Fixed optical transport is the predominant fronthaul technology for 4G mobile access networks, carrying the traffic between the central office and subtended antenna sites. With the new functional splits and related standards introduced in 5G, new capacity and quality-of-service requirements are imposed on optical transport. In this paper, we discuss low-cost high-capacity optical fronthaul solutions enabled by advanced modulation formats and wavelength-agnostic passive wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology. As the key component, a low-cost remotely tunable WDM transceiver is introduced, specifically designed on a hybrid InP-polymer platform. We also explain why an Ethernet-based 5G fronthaul solution requires additional means to improve the latency and timing performance of the conventional packet forwarding and multiplexing. We review the recent standardization effort on time-sensitive networking in support of 5G fronthaul and present an FPGA-based implementation providing low latency and low packet delay variation following the latest IEEE 802.1CM specification. These advanced technologies can facilitate an effective packet-optical transport for 5G.

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下一代（5G）移动网络的高级光接入技术[已邀请]

固定光传输是4G移动接入网络的主要前传技术，用于承载中心局和对接天线站点之间的流量。随着5G中引入新的功能拆分和相关标准，对光传输提出了新的容量和服务质量要求。在本文中，我们将讨论由先进的调制格式和与波长无关的无源波分复用（WDM）技术支持的低成本大容量光学前传解决方案。作为关键组件，引入了一种低成本的远程可调WDM收发器，该收发器专门在混合InP聚合物平台上设计。我们还将解释为什么基于以太网的5G前传解决方案需要额外的手段来改善常规数据包转发和复用的延迟和定时性能。我们回顾了最近的对时间敏感型网络的标准化工作，以支持5G前传，并提出了一种基于FPGA的实现，它遵循最新的IEEE 802.1CM规范，提供了低延迟和低分组延迟变化。这些先进技术可以促进5G的有效分组光传输。