In the early stage of 5G development, the industry’s discussion on backhaul network planning was mainly focused on optical fiber, and it was expected that optical fiber alone could meet the high backhaul capacity requirements of 5G. However, with the development of technology, everyone found that these early assumptions were wrong. Today, microwave technology has become a competitor of optical fiber.

In order to understand how the transmission network will develop to support 5G services, Heavy Reading (HR) and its partners Anritsu, Ericsson, Fujitsu, and Infinera launched the “Survey of Operator Strategies for Leadership in the 5G Transmission Market” in May 2020. The survey attracted 86 qualified network operator respondents from all over the world, who shared transmission deployment issues and timetables, front-haul network and radio access network centralization, routing and synchronization, and testing 5G networks.

As the data rate jumps to 10Gbps, microwave backhaul quickly returns to the market as a viable 5G backhaul solution. In HR’s “2019 5G Transmission-Operator Strategies” survey, 35% of operator respondents believed that 10Gbps microwave was “very important” for 5G transmission.

Generally, in 5G xHaul, compared to mid-backhaul, front-haul one has always been the biggest challenge and industry concern due to its high bandwidth requirements and strict delay restrictions. Early hypotheses believed that optical fiber could solve the problem in this emerging field. But HR’s 2020 survey data shows that wireless connection will also be a viable option for front-haul networks, especially in millimeter wave frequencies above 30GHz, which can increase the data rate to 25Gbps or higher. According to HR’s 2020 5G transmission survey, microwave/millimeter wave transmission will account for 18% of 5G front-haul connections.

It needs to be clear that operators choose optical fiber as their first choice for front-haul technology, but microwave/millimeter wave will be a choice when optical fiber cannot be used or the use of optical fiber is prohibited. This trend may vary greatly depending on the geographic area, because the fiber infrastructure resources and economic feasibility of different countries are very different.

All in all, the data shows the strong momentum of microwave transmission.