5G Backhaul Challenges and Emerging Research Directions: A Survey

By Mona Jaber, Muhammad Ali Imran, Rahim Tafazolli, Anvar Tukmanov. IEEE Access, 2016

514 citations recorded by the source corpus.

5G is the next cellular generation and is expected to quench the growing thirst for taxing data rates and to enable the Internet of Things. Focused research and standardization work have been addressing the corresponding challenges from the radio perspective while employing advanced features, such as network densification, massive multiple-input-multiple-output antennae, coordinated multi-point processing, inter-cell interference mitigation techniques, carrier aggregation, and new spectrum exploration. Nevertheless, a new bottleneck has emerged: the backhaul. The ultra-dense and heavy traffic cells should be connected to the core network through the backhaul, often with extreme requirements in terms of capacity, latency, availability, energy, and cost efficiency. This pioneering survey explains the 5G backhaul paradigm, presents a critical analysis of legacy, cutting-edge solutions, and new trends in backhauling, and proposes a novel consolidated 5G backhaul framework. A new joint radio access and backhaul perspective is proposed for the evaluation of backhaul technologies which reinforces the belief that no single solution can solve the holistic 5G backhaul problem. This paper also reveals hidden advantages and shortcomings of backhaul solutions, which are not evident when backhaul technologies are inspected as an independent part of the 5G network. This survey is key in identifying essential catalysts that are believed to jointly pave the way to solving the beyond-2020 backhauling challenge. Lessons learned, unsolved challenges, and a new consolidated 5G backhaul vision are thus presented.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Media Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/65766af5c39fa3af8843824678d1f1e05a1304c6

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Citations in the corpus

Internet of Things (IoT) for Next-Generation Smart Systems: A Review of Current Challenges, Future Trends and Prospects for Emerging 5G-IoT Scenarios (2020, methodology): “The technique includes coordinated scheduling and joint transmission [67].”
A Survey on Mobile Augmented Reality With 5G Mobile Edge Computing: Architectures, Applications, and Technical Aspects (2021, background): “The backhaul is referred to the set of links that connects the access nodes to the core network, and present backhaul is primarily built with microwave links and ﬁber links [120].”
A Survey on Low Latency Towards 5G: RAN, Core Network and Caching Solutions (2017, background): “In the literature, surveys on 5G network including architecture [3], [4], SDN/NFV/MEC based core network [9], [10], 2: A candidate architecture for 5G cellular network [8]. caching [11], [12], backhaul [13], resource management [14] and data centric network [15], [16] are available.”
Security for 5G and Beyond (2019, background): “1) Security Challenges: The backhaul network comprise network elements and communication channels between the base station and the core network [152].”
A Key 6G Challenge and Opportunity—Connecting the Base of the Pyramid: A Survey on Rural Connectivity (2020, methodology): “In addition, Jaber et al. [42] discuss challenges for 5G back-haul connectivity in order to meet the stringent requirements of data rate and latency at the 5G RAN.”
Underwater Optical Wireless Communications, Networking, and Localization: A Survey (2018, background): “However, FSO communication focuses more on long-range and high data rate outdoor terrestrial optical wireless communication (TOWC) applications such as wireless X-hauling [117].”