The University of Glasgow has established a 5G testbed in partnership with Nokia and UK altnet CityFibre. The testbed has been used to demonstrate the use of 25G PON to support 5G backhaul requirements, including a demonstration of a holographic call.
The recent demonstration saw three 5G sites backhauled to core infrastructure via 25G PON. At the same time, the PON network support 10G XGS-PON traffic to demonstrate co-existence of 25G and 10G PON on the same infrastructure. In addition to the holographic call, the network also supported teleoperation of a robotic arm and 8K video streaming.
"Backhaul connectivity is the real backbone of 5G networks and could be a bottleneck for achieving high end-to-end performance if not well designed to meet demands,” commented Professor Muhammad Imran, professor of communication systems and director, Communications Sensing and Imaging Group, University of Glasgow. “In partnership with Nokia and CityFibre, we have demonstrated on our 5G testbed how Nokia’s next-generation 25G PON transport solution can improve 5G user experience by supporting 3D telepresence and remote robotic control use cases.”
“Nokia and the University of Glasgow 5G Centre have demonstrated the ease at which CityFibre’s Full Fibre passive optical networks can scale and evolve to meet tomorrow’s technology requirements. This better-by-design approach to digital infrastructure means we can accommodate the low-latency backhaul requirements of 4G and 5G mobile operators and enable the development of new and exciting high-bandwidth applications,” said Matt Yarwood, network architect at CityFibre.
“This trial has been hugely encouraging. 25G PON will be a game-changer with mission-critical 5G networks increasingly requiring more redundancy. And it’s proven it can be run on exactly the same fiber running XGS-PON traffic,” added Phil Siveter, CEO Nokia UK.