The transport networks have a key role fifth in the support of demands of any telecommunications system. The fifth generation of mobile communication systems, the 5G, seeks to support a highly digitalized society, which has high operational demands. CRA (Centralized radio architecture) are emerging as a technically capable transport alternative to support 5G. Such solution divides the transport network into two sections, backhaul and fronthaul, which can be subdivided into several levels of links, whether optical, metallic or based on microwave. The viability of any technology to support the 5G does not only depend of technical requirements, whether traffic, coverage, availability or others, but also of the installation and operation economic aspects of the technologies. In this context, this work performs an technical and economic analysis for CRAs attending the indoor environment in the 5G context. To this end, a reference traffic forecast model is utilized and a set of models for dimensioning, predicting fault behavior and costs have been proposed and developed, which are generic and can be applied to different types of networks configurations or environments, whether indoor or outdoor, in a way that the two last mentioned models are based on a Markovian model solved by simulation. The analysis focused on CRAs installed in the indoor environment, where users spend most of their time, considering a high-density urban scenario, fronthaul with optical and metallic link levels or only metallic, as well PON (Passive Optical Network) based backhaul. The considered fronthaul alternatives were optical-metallic hybrid using 10 and 32 Gbps bidirectional transceivers, as well as all-metallic using the standard G.(mg)fast, making use or not of the phantom mode transmission, which is a technique to create virtual differential channels from real twisted pairs, resulting in increased capacity for metallic cables. The PON considered standards for the backhaul are 40 Gigabit PON and wavelength division multiplexing PON. The considered protection topologies against equipment failures for the PON backhaul are basic (unprotected), protected at the feeder level, protected at the feeder level and optical line terminal, and protected at the optical line terminal and at both levels feeder and distribution). The obtained results indicates that the best fronthaul alternative for CRA, supporting a average building of a high density urban scenario, is the all metallic using the standard G.(mg)fast with phantom mode transmission. In addition, they also indicate that PONs can be viable as backhaul 5G if protection schemes are used, and that in a dense urban setting, the 40 Gigabit PON standard is technically and economically the most viable for CRAs backhaul.
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