Re: Fronthaul is a relative of DAS in a wayHi Dan, you are totally right, in some scenarios it is really a competing technology, especially if you think that it is possible to do RAN Sharing. So you could share the RRH among different operators.
DAS and CPRI are being considered here in some scenarios for the Olympic games in 2016, where you cannot install so many telecom equipment in a same place.
DAS is better in some cases, CPRI is better in other cases.
Re: Fronthaul is a relative of DAS in a wayThanks, just heard an operator talk about mobile networks of the future where the packet spends the least time in the air possible, so....
Hi Dan, The first time I heard the phrase fronthaul I thought the speaker was making it up on the spot.
Fronthaul, and C-RAN in general, are interesting technologies and it will be interesting to see how they spread across the globe in the next few years. Some Asian operators are well down this path already and we've seen an uptick in interest in Europe and the Americas recently so it is certainly an area that many operators are looking into.
It is an area of networking that could be a great opportunity for optical networking vendors as operators move from the initial fronthaul over fibre to fronthaul over WDM. If they can support the tough latency and sync requirements that the CPRI and OBSAI standards require. Of course, fibre availability will be a key requirement and perhaps a limiting factor in some locations.
As an industry move that has largely been driven by the wireless operators rather than vendors it has some real traction behind it. The whole C-RAN business case (consolidated BBU clusters to support current and future wireless network architecture trends and lower power costs and space in cell sites) is the main driver for fronthaul as you mentioned in your piece. So fronthaul plays an important supporting role to C-RAN that can make or break the overall C-RAN business case.
Re: Fronthaul is a relative of DAS in a wayThat's what I was guessing about too. With the tremendous surge in mobile device useage, what's going to be the best technical while still economic solutuion to handling all the new traffic at speeds customers want or need?
Re: Fronthaul is a relative of DAS in a wayIt sounds like fronthaul is going to be needed in some of the most densely packed urban areas in order to deliver the amount of data people require. There is only so much physical space in these areas.
Would this be the most important application for this?
Fronthaul is a relative of DAS in a wayFronthaul is not dissimiliar to DAS in concept. The difference being that traditional distributed antenna systems share bandwidth whereas using the point-to-point fiber links gets each RRH a really fast connection.
DAS and CPRI are being considered here in some scenarios for the Olympic games in 2016, where you cannot install so many telecom equipment in a same place.
DAS is better in some cases, CPRI is better in other cases.