The ever-growing demand for mobile data necessitates a transport network architecture that can withstand the 5G-and-beyond multi-Gbps traffic requirements. To cater for such unprecedented demand, studies are being conducted to incorporate TeraHertz (THz) communications in future mobile networks. In this paper, we consider an urban environment and evaluate the feasibility of THz wireless midhaul links for the transport networks between the Central Units (CU) and Distributed Units (DU) in a disaggregated 5G network architecture with functional splits. Our goal is to study the feasibility of midhaul links at 140 GHz by minimizing the number of required CUs to serve all the DUs. To this end, we define several policies for selecting CU and DU nodes in order to determine the peak data rate that can be supported over each link between a CU and DU. Our numerical results based on ray-tracing suggest that wireless links at 140 GHz with 3GPP option 2 as High Layer Split (HLS) represents a promising technology for midhaul transport networks.

翻译：移动数据需求的持续增长要求传输网络架构能够满足5G及未来多Gbps流量需求。为应对这一前所未有的需求，业界正在研究将太赫兹通信融入未来移动网络。本文考虑城市环境，评估太赫兹无线中继链路在功能拆分式5G网络架构中，连接中央单元与分布式单元的传输网络的可行性。我们的目标是通过最小化服务所有分布式单元所需的中央单元数量，研究140 GHz频段中继链路的可行性。为此，我们定义了多种中央单元与分布式单元节点选择策略，以确定中央单元与分布式单元之间每条链路所能支持的最大数据速率。基于射线追踪的数值结果表明，采用3GPP Option 2高层拆分的140 GHz无线链路是用于中继传输网络的一项有前景的技术。