5G

Conventionally, BBUs (Baseband Unit) used to be inside base station cabinets at the bottom of a mobile tower. With 5G networking, these BBUs are centralized with a single BBU unit now catering to multiple networking towers making the system less complex as well as more efficient and economical, not to mention the immense speed advantage associated with it. Fiber optic signals arriving from the RRU are converted to electrical signals at the BBU and after adjusting for the baseband frequencies, are further transported to the core network. Amphenol offers interconnect solutions ranging from high speed input output connectors, high speed cable assemblies, rugged connectors to power connectors and more for designing efficient functioning baseband units.

Intricately designed Antennas and Remote Radio Units precisely pick up the high-speed RF wave signals from a cell phone and IoT device using advanced MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) and Beamforming techniques to convert them into fiber optic signals before being sent for further processing and vice versa. The RRU system consists of transceivers, analog to digital converters (ADC), power amplification (PA) and filtering processors. With the implementation of C-RAN (Cloud Radio Access Network) architecture, RRUs are more scalable, flexible, efficient, and compatible making 5G networks faster and efficient. From high speed rugged outdoor I/O connectors to Ethernet connectors and transceivers, Amphenol has the best solutions to offer for RRUs and Antennas.

Edge servers can be simply described as high-power computers or servers which are placed near or at the "edge" of the 5G network. These servers add an extra layer of processing network signal from equipment deployed at the edge of the 5G network before it reaches the core network and vice versa. This makes the 5G network multiple times faster by reducing the latency, making it an ideal technology for mission critical equipment using Artificial Intelligence. Check out Amphenol's comprehensive solutions for increased speed, capacity, and durability in edge servers for 5G.

Network gateways, switches and servers are an integral part of the 5G network, especially inside the 5G core, where all the post processing of the signal is carried out before being sent to the data centers. A major part of the 5G advantage is realized inside the core. The gateways implement novel techniques like Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Carrier Aggregation (CA) and Network Slicing to decode and multiplex the signals and then route them to the data centers for further processing. Check out our range of interconnect solutions used in the network gateways and in virtualized equipment that realize the standalone 5G core function.

Transponders are interconnected units associated with the RRU or the BBU and play a large part in the transport of the 5G signal. The first half of the transport procedure is called fronthaul, where fiber optic signals from the RRU are fine-tuned by the transponder using Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) techniques and then passed on to the BBU and edge servers that are part of the CRAN. The latter half of the procedure where the signals from the CRAN unit are passed on by optics or wireless to the core and further on to the data center is called Backhaul. Amphenol provides connectors that go inside the transponders and routers that assure a smooth run of the 5G transport.