Cost-Effective Delay-Constrained Optical Fronthaul Design for 5G and Beyond

With the rapid growth of telecom sector heading towards 5G and 6G emergence high-bandwidth time-sensitive applications, mobile network operators (MNOs) are driven to plan their networks meet these new requirements in a cost-effective manner. The cloud radio access (CRAN) has been presented as promising architecture that can decrease capital expenditures (Capex) operating (Opex) improve performance. fronthaul (FH) is part links remote head (RRH) baseband unit (BBU); need high-capacity low latency connections necessitating costeffective implementation. On other hand, transport delay FH deployment costs increase if BBU not placed an appropriate location. In this paper, we propose integer linear program (ILP) simultaneously optimizes resulting minimal (Capex). Simulations run compare performance star tree topologies with varying line sight probabilities (LoS) thresholds. We consider fiber-optic (FO) free-space optics (FSO) technologies for CRAN. Finally, provide analysis Opex total ownership (TCO), i.e., technoeconomic analysis.