With the arrival of the 5G era, the demand for wireless optical modules will increase significantly in the future, and the growth points mainly focus on optical modules with 25G, 50G, 100G, 200G, 400G and higher rates. This is the market opportunity brought by the 5G era to optical modules.
The fifth-generation mobile communication technology is abbreviated as 5G, which is a new generation of broadband mobile communication technology with high speed, low latency and large connection characteristics. It is a network infrastructure that realizes the interconnection of people, machines, and things. Among them, a 5G network has three parts: access network, bearer network, and core network. The access network is generally a radio access network (RAN), which is mainly composed of base stations. There are three parts in the evolution of the 5G network. The AAU connecting DU part is called the 5G fronthaul (Fronthaul), the middlehaul refers to the DU connecting the CU part, and the backhaul is the communication bearer between the CU and the core network.
Tendency
With the arrival of the 5G era, the demand for wireless optical modules will increase significantly in the future, and the growth points mainly focus on optical modules with 25G, 50G, 100G, 200G, 400G and higher rates. This is the market opportunity brought by the 5G era to optical modules. At the same time, the changes and upgrades of the network architecture have also put forward higher requirements for optical modules. The expansion of functions, the increase in speed, and the reduction of costs are the main demands of 5G wireless optical modules.
Demand
5G fronthaul: the largest number of connections, the rate is mostly 25Gb/s.5G fronthaul technical solutions include: optical fiber direct connection, passive WDM, active WDM/OTN, slice packet network (SPN), etc. The optical modules used in 5G access network are mostly 50G/100Gb/s gray light or WDM color light.Since the optical modules are often used in computer rooms with better heat dissipation conditions in midhaul and backhaul scenarios, commercial-grade optical modules can be used. 5G uses 100MHz spectrum bandwidth (for co-construction and sharing, 200MHz is required), 64T64R. The CPRI bandwidth requires 320G. After the introduction of the eCPRI interface, the fronthaul bandwidth is compressed to 25G. Therefore, the 5G fronthaul will be based on 25G.
Midhaul: A DU requires 10G. If the bandwidth requirement of the looped access layer exceeds 25G, 50G or 100G optical modules are required (considering later evolution).
Backhaul: According to model calculations, the convergence and core layer bandwidth requirements exceed 100G, so 200G or 400G optical modules are required.
