Towards spectrum-programmable, mesh-enabled mobile xHaul through reconfigurable WDM overlay in fully-passive networks

A scheme for flexible networking is presented for the mobile front- and/or backhaul. Reconfigurable add/drop nodes are employed at the fibre plant to enable dynamic bandwidth allocation at wavelength level, as well as feeder protection and the formation of virtual optical networks. With these functionalities available capacity at the mobile backhaul can be distributed among datacentres of cloud radio access network (RAN) in order to adapt to actual load conditions at the baseband units (BBU). Moreover, the ability to form virtual point-to-point links between BBUs belonging to different cloud-RANs as well as between remote radio heads and baseband units of different cloud-RAN entities can optimize the utilization of network resources as a whole. The key to do so is a mobile front-/backhaul leveraged by reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADM). To the first time energy harvesting is applied to provide this functionality while retaining a fully-passive optical network.