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To meet challenging 5G capacity requirements, operators are densifying their cellular networks by deploying additional small cells to cover hot spots, and such an increase in the number and density of cells may result in excessive numbers of handovers. In this study, we propose a handover reduction mechanism implemented in a cloud radio access network (CRAN) by exploiting the high capacity of an optical access network serving as a “fronthaul.” CRAN has been proposed as a 5G radio access network architecture, where the digital unit (DU) of a conventional base station (BS) is separated from the radio unit (RU) and moved to the “cloud” (DU-cloud) for better mobility management and cost saving. Separating RUs and DUs requires a low-latency and high-bandwidth 5G transport network to handle “fronthaul” traffic, for which optical access is an excellent choice. Here, we present a new 5G architecture, called …