Optical slot switching latency in mobile backhaul networks

Next generation mobile networks such as LTE-Advanced 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 for instance to support interference cancellation mechanisms such as 'CoMP' and expedite handovers, the traffic pattern turns into any-to-any node communication in the next generation mobile networks. In previous papers, we proposed an optical mobile backhaul network to transport the mobile user data in an energy-efficient fashion while supporting any-to-any traffic exchanges. 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 the support of several classes of service.