The road to 5G in the future will be led by optical fibers

Internet infrastructure construction, especially with regard to cables, most of the topics discussed today revolve around wireless communication technology and general ease of use, followed by the transformation of wifi networks to smaller cellular communication base stations To maintain the volume and coverage required by customers and machines, the Internet will also require more cables to connect.

It is worth mentioning that the emergence of the Internet of Things has increased the total number of connections required. Not only that, mobile data traffic is increasing explosively, and the trend shows no sign of slowing down, which makes optical fiber become the best choice for China Mobile’s backhaul connection that can consider current requirements and maintain expectations for 5G:

Statistical data transfer speed of 10Gbps per customer

Up to 100 times more connected machines

1000 times the network bandwidth

5 times the relative density of communication base stations

Very low latency of less than 5ms

At the same time, many operators are opting for a centralized RAN (C-RAN) architecture to reduce power consumption and increase the indoor space utilization of communication towers. Fiber plays a key role by providing the fronthaul link between a centralized baseband chip module (BBU) and the remote-controlled radiotelephone head-end (RRH) of several basestations miles away.

C-RAN presents this logical approach to not only increasing the volume, reliability and coordination of the Internet, but also reducing operating costs. At the same time, in order to maintain greater scalability and expandability to consider future Internet requirements, the role of BBU will also be "virtualized technology", which also makes C-RAN an inevitable step into the cloud radio network access network (Cloud RAN). choose.

Operators who have invested in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) projects over the past 10+ years have inadvertently established the foundations for 5G. At this stage, most FTTH Internet uses only 2-3 optical wavelengths - 1 for Gigabit Passive Optical Internet (GPON) for downstream transmission, 1 for GPON transmission, and one for video transmission. Coarse wavelength division/aggregation wavelength division multiplexing (C/DWDM) optical wavelengths with a wide range of frequency bands are not used, so they can be used for wireless network applications. Operators can use the same fiber bundle, but use different optical wavelengths to transmit the total traffic of cellular communication base stations and the total traffic of residential GPON.

Passive C/DWDM control modules can be placed on both sides of fiber optic cabling equipment to compose or separate out different wavelengths of light. As another option, operators can also carry out total traffic transmission according to the deployment of many different fiber optic bundles, and carry out appropriate router overall planning for fiber optic connections in fiber optic cable junction boxes or splice boxes. 5G fixed wireless network connectivity is another element of the driver's fiber requirements.

Some operators are using it as another option for such broadband use towards home and small and medium business customers. Although the deployment of stationary 5G broadband usage is faster and simpler than FTTH, the higher speed also increases the network bandwidth workload of various parts of the Internet, which means that a large number of fiber optic connections must be used to adapt.

At this stage, basically all underground transportation, long-distance inter-provincial and inter-inland Internet applications are connected by optical fiber, and it has been confirmed that the new generation of optical transmission technology can continue to expand according to the latest news, considering the increasingly prominent network bandwidth requirements. And in the use of wireless networks and microwave technology to connect the Internet, copper cables are still widely deployed.

The large-scale application of optical fiber is particularly important for areas that are willing to successfully achieve 5G coverage, and this is not just due to volume considerations. A large number of interconnecting fibers will also contribute to the achievement of the overall goal of 5G and Internet features related to diversity, ease of use, and coverage.

Because of this, in order to fulfill the promised characteristics of 5G, "the application of wifi network is indispensable and rich" will be more and more confirmed, and the "rich" often referred to here refers to fiber. Nowadays, the Internet integrates optical fiber, copper cable and wireless communication technology to meet the ever-increasing bandwidth requirements. Optical data connections have been considered by major operators around the world to be the Internet infrastructure construction in the 21st century. At this stage, operators have just begun to proactively detect and overall plan the deployment of 5G infrastructure. But before anything here becomes a reality, operators must also consider how they can help improve their Internet deployment and development strategies.

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