in virtualized cloud-fog RAN , 2019, IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.

[3]  Rui Zhang,et al.  An Ultra-Reliable MMW/FSO A-RoF System Based on Coordinated Mapping and Combining Technique for 5G and Beyond Mobile Fronthaul , 2018, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[4]  Roberto Proietti,et al.  Experimental Demonstration of mmWave Multi-Beam Forming by SiN Photonic Integrated Circuits for Elastic RF-Optical Networking , 2019, 2019 Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exhibition (OFC).

[5]  Kyungwhoon Cheun,et al.  Millimeter-wave beamforming as an enabling technology for 5G cellular communications: theoretical feasibility and prototype results , 2014, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[6]  Andreas Hermerschmidt,et al.  1 LCOS Spatial Light Modulators: Trends and Applications , 2012 .

[7]  Brian A. Floyd,et al.  A 28-GHz SiGe BiCMOS PA With 32% Efficiency and 23-dBm Output Power , 2017, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[8]  Francesco Musumeci,et al.  Optimal BBU Placement for 5G C-RAN Deployment Over WDM Aggregation Networks , 2016, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[9]  Yuefeng Ji,et al.  Joint Wavelength, Antenna, and Radio Resource Block Allocation for Massive MIMO Enabled Beamforming in a TWDM-PON Based Fronthaul , 2019, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[10]  Yasuyoshi Uchida,et al.  LCOS-based flexible grid 1×40 wavelength selective switch using planar lightwave circuit as spot size converter , 2015, 2015 Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exhibition (OFC).

[11]  T. Clark,et al.  Ultra-Low-Loss Silicon Nitride Optical Beamforming Network for Wideband Wireless Applications , 2018, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[12]  S. J. B. Yoo,et al.  Experimental Demonstration of Elastic RF-Optical Networking (ERON) for 5G mm-wave Systems , 2017, 2017 European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC).

[13]  Thomas Pfeiffer,et al.  Next generation mobile fronthaul and midhaul architectures [Invited] , 2015, IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.

[14]  P. Z. Fan,et al.  An AOA assisted TOA positioning system , 2000, WCC 2000 - ICCT 2000. 2000 International Conference on Communication Technology Proceedings (Cat. No.00EX420).

[15]  Theodore S. Rappaport,et al.  Radiocommunications , 1967, Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge.

[16]  Naoya Wada,et al.  Scalable two- and three-dimensional optical labels generated by 128-port encoder/decoder for optical packet switching. , 2015, Optics express.

[17]  Sung Min Park,et al.  A 40-GHz Mirrored-Cascode Differential Transimpedance Amplifier in 65-nm CMOS , 2019, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[18]  Bo Zhang,et al.  3.2 A 320mW 32Gb/s 8b ADC-based PAM-4 analog front-end with programmable gain control and analog peaking in 28nm CMOS , 2016, 2016 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

[19]  H.T. Friis,et al.  A Note on a Simple Transmission Formula , 1946, Proceedings of the IRE.

[20]  Tim Moran,et al.  A quad 25Gb/s 270mW TIA in 0.13µm BiCMOS with <0.15dB crosstalk penalty , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers.

[21]  Chin-Tau Lea,et al.  A Scalable AWGR-Based Optical Switch , 2015, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[22]  Jeyanandh Paramesh,et al.  A 25–30 GHz 8-antenna 2-stream hybrid beamforming receiver for MIMO communication , 2017, 2017 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC).

[23]  Sridhar Ramesh,et al.  Performance, Power, and Area Design Trade-Offs in Millimeter-Wave Transmitter Beamforming Architectures , 2018, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine.

[24]  Paolo Monti,et al.  Optical transport solutions for 5G fixed wireless access [Invited] , 2017, IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.

[25]  Ming Xiao,et al.  Millimeter Wave Communications for Future Mobile Networks , 2017, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[26]  Weisheng Hu,et al.  Soft-stacked PON for soft C-RAN , 2016, IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.

[27]  Firooz Aflatouni,et al.  A Low-Power Hybrid-Integrated 40-Gb/s Optical Receiver in Silicon , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[28]  Paolo Ghelfi,et al.  Photonic Integrated Microwave Phase Shifter up to the mm-Wave Band With Fast Response Time in Silicon-on-Insulator Technology , 2018, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[29]  Robert W. Heath,et al.  Grassmannian beamforming for multiple-input multiple-output wireless systems , 2003, IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2003. ICC '03..

[30]  Nathan J. Gomes,et al.  A Flexible Subcarrier Multiplexing System With Analog Transport and Digital Processing for 5G (and Beyond) Fronthaul , 2019, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[31]  L. Velasco,et al.  Meeting the requirements to deploy cloud RAN over optical networks , 2017, IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.

[32]  Ricard Vilalta,et al.  Network slicing architecture for SDM and analog-radio-over-fiber-based 5G fronthaul networks , 2020, IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.

[33]  Erik G. Larsson,et al.  Massive MIMO for next generation wireless systems , 2013, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[34]  Kuanping Shang,et al.  Low-Loss Compact Silicon Nitride Arrayed Waveguide Gratings for Photonic Integrated Circuits , 2017, IEEE Photonics Journal.

[35]  Roberto Proietti,et al.  mmWave Beamforming using Photonic Signal Processing for Future 5G Mobile Systems , 2018, 2018 Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exposition (OFC).

[36]  Raymond Knopp,et al.  FlexCRAN: A flexible functional split framework over ethernet fronthaul in Cloud-RAN , 2017, 2017 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC).

[37]  Dejan Markovic,et al.  A 13.1GOPS/mW 16-core processor for software-defined radios in 40nm CMOS , 2014, 2014 Symposium on VLSI Circuits Digest of Technical Papers.

[38]  Gunther Roelkens,et al.  27 dB gain III-V-on-silicon semiconductor optical amplifier with > 17 dBm output power. , 2019, Optics express.

[39]  Roelof Bernardus Timens,et al.  Low-Loss Si3N4 TriPleX Optical Waveguides: Technology and Applications Overview , 2018, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[40]  Christopher Cox,et al.  An Introduction to LTE: LTE, LTE-Advanced, SAE and 4G Mobile Communications , 2012 .

[41]  Lena Wosinska,et al.  Demonstration of dynamic resource sharing benefits in an optical C-RAN , 2016, IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.

[42]  Joohwa Kim,et al.  A 40-Gb/s Optical Transceiver Front-End in 45 nm SOI CMOS , 2012, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[43]  Masahiko Jinno,et al.  Elastic optical networking: a new dawn for the optical layer? , 2012, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[44]  Hideo Sunami,et al.  An Infrared Silicon Optical Modulator of Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor Capacitor Based on Accumulation-Carrier Absorption , 2009 .

[45]  Kuanping Shang,et al.  Silicon nitride tri-layer vertical Y-junction and 3D couplers with arbitrary splitting ratio for photonic integrated circuits. , 2017, Optics express.

[46]  Marco Ruffini,et al.  A Variable Rate Fronthaul Scheme for Cloud Radio Access Networks , 2018, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[47]  Toru Yazaki,et al.  A 4× 25-to-28Gb/s 4.9mW/Gb/s −9.7dBm high-sensitivity optical receiver based on 65nm CMOS for board-to-board interconnects , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers.

[48]  Gee-Kung Chang,et al.  Photonics-Aided Millimeter-Wave Technologies for Extreme Mobile Broadband Communications in 5G , 2020, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[49]  Robert Schober,et al.  Linear Massive MIMO Precoders in the Presence of Phase Noise—A Large-Scale Analysis , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[50]  F Ellinger,et al.  A Jitter-Optimized Differential 40-Gbit/s Transimpedance Amplifier in SiGe BiCMOS , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[51]  Xiang Liu,et al.  Emerging optical access network technologies for 5G wireless [invited] , 2016, IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.

[52]  Stefano Pellerano,et al.  Architecture and Circuit Choices for 5G Millimeter-Wave Beamforming Transceivers , 2018, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[53]  Nikos Pleros,et al.  A 5G mmWave Fiber-Wireless IFoF Analog Mobile Fronthaul Link With up to 24-Gb/s Multiband Wireless Capacity , 2019, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[54]  Bo Zhang,et al.  3.4 A 36Gb/s PAM4 transmitter using an 8b 18GS/S DAC in 28nm CMOS , 2015, 2015 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - (ISSCC) Digest of Technical Papers.

[55]  Philippe Chanclou,et al.  Things You Should Know About Fronthaul , 2015, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[56]  Paolo Santi,et al.  The Node Distribution of the Random Waypoint Mobility Model for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks , 2003, IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput..

[57]  Andrew A. Goldenberg,et al.  MEMS optical switches , 2001, IEEE Commun. Mag..

[58]  John E. Bowers,et al.  Integrated microwave photonics , 2015, 2015 International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP).

[59]  Gabriel M. Rebeiz,et al.  A 64-Element 28-GHz Phased-Array Transceiver With 52-dBm EIRP and 8–12-Gb/s 5G Link at 300 Meters Without Any Calibration , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[60]  Gabriel M. Rebeiz,et al.  A 60 GHz single-chip 256-element wafer-scale phased array with EIRP of 45 dBm using sub-reticle stitching , 2015, 2015 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC).

[61]  Xinying Li,et al.  Photonics-Assisted Technologies for Extreme Broadband 5G Wireless Communications , 2019, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[62]  Elaine Wong,et al.  5G C-RAN With Optical Fronthaul: An Analysis From a Deployment Perspective , 2018, Journal of Lightwave Technology.