At present, 5G is in the crucial stage of the formation of technical
standards. Major countries and operators in the world have started the 5G test
in succession and successively issued strategic plans to carry out industrial
layout and seize strategic high ground. China is also actively promoting the 5G
technology research and industrialization, 5G technology research and
development testing, international standardization support continue to make new
progress. Recently, more than three major operators 5G infrastructure, total
spending within seven years will reach 180 billion U.S. dollars heavy news came
out, the 5G topic to an unprecedented peak.
As we all know, the future of 5G depends on small base stations.
When the coverage of base stations is getting smaller and smaller, the number of
base stations will increase exponentially. Taking the example of 3.5GHz, the
number of base stations of 3.5GHz is more than the number of base stations of
800MHz and 1.8GHz Doubles. If it is planned more than 6GHz, the number of base
stations will be more. If it is planned to 26GHz above, it does not know it
will reach how many times. Therefore, a substantial increase in the number of
base stations is an inevitable result, and the interconnection between base
stations requires a lot of fiber. It is reported that at present, the number of
base stations in China has reached more than 5 million, while the future
development of 5G, conservative forecasts will reach 10 million or more, if the
high-band, or even more.
Obviously, optical communication and 5G have met by chance.
Accordingly, what is the impact of 5G on optical communications? The
opportunities that 5G brings to optical communication are mainly including
three parts: optical fibers, optical transceivers and optical network.
1. First, optical fiber is the first beneficiary. 5G band is high
and the number of base stations may be 2-3 times. If following the full
coverage requirements, according to Fiber Broadband Association estimates, 5G
fiber usage will be 16 times more than 4G. Consider China's 4G base station
density is very high, the urban area only a few hundred meters spacing, it is
estimated that the amount of 5G fiber is 4G 2-3 times.
2. Second, optical transceiver module is the second beneficiary.
Assuming that the 5G base station is 2-3 times as much as 4G, considering the
medium / backhaul module, it is expected to bring tens of millions of 25GHz
high-speed optical module usage. 5G flat architecture to the traditional huge
capacity and cost pressures, which requires a large number of optical transceivers
to support.
3. Moreover, high-speed optical access network systems and optical
devices are the third beneficiaries. The 5G architecture enables several
decades of backhaul / midamble / preamble capacity up to tens of hundreds of
Gbps levels and requires the introduction of 25G / 50G based CWDM or WDM for
tunable lasers, tunable filters and CWDM / WDM devices High cost performance
requirements; for TWDM PON systems, the demand for eCPRI and even edge ROADM
systems is likely to increase significantly.
To sum up, we are currently at the pinnacle of opportunities and
challenges in the 5G era. As the leading optical communications industry and
optical component manufacturer in the 5G era, Gigalight has been closely following the market and moving ahead of 2016 in
preparation for the beginning of 5G optical device product lines. At present, Gigalight
owns a complete line of professional optical modules and other products. In
particular, a large number of high-speed new products are launched in last year:
100G QSFP28 CWDM4, 100G QSFP28 PSM4, and 200G QSFP DD SR8.
