Network Challenges In the 5G Era
With the booming development of IoT, telematics and other technologies, the types and amount of access terminals in the network are increasing. Facing this trend, 5G wireless network has the potential to realize the real "Internet of Everything". It is estimated that by 2030, the total number of mobile communication devices globally will reach 100 billion magnitudes. Mobile data traffic will increase by approximately 20,000 times compared to 2010. Data traffic in mobile networks is uneven in distribution and varies with time, place, and application, which brings great pressure to network transmission. Therefore, the new requirements of 5G networks requires innovative solutions to cope with this change.

Figure 1 Current Mobile Backhaul Structure

Figure 1 shows the most common mobile hop to hop backhaul structure in current networks. The main bearer technology is IP/MPLS or MPLS-TP with a capacity of 10G per access ring. Each ring typically has 6-8 nodes that carries 2G/3G/4G BTS services. This structure has been successful in the 4G era. However, the current network has encountered some bottlenecks as the bandwidth and access ring capacity have increased in the 5G era as shown in Figure 2. It is evident the increase in bandiwidth is a rigid demand, and as the amount of nodes and distance increase per access ring the other challenge is how to reduce the latency with more access nodes and longer ring distance.