摘要
5G-Crosshaul aims at developing an adaptive, sharable, cost-efficient 5G transport network solution integrating the fronthaul and backhaul segments of the network. This transport network will flexibly interconnect distributed 5G radio access and core network functions, hosted on in-network cloud nodes, through the implementation of two novel building blocks: 1) a control infrastructure using a unified, abstract network model for control plane integration (5G-Crosshaul Control Infrastructure, XCI); 2) a unified data plane encompassing innovative high-capacity transmission technologies and novel deterministic-latency switch architectures (5GCrosshaul Packet Forwarding Element, XFE). 5G-Crosshaul will greatly simplify network operations despite growing technological diversity. It will hence enable system-wide optimization of Quality of Service (QoS) and energy usage as well as network-aware application development.