Planning a Cost-Effective Delay-Constrained Passive Optical Network for 5G Fronthaul

With the rapid growth in the telecommunications industry moving towards 5G and beyond (5GB) and the emergence of data-hungry and time-sensitive applications, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are faced with a considerable challenge to keep up with these new demands. Cloud radio access network (CRAN) has emerged as a cost-effective architecture that improves 5GB performance. The fronthaul segment of the CRAN necessitates a high-capacity and low-latency connection. Optical technologies presented by Passive Optical Networks (PON) have gained attention as a promising technology to meet the fronthaul challenges. In this paper, we proposed an Integer Linear Program (ILP) that optimizes the total cost of ownership (TCO) for 5G using CRAN architecture under different delay thresholds. We considered the Time and Wavelength Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Network (TWDM-PON) as a fronthaul with different splitting ratios.