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B16 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 7, NO. 11/NOVEMBER 2015 Shibata et al.

Performance Evaluation of Mobile


Front-Haul Employing Ethernet-
Based TDM-PON With IQ Data
Compression [Invited]
Naotaka Shibata, Takayoshi Tashiro, Shigeru Kuwano, Naohiko Yuki, Youichi Fukada,
Jun Terada, and Akihiro Otaka

Abstract—In this paper, we experimentally and numeri- links [mobile front-haul (MFH)]. Wireless signals can be
cally evaluate the performance of a common public radio
transmitted with negligible degradation between the BBUs
interface (CPRI) over a time division multiplexed passive
optical network (TDM-PON) system for accommodating and RRHs by employing digitized radio-over-fiber (DRoF)
densely deployed small cells in centralized-radio-access- technologies. The common public radio interface (CPRI)
network-based future radio access. A prototype of the is a commonly used interface for a MFH using DRoF [5–7].
CPRI over TDM-PON is developed by using Ethernet-based
TDM-PON. Experimental results showed that its synchroni- The centralized radio access network (C-RAN) architec-
zation accuracy and latency meet the requirements of a ture with a centralized BBU and distributed RRH configu-
mobile front-haul using CPRI by the implemented delay ration provides centralized and coordinated operations
jitter reduction and low-latency bandwidth allocation
of multiple cells [8]. Figure 1(a) shows the conventional
techniques. An in-phase and quadrature (IQ) data compres-
sion technique is also implemented on the system to enable C-RAN-based MFH configuration. The C-RAN achieves
a higher accommodation of remote radio heads. energy efficient operation of BBUs by BBU virtualization,
Experiments confirmed that the compression technique and cell-edge user throughput is improved by coordinated
meets open radio equipment interface standards in terms multipoint (CoMP) transmission/reception functions, such
of latency and signal quality degradation. Numerical
results showed that the technique with a 0.45 compression as joint transmission and reception [9]. Many MFH links
ratio increases the number of supportable remote radio are required when deploying a large-scale C-RAN for FRA,
heads from 3 to 7 for a mobile front-haul with a 100 μs so a cost-effective MFH is essential.
latency limitation.
Time division multiplexed passive optical network
Index Terms—CPRI; IQ Data Compression; Mobile Front- (TDM-PON) systems have the potential to efficiently ac-
haul; TDM-PON. commodate densely deployed small cells in C-RAN-based
FRA for the following reasons [10,11]: densified small cells
can be deployed as clusters with intervals of several tens of
I. INTRODUCTION meters [3], and the distance between a BBU and a RRH is
shorter than 20 km in general; TDM leads to the efficient
use of wavelengths; and available TDM-PON systems,
M obile traffic is increasing explosively, and significant
capacity enhancement of cellular systems is re-
quired to meet ever-increasing traffic demands. In future
such as the 10G-EPON, already exist [12]. Therefore, a
CPRI over TDM-PON system [Fig. 1(b)], in which a MFH
with a CPRI is constructed over a TDM-PON system, can
radio access (FRA), many small cell base stations will be
be a cost-effective solution. In this system, CPRI signals
densely deployed to efficiently enhance capacity [1–4]. To
enable flexible deployment, their functions are divided are packetized into PON frames for transmission. A wave-
between baseband units (BBUs) and remote radio heads length division multiplexing (WDM)-based PON system is
(RRHs). The BBUs provide baseband processing functions, another candidate for MFH accommodation. However, the
while the RRHs provide radio transmission and reception cost of WDM equipment is too high for LTE-based small
functions. The BBUs and RRHs are connected by optical cells. Therefore, we selected a TDM-PON system for the
accommodation of small cells.
However, TDM-PON technologies have been developed
Manuscript received May 29, 2015; revised August 5, 2015; accepted
August 12, 2015; published September 3, 2015 (Doc. ID 241554). mainly for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) applications, so there
N. Shibata (e-mail: shibata.naotaka@lab.ntt.co.jp), T. Tashiro, S. are problems in using them for CPRI transmission. The
Kuwano, N. Yuki, J. Terada, and A. Otaka are with NTT Access Network first is the MFH latency limit. The upstream latency of cur-
Service Systems Laboratories, NTT Corporation, 1-1 Hikarinooka, rent TDM-PON systems is about 1 ms due to their dynamic
Yokosuka, Kanagawa 239-0847, Japan.
Y. Fukada is with NTT Network Technology Laboratories, NTT
bandwidth allocation (DBA), and this does not meet the
Corporation, 3-9-11, Midori-cho, Musashino, Tokyo 180-8585, Japan. MFH requirement of several hundred microseconds [13].
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/JOCN.7.000B16 Therefore, a low-latency bandwidth allocation scheme is

1943-0620/15/110B16-07$15.00/0 © 2015 Optical Society of America

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Shibata et al. VOL. 7, NO. 11/NOVEMBER 2015/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. B17

Fig. 1. Configurations of C-RAN-based mobile front-haul. Fig. 2. CPRI over Ethernet-based TDM-PON system.
(a) Conventional configuration. (b) CPRI over TDM-PON.

essential for TDM-PON systems. A second problem is the the BBUs and RRHs is CPRI signals, while the Ethernet-
link delay jitter. The jitter requirements imposed by CPRI based TDM-PON carries Ethernet frames. The CPRI–
are strict since CPRI signals are continuous signals. In a Ethernet converters (CECs) perform the conversion
TDM-PON system, delay jitter occurs due to the packetiz- between Ethernet frames and CPRI frames. The CEC at
ing and multiplexing of signals and it must be suppressed. the BBU side (CEC-B) connects the BBUs and the optical
A third problem is the optical bandwidth. The required line terminal (OLT), and the CEC at the RRH side (CEC-R)
optical bandwidth in a MFH is very large and proportional connects the RRH and the optical network unit (ONU) of
to the product of the sampling rate, number of bits for a the TDM-PON system.
sample, and number of antennas: as an example, a 20 MHz Figure 3 shows block diagrams of the CEC-B and CEC-R.
2 × 2 multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) wireless sig- The CECs perform Ethernet encapsulation at the encapsu-
nal with 15 bit quantization requires about 2.5 Gbps in lator for CPRI signals and perform Ethernet decapsulation
CPRI [7]. Therefore, bandwidth reduction techniques are at the decapsulator. Since the CPRI signals of options 1–7
also essential for multiplexed transmission. use 8B/10B code, the encapsulator decodes the 8B/10B code
In this paper, we propose a CPRI over TDM-PON sys- of the input CPRI signals before encapsulating them to
tem, and develop a prototype of it by using an Ethernet- reduce the required optical bandwidth. The decapsulator
based TDM-PON [14]. Ethernet-based TDM-PON systems, extracts the payload from Ethernet frames and performs
such as 10G-EPON, can be made cost effective by using 8B/10B encoding for them to obtain original CPRI signals.
a common Ethernet interface. To meet the CPRI require- A special code for CPRI frame synchronization (K28.5
ment, the developed system implements techniques for
reducing delay jitter, allocating bandwidth with a low
latency, and achieving a high-precision clock. It also imple-
ments an in-phase and quadrature (IQ) data compression
technique for wireless waveform data to increase the num-
ber of supportable RRHs within an allowable latency. The
feasibility and performance of the system were evaluated
experimentally and numerically.
In the remainder of the paper, Section II describes the
developed system. In Section III, the performance of CPRI
over TDM-PON is evaluated by experiments. In Section IV,
the performance of CPRI over TDM-PON with the com-
pression technique is evaluated numerically. Section V
concludes the paper with a summary.

II. SYSTEM MODEL

A. MFH With TDM-PON

Figure 2 shows the schematic of the proposed CPRI over


an Ethernet-based TDM-PON system. The input/output of Fig. 3. Block diagrams of CEC-B and CEC-R.

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B18 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 7, NO. 11/NOVEMBER 2015 Shibata et al.

Code) is converted to an 8B code, and frame information is first and fiber latency (5 μs/km) is set. Then the residual
transmitted using the header field. At the CEC-B, the mul- latency is assigned to the processing latencies.
tiplexer multiplexes the signals from BBUs in the time do-
main and the demultiplexer demultiplexes the signals from
the RRHs. B. IQ Data Compression
The length of the Ethernet frame is set to 1064 bytes; the
frame consists of a 1024 byte payload (16 CPRI basic With respect to accommodating CPRI links in a TDM-
frames), a 20 byte header for CPRI over TDM-PON, and PON, only a few ONUs can be accommodated since the CPRI
a 20 byte Ethernet header. The header field for CPRI over line rate is too high (e.g., CPRI option 3: 2.4576 Gbps). Thus
TDM-PON contains the information for the proper opera- it is essential to reduce the CPRI data rate to enable efficient
tion of the system: timestamp, latency setting, connection accommodation in a TDM-PON system. One practical way of
information, CPRI frame information, etc. achieving this is the use of IQ data compression [16–19].
In CPRI, only the IQ data field is compressed; the control
The CECs are equipped with a jitter absorber to meet
words are not compressed. Let us define compression ratio
the jitter requirements imposed by CPRI. The timestamp
as the ratio of the compressed IQ data and control words to
is generated when the first CPRI basic frame of an
the original CPRI signal.
Ethernet frame arrives at the transmitter side of a CEC,
T 1 . The target value of the latency between CECs is pre- We consider two scenarios, type A and type B, in imple-
liminarily set to a certain value, T 2 . The jitter absorber menting the compression technique (Fig. 4). In type A, the
buffers recovered CPRI frames and transmits them at the compressors and decompressors are implemented inside
time of T 1  T 2. Therefore, the latency between BBUs both the BBU and RRH. The transmission rate is reduced
and RRHs is kept at the constant value of T 2, and T 2 should to a lower line rate in the CPRI and the PON bandwidth
be larger than the maximum delay jitter due to the is efficiently utilized. Moreover, the transceiver costs of the
packetizing and multiplexing of CPRI signals. The CECs BBU and RRH can be reduced by using a lower CPRI
perform the above functions in both uplink and downlink option. In type B, the compressors and decompressors
transmissions. are implemented outside the BBU and RRH. For the case
shown in Fig. 4, they are implemented inside the CECs.
To achieve the high-precision clock transport required
Although this does not reduce the BBU and RRH trans-
for CPRI, the CECs also implement the synchronization
ceiver costs, it reduces the transmission rate in the PON
technique. The CEC-B extracts the reference clock from
and, accordingly, the PON bandwidth is efficiently utilized.
the CPRI signal in the downlink transmission and feeds
it to the OLT. In the TDM-PON system, the reference clock Moreover, in this scenario, the interface between the CECs
and local time are synchronized between the OLT and is not limited to CPRI and consequently the transmission
ONUs. The time of CEC-B is synchronized with the refer- rate can be flexibly reduced. In contrast, in the type A
ence clock, and time information, such as pulse-per-second scenario, the transmission rate is limited to one of the
(PPS) and time of day (ToD), is fed to the OLT for time CPRI options.
synchronization. The support of IEEE 802.1AS makes it There are lossy and lossless compression techniques.
possible to achieve synchronized time between the OLT Lossy compression techniques include those to reduce the
and ONU [15]. Therefore, the ONU provides the synchron- oversampling ratio, quantization bit number, etc. Lossless
ized clock and time to the CEC-R. compression techniques include linear prediction coding,
To achieve a low latency, we use a fixed bandwidth and entropy coding. In terms of wireless performance,
allocation (FBA) mechanism instead of the conventional
DBA in the TDM-PON. In DBA, the OLT allocates the time
slot on the basis of a requirement made by an ONU. This
leads to a very large round-trip delay from the time the
ONU requires transmitting the data to the time it actually
transmits them. In CPRI over TDM-PON, the bandwidth
required for each ONU is fixed since the CPRI line rate
is fixed. Therefore, the bandwidth can be allocated without
a requirement being made by the ONU, and the FBA
mechanism can be applied. In the FBA, the calculation
of upstream time slot allocation in the OLT is based on only
the preset CPRI bandwidth, and the grant to each ONU is
generated without requests from ONUs. Therefore, it is
possible to eliminate the round-trip delay and achieve
low latency.
Concerning the latency, the latencies of CEC processing,
PON processing, and compression processing are included
in the MFH latency. Therefore, the maximum reach of
MFH is shortened by these processing latencies. From the
viewpoint of system design, the maximum reach is defined Fig. 4. Implementation of the compression technique.

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Shibata et al. VOL. 7, NO. 11/NOVEMBER 2015/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. B19

lossless compression techniques are preferable since the TABLE II


original IQ data before the compression processing can SYNCHRONIZATION ACCURACY
be obtained after decompression processing. However, lossy Measured Value CPRI Requirement
compression techniques generally achieve lower compres-
sion ratios with a slight degradation in signal quality. Maximum delay 1.164∕−1.035 ns 8.138 ns
jitter in uplink
Actually, the open radio equipment interface (ORI) stan-
Maximum delay 1.225∕−0.974 ns
dard [16,17], in which IQ data compression techniques
jitter in downlink
are discussed with compliance to CPRI standards, adopts Frequency accuracy 0.815∕−0.773 ppb 2 ppb
lossy compression techniques. We used a lossy compression
technique in our experiments to achieve a higher accommo-
dation of RRHs.
B. Signal Quality

III. EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF CPRI OVER The error vector magnitude (EVM) of the wireless signal
TDM-PON was evaluated at the RRH. Figure 5(a) shows the 64-QAM
constellation in the LTE downlink signal measured at the
RRH when the BBU and RRH were directly connected; the
We developed a prototype of CPRI over Ethernet-based
EVM was 0.14%. Figure 5(b) shows the constellation in
TDM-PON to confirm its feasibility. The CEC functions
the CPRI over TDM-PON; the EVM was again 0.14%.
are implemented on a field-programmable gate array. A
These results confirm that CPRI signals can be transmit-
10G-EPON prototype was used as the Ethernet-based
ted via a TDM-PON with no degradation in signal quality.
TDM-PON.
The performance of CPRI over TDM-PON with the
The experimental setup is the same as shown in Fig. 2.
implemented compression technique was also evaluated.
The CPRI line rate was set to 2.4576 Gbps (option 3), which
Table III summarizes the experimental results. It was
can transmit a 20 MHz 2 × 2 MIMO wireless signal with
found that the wireless signal degraded as the compression
15 bit quantization. Table I summarizes the BBU and
ratio r improved. The EVM was 0.85% when r  0.45, and
RRH configurations used in the experiments, which were
it was 2.49% when r  0.38. Although the compression
changed in accordance with the values to be measured.
and decompression processing made the EVM as high as
Since fiber length gives only latency offset in the proper
2.49%, the EVM meets the requirement of the ORI stan-
TDM-PON operation and we would like to examine the
dard (3%) at most [16]. Moreover, the EVM is defined as
processing delay in TDM-PON equipment, the OLT and
a root-mean-squared value, as reported in [20], and the
ONU were connected in a back-to-back configuration. A
EVM due to compression degrades the allowable EVM for
lossy IQ data compression technique was implemented
a wireless system using 64-QAM modulation only 0.4%
on the BBU and RRH.
from 8%.

A. Synchronization Accuracy

Table II shows the measured synchronization accuracy


and the CPRI requirements. The measured peak-to-peak
delay jitter in uplink was 1.164∕−1.035 ns, and that in
downlink was 1.225∕−0.974 ns. Both of these values are
lower than the CPRI requirement of 8.138 ns [5] thanks
to the jitter reduction and high-precision clock transport
techniques. The frequency accuracy measured at the RRH
was 0.815∕−0.773 ppb, which is lower than the CPRI (a) (b)
requirement of 2 ppb [5]. These results confirm that
the developed CPRI over TDM-PON system meets the syn- Fig. 5. Measured constellations. (a) CPRI over TDM-PON and (b)
chronization accuracy requirements of the CPRI standard. without TDM-PON.

TABLE I
BBU AND RRH CONFIGURATIONS
TABLE III
Setup No. 1 Setup No. 2 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS WHEN USING A COMPRESSION
BBU CPRI tester Vector signal generator TECHNIQUE
with CPRI interface
Measured Value ORI Requirement
RRH CPRI tester Signal analyzer with
CPRI interface EVM 0.85% (r  0.45) 3%
Measured value Link delay jitter Frequency accuracy 2.49% (r  0.38)
latency constellation (EVM) Latency 10.5 μs 20 μs

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B20 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 7, NO. 11/NOVEMBER 2015 Shibata et al.

C. Latency A. Number of Supportable ONUs

Figure 6 shows the measured latency of the CPRI signal First, we evaluated the number of supportable ONUs
between the BBU and RRH when not using compression within a latency limit. The feasibility of the compression
techniques. In the experiments, we were able to success- ratio of 0.45 was confirmed in Section III, so the CPRI line
fully connect at most four ONUs. In downlink transmis- rate was assumed to be reduced to 1.2288 Gbps (option 2) in
sions, the latencies were almost the same at about 19 μs the type A scenario. In the type B scenario, the transmis-
regardless of the number of ONUs. In uplink transmis- sion rate was reduced to 1.11 Gbps when r  0.45, and to
sions, the latency was lower than 1 ms thanks to the FBA, 0.9216 Gbps when r  0.38.
but it gradually increased as the number of ONUs Figure 7 shows the calculated latency of uplink trans-
increased; this is due to the trade-off between optical band- missions. When the compression technique was not used,
width efficiency and latency. Shorter PON packets (grant the numerical results in Fig. 7 were found to agree well
lengths) provide lower latency since each ONU’s transmis- with the measured results in Fig. 6. The latencies in-
sion interval is reduced, but the bandwidth efficiency is de- creased with the use of the compression technique when
graded due to overheads such as PON header and guard there were fewer than four ONUs, but a higher number
time. When fewer than four ONUs were connected, a com- of ONUs could be connected while still suppressing the la-
paratively low latency was achieved by using short PON tency increase. We also found that the latency decreased as
packets; the latency was less than 41 μs. However, when the compression ratio improved.
four ONUs were connected, the latency increased to 162 μs
since longer PON packets were used to achieve a high The latency requirement in the MFH is reported to be
bandwidth efficiency for supporting four ONUs. 250 μs in [13]. If the latency requirement for the TDM-
PON system, excluding fiber propagation, were 100 μs, the
Table III also shows the measured latency due to com- compression technique would be able to enhance the num-
pression and decompression processing. The additional ber of supportable ONUs from three to seven in the type
latency due to compression processing was 10.5 μs regard- A and type B scenarios with r  0.45, and from three to
less of the compression ratio. The ORI standard [16] eight in type B with r  0.38.
stipulates that latency should not exceed 100 μs and that
lower than 20 μs is preferable. Therefore, the results
obtained confirmed that CPRI over TDM-PON with the B. Required Compression Ratio
implemented compression technique is feasible in terms
of the ORI standard. Figure 8 shows the required compression ratio for sup-
porting a certain number of ONUs when the processing
latency in the MFH is limited to 100 or 150 μs. We found
IV. NUMERICAL EVALUATION ON THE EFFECTS OF THE that the number of supportable ONUs could be increased
COMPRESSION TECHNIQUE by improving the compression ratio. If the latency limit in
the processing is relaxed, the optical bandwidth efficiency
In this section, the performance of CPRI over TDM-PON can be improved by using longer PON packets. In addition,
with the compression technique is numerically evaluated. the number of supportable ONUs can be increased with a
The original CPRI line rate was assumed to be 2.4576 Gbps given compression ratio; as an example, if r  0.45, the
(option 3). The latency due to compression and decompres- number of supportable ONUs is increased from seven to
sion processing was set to 10.5 μs. The following results are eight when the processing latency limit is relaxed from
obtained by any algorithm of the compression technique 100 to 150 μs.
with 10.5 μs latency.

Fig. 6. Measured latency as a function of the number of ONUs


without a compression technique. Fig. 7. Calculated latency.

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Shibata et al. VOL. 7, NO. 11/NOVEMBER 2015/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. B21

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B22 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 7, NO. 11/NOVEMBER 2015 Shibata et al.

in 2007 and 2009, respectively. In 2009, he joined the NTT Access Youichi Fukada received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics
Network Service Systems Laboratories, where he engaged in the from Chiba University, Chiba, Japan, in 1988 and 1990, respec-
research of wireless communication systems. Since 2012, he has tively. In 1990, he joined NTT Transmission Systems Laboratories,
been engaged in the research of optical-wireless converged where he was involved in research and development on optical
networks. He is a member of the Institute of Electronics, fiber amplifiers, WDM-based WAN systems, etc. He is a Member
Information, and Communication Engineers (IEICE), Japan. of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication
Engineers (IEICE) of Japan. From 2003 to 2005, he was the
Secretary of the IEICE Technical Group on Communication
Systems.
Takayoshi Tashiro received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in
electronic, information, and energy engineering from Osaka
University, Osaka, Japan, in 2005 and 2007, respectively. In 2007, Jun Terada (M’02) received the B.E. degree in science and engi-
he joined NTT Access Network Service Systems Laboratories, neering and M.E. degree in computer science from Keio University,
Yokosuka, Japan. He has been involved in research on lifeline com- Kanagawa, Japan, in 1993 and 1995, respectively. In 1995, he
munication in optical access systems, radio over fiber technologies, joined the NTT LSI Laboratories, where he was engaged in re-
and Ethernet synchronization technologies. He is a Member of the search and development of low-voltage analog circuits, especially
Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication A/D and D/A converters. From 1999, he was engaged in developing
Engineers (IEICE) of Japan. small and low-power wireless systems for sensor networks.
From 2006, he was engaged in high-speed front-end circuits for
optical transceivers. He is now a Senior Research Engineer and
a Supervisor at the NTT Access Network Service Systems
Shigeru Kuwano (M’92) received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. Laboratories, where he is responsible for R&D management of
degrees in communication engineering, from Osaka University, optical and wireless converged access networks. He is a member
Osaka, Japan in 1987, 1989, and 1992, respectively. He joined of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication
NTT Corporation in 1992, where he engaged in research and Engineers (IEICE) of Japan, and he has served as a member
development of the optical transmission system, optical network- of the technical program committee of the Symposium on VLSI
ing, LAN technology-based networks, and wireless systems. He is Circuits and is currently serving the Asian Solid-State Circuits
now a Senior Research Engineer at NTT Access Network Service Conference (A-SSCC) since 2012.
Systems Laboratories and is working on the research and develop-
ment of optical and wireless converged networks. He is a Member
of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Akihiro Otaka received the B.S. and M.S. in physics from the
Engineers (IEICE) of Japan. University of Tokyo in 1989 and 1991, respectively. He joined
NTT in 1991 and engaged in developing optical lithography tech-
nologies for LSI fabrication. In 1998, he began working on the de-
velopment and standardization of optical access systems such as
Naohiko Yuki received the B.S. and M.E. degrees in information gigabit and 10 gigabit EPON. From 2010 to 2014, he was with
engineering from Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan, in the NTT EAST R&D Center, where he worked on optical access,
1987 and 1989, respectively. In 1989, he joined NTT LSI wireless access, and wireless home networks. He joined NTT
Laboratories, where he was involved in research and develop- Access Network Service Systems Laboratories in 2014. He is a
ment on a mixed-signal integrated circuit. He is now a Senior member of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and
Research Engineer at the NTT Access Network Service Communication Engineers (IEICE), Japan, and the Japan
Systems Laboratories. Society of Applied Physics (JSAP).

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