Wheel‐based 5G fronthaul/backhaul hybrid MDM‐NGPON/FSO system under Gamma‐Gamma turbulence and weather effects

Abstract

SummaryThis work presents the bidirectional and symmetric 40 Gbps wheel architecture comprising 16 channels‐based bidirectional hybrid next generation passive optical network with free space optics (NGPON/FSO) system using mode division multiplexing (MDM) scheme. The system incorporates a low‐cost high bandwidth and integrated time and wavelength division multiplexing with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (TWDM‐OFDM) for data transmission over mixed fiber‐FSO links to various end users at donut modes 0 and 1. This system enhances the fifth generation (5G)‐based networks reliability, survivability, and flexibility, especially in rural places where the core fiber link may be damaged/destroyed under diverse turbulent and weather conditions. The obtained results depict the faithful multimode fiber range of 100 km with fixed FSO range of 100 m at −17 dBm receiver sensitivity and low power penalty of 0.2 dB at 10−9 bit error rate. Maximum FSO range of 2800 m under weak‐to‐strong Gamma‐Gamma turbulence and the effect of fog, rain, snow, and snow with rain can be obtained successfully with fixed 50 km fiber length. Also, the proposed wheel architecture provides superior performance over hybrid ring‐mesh architecture with high split ratio of 1:64. Moreover, the system can sustain up to 70 remote nodes at symmetric 10 Gbps throughput providing high gain, high optical signal‐to‐noise ratio, and low noise figure. The comparative literature work also reveals that the proposed architecture offers high bandwidth, security, long‐reach, and cost‐effectiveness in 5G fronthaul/backhaul networks.