Optical Slot Switching Latency in Mobile Backhaul Networks

Next generation mobile networks will offer high data rates to users utilizing new radio access technologies. In addition, new applications as well as devices such as smartphones and tablets will result in a rapid mobile traffic growth. Consequently, a rapid increase of the load in the mobile backhaul segment is expected, resulting in turn into a substantial increase of the energy consumption. Moreover, by allowing the possibility of direct communications between base-stations, the traffic pattern turns into an any-to-any node communication in the next generation mobile networks. An optical mobile backhaul network is proposed as the suitable solution to transport the mobile user data in an energy efficient fashion while supporting this any-to-any traffic exchanges and ensuring a low latency. In this paper we evaluate, analytically and by simulation, the latency in such next generation optical mobile backhaul networks for realistic scenarios. We also study the impact of several classes of service handling.