Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
This article discusses novel wireless and optical technologies to address the radical new challenges of small cell mobile backhaul (MBH). Specifically, we examine 60 GHz and 70-80 GHz millimeter-wave technologies for high-capacity last mile and pre-aggregation backhaul, and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access passive optical networks as the optical technology complement for enabling flexible cost-efficient hybrid backhaul coverage. Flexible high-capacity hybrid millimeter wave/optical MBH network operation is next verified via network simulations in the context of a demanding, urban small-cell backhaul application. Finally, a novel software defined networking tool called the backhaul resource manager is introduced for automated dynamic resource provisioning and capacity-aware path computation that improves fairness, network utilization and end-to-end user quality of experience. The introduction of the novel wireless, optical, and software-defined technologies thus has the potential to truly revolutionize the future MBH network.
Bojic et al. (Sun,) studied this question.