The 5G-Crosshaul Packet Forwarding Element pipeline: Measurements and analysis

Abstract

This paper is focused on the 5G-Crosshaul Packet Forwarding Element (XPFE), which is the packet forwarding element of the 5G-Crosshaul network architecture. The XPFE integrates multiple technologies which allow to transport traffic from multiple tenants and of different nature over the same infrastructure. Hence, the paper is focused on the performance of this essential element of our network, providing some end-to-end delay measurements and analyzing the behavior of this delay. Likewise, we have fitted the appropriate probability distribution for these measurements, which allows us to infer some confidence intervals for the prediction of the maximum number of hops supported by delay-sensitive fronthaul traffic before being processed in a 5G-Crosshaul Processing Unit.