News
ADVA Optical Networking Plays Key Role in 5G-XHaul Research and Development Network
March 2016 by Marc Jacob
ADVA Optical Networking announced its involvement in the 5G-XHaul project. The company’s engineers and equipment are playing a central role in the EU-funded initiative to develop the next generation of mobile networks and services. ADVA Optical Networking’s WDM-PON technology is being used to create optical links between access points, antennae and core networks in the research project’s testbeds. The initiative, which is part of the EU Horizon 2020 5G Infrastructure Public-Private Partnership (5G PPP), aims to revolutionize fronthaul and backhaul networks to create the infrastructure needed for LTE-Advanced connectivity. The three-year project is a pan-European collaboration bringing together market-leading companies, research institutes and universities in order to create the new 5G standard and address the rapidly growing need for higher data rates.
The 5G-XHaul project will culminate in 2018 with ADVA Optical Networking’s team jointly conducting a large-scale field trial in Bristol, UK. This city-wide demonstration will showcase how flexibility in the passive network can be increased with the highly-efficient and cost-effective tuneable lasers built into ADVA Optical Networking’s WDM-PONs. Funding for the unique collaboration is provided by the EU’s 5G PPP, the world’s biggest information and communication research program. The ultimate aim of the project is to rethink fronthaul and backhaul networks from the system and architecture levels all the way down to the physical layer. It’s goal is to enable dynamic allocation of network resources through network functions virtualization and software-defined networking, delivering the increased capacity needed for 5G as well as providing radical improvements to energy efficiency.
