ce and improving system throughput, while its bandwidth 4 NG-RAN Architecture requirements are similar to that of the NG interface. F1 does require interoperability between the CU and DU, or macro and small cell; however, this barrier is lowered in 5G by 3GPP standardizing this interface. The third disaggregation point is termed split option 6 in 3GPP terminology (3GPP TR 38.801). 14 For LTE this interface was specified by the Small Cell Forum as nFAPI (SCF 082); for 5G the SCF has announced an intention to specify this interface as 5G nFAPI and pro- viding an overview of this activity is a key focus for this chapter. The example given for the nFAPI split is an indoor small cell network within a hotel, the PHY and RF components are located in the DU, with the remainder of the base station at the central location. The attractiveness of the nFAPI split is that it introduces the benefits of centralized scheduling to deployments that have low-latency backhaul, while not increasing the backhaul band- width requirements compared with NG and F1. This type of backhaul situation is relatively common in enterprise deployments. The fourth disaggregation point is termed split option 7 in 3GPP terminology (3GPP TR 38.801) and has been further refined and specified by the O-RAN Alliance as O-RAN Fron- thaul (ORANFH). This option is described in more detail in Section 4.5. The example given for the fronthaul split is an indoor small cell network within an office. The DU contains the lower PHY and RF components, with the remainder (including the upper PHY) location in the CU situated within a server room. This split is possible due to an assumption that a high bandwidth fronthaul connection is available between the CU and DU. This split opens up the possibility of joint transmission and reception between small cells, which, in particular, can help improve reliability for URLLC scenarios. 4.6.4.2 Platform Architectures With small cells having multiple disaggregation architectures they also have several different platform architec