Network densification, particularly with increasing carrier deployments of small cells, enables pinpoint coverage and capacity for data-hungry subscribers. But, as more and more access points go into the field, the more difficult it becomes to manage and optimize a network. This is where virtualization technologies, used to automatically and dynamically manage network traffic and spectrum allocation, come into play, and virtualization depends on fiber, according to Commscope VP of Portfolio Marketing Phillip Sorrells.
“One of our key themes that we came in to talk about was virtualization, and what Commscope is doing to enable virtualization to actually happen in the physical layer. We were really excited to spend some time talking to some of our technology partners about how the 5G standard is evolving and what the architecture is starting to really firm up around.” He said all of the access points would need fiber for fronthaul, backhaul and “aggregation into clouds.
Click here to view a video interview with Sorrells.Â
Sorrells then explained how Commscope’s Wideband Multimode Fiber, which uses wide division multiplexing to quadruple capacity compared to OM4 multimode fiber, fits into the centralization of baseband processors in the context of network densification.
Baseband processors “have got to go somewhere,” he said. “They’re going to go into small cabinets, they’re going to go into central offices, they’re going to go into locations that look like a data center. One our big initiatives is development of ultra-dense fiber connectivity in data-center-type applications. We’re developing technology so we can package more and more fiber connections to handle denser and denser processors. All of that is in place…to kind of really be the physical empowerment of all the virtualization technology that’s in work today.”
