Infinera and EBlink, a supplier of of wireless fronthaul technology, announced a partnership to deliver both fiber and wireless based solutions and to provide an end-to-end fronthaul architecture.
The joint solution has already been demonstrated in a live field trial with Orange in western France that interconnected baseband units (BBU) and remote radio heads (RRH) from several of Orange’s Radio Access Network (RAN) vendors. In the live field trial, the combined Infinera TM-Series and EBlink FrontLink solution demonstrated on Orange’s network how it can deliver a unique end-to-end performance combining fiber and wireless for mobile fronthaul.
Where fiber exists, the Infinera TM-Series delivers bandwidth using WDM. Where there is no fiber, EBlink’s wireless fronthaul is complementary to the WDM fronthaul solution.
“Mobile fronthaul is a challenging environment with tough requirements on latency and synchronisation for optical solutions,” said Sten Nordell, CTO of Infinera’s Metro Business Group. “As one of the few suppliers capable of achieving these requirements, we are very pleased to partner with EBlink and Orange to demonstrate that the combination of fiber and wireless is the right alchemy for mobile fronthaul.”
“This partnership with Infinera reaffirms the relevance of our wireless fronthaul technologies and how complementary fiber and wireless can be,” said Eric Sèle, deputy CEO of EBlink. “The deployment of the Infinera and EBlink solutions on Orange’s network underscores the concept that wireless fronthaul picks up where fiber leaves off.”
