Altran White Paper: Ethernet in the Mobile Fronthaul

The number of global unique mobile subscribers is expected to grow by 160 million from 5.7 billion subscribers in 2020 to 5.86 billion in 2025.

 

85% or more of mobile connections are expected to be 4G or 5G. This will require a massive increase in the number of antennas to accommodate all of these new subscribers and other devices. This also will increase the amount of signal processing to be handled, thus requiring increasing amounts of space for cell towers, posing a significant problem, especially in urban areas. The solution to this problem is a change in the network and system architecture by the introduction of Remote Radio Head (RRH) systems. The earlier cell site architecture consisted of a large radio component located along with the antenna.

 

Altran offers a licensable software framework for fronthaul switches and gateways. This framework is based on software that has been widely deployed in carrier networks around the world for more than a decade. The Altran software framework includes support for CPRI and eCPRI transport over Ethernet networks, covering all the different modes of transport, together with the necessary functions for reliability, timing, synchronization, time sensitive networking and management.