Optical Network Evolution Towards 5G

Dear Colleagues,

Advanced mobile techniques and optical networks are strictly connected within the emerging cloud radio access network scenario to provide high speed, low latency transport solutions. The evolution of optical networks to provide scalable and flexible front-haul and mid-haul solutions are driven by key 5G technologies, including massive MIMO, ultra-high network density, heterogeneous device environment, and enhanced CPRI solutions, and Ethernet-based front-haul solutions. Passive and active solutions to extensively support WDM technologies with the quality of service required, in both indoor and outdoor contexts, are mandatory as a consequence of the increasing number of antennas per cell, cell density, and function centralization. Low and deterministic latency is one of the key enablers both for 5G applications and architectures. SDN-controlled virtual networking mechanisms to support reconfiguration capability and function assignment in an emerging service scenario aim at achieving unprecedented flexibility and performance. This Special Issue will collect the most recent studies and applications describing optical network evolution toward a next generation converged connectivity. Welcome topics include, but are not strictly limited to:

• Optical networks for front-haul and back-haul
• Optimized solutions for network functional splits and placement
• Techniques for time-sensitive optical networking
• Reconfigurable WDM optical networks for 5G support
• SDN-controlled optical networks for 5G
• Cloud RAN deployment and network virtualization
• Reliable optical networks and function placement in C-RAN
• Traffic aggregation in C-RAN with latency constraints
• Optical network solutions for high density contexts
• 5G transport networks and convergence applications
• Optical Ethernet experiments and applications

Prof. Dr. Carla Raffaelli
Prof. Dr. Steinar Bjornstadt
Dr. David T Chen
Guest Editors

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