This month, we are taking a look at some of the hottest topics in the optical transceiver market. In the last post, we talked about Silicon Photonics, and in this post we focus on 5G wireless. 5G (5th generation) wireless is receiving significant attention, with the technology poised to replace current 4G networks in the coming years. Many equipment vendors and carriers are preparing for 5G deployment. The key characteristics of 5G are higher capacity and lower latency, with the vision of connecting not only people but also machines and objects for improved IoT (Internet of Things) implementation.
Some of the projected goals for 5G include data rates of tens of megabits per second for tens of thousands of users, 100 megabits per second for metropolitan areas, and 1 Gb per second simultaneously to many workers on the same office floor. Additional goals include supporting several hundreds of thousands of simultaneous wireless sensor connections, significantly enhanced spectral efficiency compared to 4G, and greatly reduced latency compared to LTE.
Fiber is expected to play a major role in 5G deployments. While wireless backhaul will continue to use a combination of wireless, satellite, and fiber, fiber will account for a larger share in 5G backhaul than it did in 4G. Backhaul upgrades are underway worldwide, converting legacy copper-based sites to packet-based transport over fiber. Although the final 5G network architecture will vary by market, WDM-PON currently has an advantage in the 5G wireless backhaul space.
Similar to how 10Gb/s multi-rate optical modules became the standard for LTE fronthaul, 25G devices are expected to see high-volume use in 5G deployments. Industrial-temperature 25G transceivers designed specifically for fronthaul applications are now becoming available. To prepare for the significant increase in fronthaul bandwidth required by 5G radios, mobile equipment makers updated the CPRI specification to eCPRI in August 2017. This update enables a tenfold reduction in required bandwidth, allows flexible scaling based on user-plane traffic, enables packet-based transport technologies, and encourages the use of Ethernet and IP for future evolution.
Vitex, in partnership with Innolight, offers 25G industrial-temperature SFP28 transceivers for wireless applications, with extended-temperature 100G transceivers also on the horizon. Overall, 5G is a transformative technology, and to achieve its performance goals of higher capacity, network availability, and coverage, fiber will play a critical role in the success of 5G deployments.
