Knowing the CPRI

Hello friends

They are probably familiar with the architecture of mobile personal data networks such as GSM, WCDMA, LTE or 5G.

The transport network is known to wireless experts as backhaul, which is nothing more than the transport section from the BBU to the control of the network. But with centralization or control in the cloud we hear more often the term fronthaul which is the link from the BBU to the radios or RRU. This is where the CPRI comes into play, it was born electric but we already find it optical with interfaces similar to SFPs and many times compatible. This CPRI interface can be found in the fronthaul by direct FO to the RRU but we can find it as DWDM transport or modern radios in the 80 GHzo band with Dual Band solutions. The footprint becomes smaller imagine a rack with the BBUs of your locality in one place and from these there are the links to the different sites in which you only have the tower or other support, the energy, the RRUs and the antennas (even these together with the AAU).

The CPRI port is a port that supports the CPRI (Common Public Radio Interface) protocol. By connecting the CPRI port of the BBU-RRU / RFU (Macro) or the BBU-RHUB / RHUB-pRRU (LampSite), it is established between them the transmission channel of the CPRI control data and the CPRI user data. Among them, the user plane data format is I / Q, and each cell must occupy a large amount of CPRI bandwidth to transmit the data on the CPRI port.