TDM EPON Fronthaul Upstream Capacity Improvement via Traffic Classification and Sifting

Mobile Fronthaul (MF) is defined as the connection between Remote Radio Head (RRH) and Baseband Processing Unit (BBU) in a Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN). Dedicated MF connections between RRH and BBU would be very costly. Thus, Time Division Multiplexing Ethernet Passive Optical Network (TDM EPON) is a promising solution to reduce cost as it can enable multiplexing gain. Note that, even though mobile users transmit intermittently, in the upstream channel RRH is sampling radio signal all the time, limiting the achievable multiplexing gain. Our study enhances the conventional TDM EPON architecture by introducing traffic classification, sifting of useless data to avoid the transmission of unnecessary EPON frames, and hence increasing the multiplexing gain in the upstream channel. We also propose a Hybrid Bandwidth Allocation (HBA) scheme to exploit the traffic usefulness classification information. Simulation results show significant improvements in terms of load and number of connected RRHs that can be supported by same EPON, while keeping the end-to-end delay under 100 μs.