Requirements and evaluation of copper-based mobile backhaul for small cells LTE networks

The increasing demand for capacity has been driving the wireless communication standards to provide support to the coexistence of macro and small cells. The backhaul, which is the link between the radio access network and the backbone, is of increasing importance in this scenario. Line-of-sight microwave radio and optical fiber are the preferred choices and widely adopted for the mobile backhaul (MBH) of macrocells. However, in many situations of practical interest, both options are not feasible due to cost and logistics. This work evaluates the backhaul of small cells, focusing on the adoption of copper pairs. Opnet is used to evaluate MBH requirements in specific scenarios taking into consideration QoS provisioning. Assuming traffic demands for LTE and LTE-Advanced, VDSL2 and G.fast technologies are evaluated and the results show that even with a heavy load of video, these technologies can accommodate the small cell MBH traffic.