5G, C-RAN, and the Required Technology Breakthrough
Author: Michael
Extending from my previous article: “5G, When Will We See It?”, one of the key factors in determining when we will see 5G is the breakthrough in mobile network technologies. Below is a simplified overview of a mobile network:
A mobile network divides a region into cells (as shown above), with each cell covered by a radio base station. These base stations are typically mounted on towers (or tall buildings), with the sites owned by tower companies and the equipment owned by telecoms in most developed countries. Mobile devices (smartphones, tablets etc.) within each cell communicate with the nearest base stations via radio for voice and data communication, where the signal is then transmitted to the core network either via cables or high-frequency radio links to a terminal (edge router) connected to the core network.
A radio base station can be functionally separated into:
- BBU (baseband unit, sometimes also referred to as a digital unit), which generates and processes a digitized baseband RF signal
- RRH (remote radio head, aka RRU, remote radio unit), which creates the analog transmit RF signal from the baseband signal and sources it to the antenna respectively, digitizes the RF receive signal