5G Xhaul and service convergence: transmission, switching and automation enabling technologies

The article provides a review of the Xhaul network in terms of architecture, transmission, switching, and service provisioning automation, with the objective to illustrate the state of the art and indicate the open issues to be addressed. Xhaul is the new transport network segment that covers the first 15-20 km from the access site, replacing today point-to-point fronthaul connections. Due to the ...