Comparison of Digital Signal Processing Approaches for Subcarrier Multiplexed 5G and Beyond Analog Fronthaul

Analog fronthaul transport architectures with digital signal processing at the end stations are promising as they have the potential to achieve high spectral efficiencies, increased flexibility and reduced latency. In this paper, two digital techniques for frequency domain multiplexing/de-multiplexing large numbers of channels are contrasted: one operates on the pre-Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) “frequency-domain” samples while the other does so on the post-IFFT “time-domain” samples. Performance criteria including computational complexity and sampling rate requirements are used in the comparison. Following modeling and simulation of the techniques, implemented within a radio-over-fiber transport architecture, error vector magnitude performance estimates are obtained. These results show that each technique has performance advantages under specific channel transport scenarios

Flexible and Efficient DSP-assisted Subcarrier Multiplexing for an Analog Mobile Fronthaul

The digital formation of an analog subcarrier multiplex employing in combination both a technique using pre-IFFT frequency-domain samples and one using post-IFFT time-domain samples is proposed and demonstrated. This combined technique enables a compromise for sampling rate requirements, while maintaining low complexity and good performance