NGFI (Next Generation Fronthaul Interface) native RoE (Radio over Ethernet)

Confidential – Not to be Circulated www.comcores.com

Comcores Radio over Ethernet Gateway for Future

Fronthaul Networks

FG IMT-2020 Workshop and Demo Day

Anders Lund, Comcores ApS

Bomin Li, Comcores ApS

Thomas Nørgaard, Comcores ApS

www.comcores.comConfidential – Not to be Circulated

2

Agenda

About Comcores

Motivation for Ethernet Based Fronthaul

Comcores Overview on next generation fronthaul networks

Demo setup

Demo results

Comcores Headquarter


3

About Comcores

Established in 2014

Globally oriented high-tech company, headquartered in Scion DTU Science Park, 20 min outside Copenhagen, Denmark

IP cores and design services for communication systems

Specialized in digital radio systems

Comcores Headquarter


4

Motivation for Ethernet Based Fronthaul New fronthaul interface technologies are required to satisfy various RAN

deployment and evolution requirements, and reduce fronthaul transmission costs

Current dedicated point-to-point connection between BBUs and RRUs (such as CPRI/OBSAI) will evolve to many-to-many fronthaul mainstream switch networks (such as Ethernet) due to cost, availability and flexibility

Fronthaul architecture is migrating from traditional RAN where single BBU connects to single/few RRUs to architectures where multiple centralized BBUs connect to multiple RRUs making a packet switched technology ideal

Ethernet is a widely adopted & nearly ubiquitous standard technology

CPRI

BasebandRadio

Eth

Radio

Baseband Pool

Radio

Radio

Packet Fronthaul

EthEth

Eth


5

Comcores Overview on next generation fronthaul networks

BaseBand

CPRI fiber connection

Virtual BBU Pool

BaseBandBaseBandBaseBand

RRHRF RRH

RRH RF

Time Sensitive Network (TSN)

SDN Controller

Aggregator

CPRIGW

C&M

Ethernet

Ethernet

RF

RF

L1 Offload


6

Comcores gateway

Fits on both radio and base band side

support of CPRI, new radio interface and high speed Ethernet

Comcores All-in-One RAU system

Virtual BBU

BackhaulEthernet Fronthaul

Network (NGFI)

RAU

Pico

Macro

All-in-One Pico

Comcores RAU system

CPRI

RF/DFENGFISplit x

L1 offloadSplit 4

RoE

Eth

ern

et T

SN M

AC

&

PC

S

Pico

Macro

vBBU

vBBU

L1 processing resources




L2/L3 processing resources

Orchestrator

RoEEt

her

net

TSN

M

AC

& P

CS

Virtual L1 resource pool

RAU

RAURAU

NGFISplit x

RoE

Eth

TSN

M

AC

&

PC

SRF/DFE

vBBU


7

Demo setup

IEEE P1914.3 - CPRI over Ethernet mapper/de-mapper

IEEE P1914.1 - Next Generation Fronthaul Interface

IEEE 802.3 - Time Sensitive Network features

IEEE 1588v2 – time stamp

BBU Gateway

TSN MACRoE RX

(Structure Agnostic)

RF(Spectrum Analyzer)

RRH Gateway

L1 OffloadRoE RX(Native)Varying number

of LTE modulated symbols

Control & Management

I

Q

TSN MACRoE TX

(Structure Agnostic)

RoE TX(Native) Varying number

of LTE modulated symbols

Control & Management

CPU baseband processing (ROM

pre-loaded)

Ethernet-based FH

CPRI tester(Sarokal)


NGFI (Split 4)

CPRI over Ethernet (Structure Aware)

RF

RoE RX(Structure

Aware)


CPRI over Ethernet (Structure Agnostic)

RoE TX(Structure Agnostic)


NGFI (Split 4)

CPRI over Ethernet (Structure Aware)

CPRI over Ethernet (Strucutre Agnostic

IEEE 1588v2


8

Lab setup

Xilinx VC709 FPGA demonstration platform

CPRI verification by Sarokal X-STEP tester

LTE demondulation verification by Keysight PXA spectrum analyzer


9

CPRI over Ethernet - motivation

C-RAN

Bridge to carry current CPRI flows in future Ethernet based fronthaul networks


10

CPRI over Ethernet - result

Synchronous traffic over asynchronous networks

Lossless transmission based on the clock recovery and delay control schemes


11

Intra-PHY Split Proof of Concept

Source: ”White Paper of Next Generation Fronthaul Interface”

SFP+

SFP+

TSN MAC RoE TxRAM

LTE Data ROM

BBU GEN

LTE Time

TSN MAC RoE Rx L1 DL OffloadRAM

LTE Time

AD9361

Keysight PXA Spectrum Analyzer

[email protected] MHz

I2C

MicroBlaze

AXI GPIO

AXI SPI

AD9361 Digital

interface

FMCOMMS3

Tx1

ctrl

Data interface

RF

122.88 MHz

FMC

Ref clk

Tx FIFO

eth_clk

BBU

RRH

Keysight MXG Signal Generator

10G Ethernet


12

PDSCH cell load

PDSCH cell load is dependent on the real traffic for Intra-PHY splits

Downlink shared channel for user data


13

Low load in a 10 MHz cell

Succesful cell synchronization

1 user allocated 1 RB (bottom)

Autodetection of cell configuration

Autodetection of user allocation


14

Peak load in a 10 MHz cell

Full allocation of user data (PDSCH)

< 1 % EVM

~160 Mbps load on Ethernet link

1:4 reduction compared to CPRI

www.comcores.com15

Acknowledgement

Technology

NGFI (Next Generation Fronthaul Interface) native RoE (Radio over Ethernet)