A Flexible and Cost-Efficient Protection Scheme for SDN-Based 5G Backhaul Network

As the deployment of small-cell antennas for 5G continues to grow, the current mobile backhaul protection system, reliant on AON and Point-to-Point (PtP), is becoming increasingly expensive. Therefore, it is necessary to explore a more cost-effective Point-to-Multipoint (PtMP) alternative based on PON technology. However, the existing PON-based PtMP solutions are practically unfeasible to offer fail-over and automatic switching from the primary mobile backhaul connection to the protection one in case of a fault which is a crucial mechanism for mobile backhaul protection. In this paper, we have designed a new and practical ONOS-based protection application to control the PON-based mobile backhaul protection system for the automatic switching between primary and protection connection. We have implemented as well as validated the scheme on our self-built 5G test-bed system, including Open5GS as 5G Core, UERANSIM as 5G RAN, and VOLTHA, ONOS, Whitebox OLT as a mobile backhaul PON-based PtMP system.