WDM-PON Management and Control by Auxiliary Management and Control Channel for 5G Mobile Fronthaul

Abstract

The demand for fifth generation (5G) mobile systems has been exploding. There are strict latency and transmission capacity requirements, especially in the optical fiber section called the mobile fronthaul. A wavelength division multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) system is an attractive solution to accommodate the high demand of traffic. However, wavelength management, which is important in a WDM-PON system, has not been sufficiently studied at the system level. In previous studies, control by a management control channel independent of the client signal, called the auxiliary management and control channel (AMCC), has been considered in many cases. In most of these studies, physical layer evaluation, such as the effect of superimposing the management control channel, was conducted for feasibility studies, and it was only confirmed that the effect was minor by measuring the bit error rate. In this paper, we review and compare the superimposition schemes of the AMCC to clarify operating conditions such as modulation format and modulation index of the AMCC signals. In addition, we propose a WDM-PON system managed using AMCC for ONU activation, wavelength adjustment and alive monitoring. We then discuss the connection of a WDM-PON prototype system we developed to a 5G mobile system to evaluate the effect of throughput on user equipment. The results indicate that the WDM-PON prototype system did not degrade (less than 2%) the downlink throughput even when the wavelength adjustment function was used against wavelength drift.