The global demand for mobile-broadband data services has experienced phenomenal growth over the last few years, driven by the rapid proliferation of smart devices such as smartphones and tablets. This growth is expected to continue unabated as mobile data traffic is predicted to grow anywhere from 20 to 50 times over the next 5 years. Exacerbating the problem is that such unprecedented surge in smartphones usage, which is characterized by frequent short on/off connections and mobility, generates heavy signaling traffic load in the network "signaling storms". This consumes a disproportion amount of network resources, compromising network throughput and efficiency, and in extreme cases can cause the cellular networks to crash. Heterogeneous networks (HetNets), which comprise a combination of macro-cell base stations and low-cost low-power small cell (SC) base stations operating over both licensed (e.g., femto and picocells) and unlicensed (e. g., WiFi access points) bands, have recently emerged as a viable solution to cope with such unprecedented mobile traffic growth. While deploying large number of SCs close to users will certainly help to solve the radio access network's (RAN) capacity and coverage problem, however, there is a significant price to pay - HetNets create a new challenge for the backhaul. The key challenge is how to provide cost-effective, scalable and flexible mobile backhaul solution to connect SCs to the mobile core network. The purpose of this paper is to propose and devise a cost-effective PON-based HetNet mobile backhaul RAN architecture that: 1) leverages existing fibered and powered facilities associated with a PON-based fiber-to-the-Node/ Home (FTTN/FTTH) residential access network; 2) enables, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, the support of efficient ground-breaking mobile data and signaling offload techniques, which significantly enhance the performance of both the LTE-A-based HetNet RAN and mobile core network (Evolved Packet Core (EPC) per 3GPP standard), ensure that core network equipment is used more productively, and moderate the evolving signaling growth and optimize its impact.
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