End-to-End Delay Performance of Analog Fiber Wireless Architecture for 5G NR Fronthaul

The convergence of fiber and wireless systems based on millimiter-wave (mmWave) bands seems to be a promising fronthaul solution for the fifth generation (5G) centralized radio access network (C-RAN) deployments. The 5G fronthaul allows the flexible splitting of functionalities between centralized and remote units but requires high data rates. These can be achieved by combining the traits of analog radio-over-fiber (RoF) communication, the wide mmWave spectrum and the availability of different functional splits. To that end, we focus on a novel RoF fronthaul architecture and evaluate its performance in terms of end-to-end packet delay under different network setups. Our simulation results show that the experienced delay is affected by the fronthaul load but remains below 100 μs in most cases.