A Preliminary Assessment of Midhaul Links at 140 GHz using Ray-Tracing
For network operators, this provides an initial assessment of THz midhaul links in urban environments, though the results are preliminary and based on simulation.
This paper evaluates the feasibility of using 140 GHz wireless links for midhaul transport in 5G networks, finding that such links with 3GPP option 2 High Layer Split are a promising technology based on ray-tracing simulations.
The ever-growing demand for mobile data necessitates a transport network architecture that can withstand the 5G-and-beyond multi-Gbps traffic requirements. To cater for such unprecedented demand, studies are being conducted to incorporate TeraHertz (THz) communications in future mobile networks. In this paper, we consider an urban environment and evaluate the feasibility of THz wireless midhaul links for the transport networks between the Central Units (CU) and Distributed Units (DU) in a disaggregated 5G network architecture with functional splits. Our goal is to study the feasibility of midhaul links at 140 GHz by minimizing the number of required CUs to serve all the DUs. To this end, we define several policies for selecting CU and DU nodes in order to determine the peak data rate that can be supported over each link between a CU and DU. Our numerical results based on ray-tracing suggest that wireless links at 140 GHz with 3GPP option 2 as High Layer Split (HLS) represents a promising technology for midhaul transport networks.