Optical Transport Architecture for the Fronthaul Segment in a 5G NR Network based on Polarization and Wavelength Multiplexing

Abstract

This paper presents the design of an optical transport architecture for the fronthaul segment in a 5G New Radio (NR) network based on both polarization and wavelength multiplexing using Polarization Splitters (PS) and an Arrayed Waveguide Grating (AWG), respectively. The proposed architecture is assessed by the transport of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) services, which allows the definition of different numerologies and service profiles; those are key aspects in the framework of 5G RN. The proposed design shows a flexible and scalable management of numerologies per polarized light component, featuring a suitable response in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER) and Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) measurements for 15 kHz, 30 kHz, and 60kHz subcarrier spacing of an OFDM based on 4QAM modulation format.