Cloud radio access network: Virtualizing wireless access for dense heterogeneous systems

Cloud radio access network (C-RAN) refers to the visualization of base station functionalities by means of cloud computing. This results in a novel cellular architecture in which low-cost wireless access points, known as radio units or remote radio heads, are centrally managed by a reconfigurable centralized "cloud", or central, unit. C-RAN allows operators to reduce the capital and operating expenses needed to deploy and maintain dense heterogeneous networks. This critical advantage, along with spectral efficiency, statistical multiplexing and load balancing gains, make C-RAN well positioned to be one of the key technologies in the development of 5G systems. In this paper, a succinct overview is presented regarding the state of the art on the research on C-RAN with emphasis on fronthaul compression, baseband processing, medium access control, resource allocation, system-level considerations and standardization efforts.

[1]  Allen Gersho,et al.  Vector quantization and signal compression , 1991, The Kluwer international series in engineering and computer science.

[2]  Shlomo Shamai,et al.  Cooperative Wireless Cellular Systems: An Information-Theoretic View , 2012, Found. Trends Commun. Inf. Theory.

[3]  Wei Yu,et al.  Sparse Beamforming and User-Centric Clustering for Downlink Cloud Radio Access Network , 2014, IEEE Access.

[4]  The Benefits of Cloud-RAN Architecture in Mobile Network Expansion , 2014 .

[5]  Shlomo Shamai,et al.  Joint Precoding and Multivariate Backhaul Compression for the Downlink of Cloud Radio Access Networks , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

[6]  Chenguang Lu.  Connecting the dots : small cells shape up for high-performance indoor radio In , 2014 .

[7]  Bin Guo,et al.  CPRI compression transport for LTE and LTE-A signal in C-RAN , 2012, 7th International Conference on Communications and Networking in China.

[8]  Francisco Facchinei,et al.  Distributed Methods for Constrained Nonconvex Multi-Agent Optimization-Part I: Theory , 2014, ArXiv.

[9]  Wei Yu,et al.  Optimized Backhaul Compression for Uplink Cloud Radio Access Network , 2013, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[10]  Shlomo Shamai,et al.  Performance evaluation of multiterminal backhaul compression for cloud radio access networks , 2013, 2014 48th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS).

[11]  Seungjoon Lee,et al.  Network function virtualization: Challenges and opportunities for innovations , 2015, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[12]  Mugen Peng,et al.  Resource Allocation Optimization for Delay-Sensitive Traffic in Fronthaul Constrained Cloud Radio Access Networks , 2014, IEEE Systems Journal.

[13]  Marco Levorato,et al.  On the Effect of Fronthaul Latency on ARQ in C-RAN Systems , 2015, ArXiv.

[14]  Aitor del Coso,et al.  Distributed compression for MIMO coordinated networks with a backhaul constraint , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[15]  Osvaldo Simeone,et al.  Uplink HARQ for Distributed and Cloud RAN via Separation of Control and Data Planes , 2015, 1508.06570.

[16]  Hamed S. Al-Raweshidy,et al.  Radio Over Fiber Technologies for Mobile Communications Networks , 2002 .

[17]  Zhongding Lei,et al.  Coordinated Multipoint Transmission with Limited Backhaul Data Transfer , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[18]  Shlomo Shamai,et al.  Multihop backhaul compression for the uplink of cloud radio access networks , 2013, 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory.

[19]  Filippo Ponzini,et al.  Transmission solutions and architectures for heterogeneous networks built as C-RANs , 2012, 7th International Conference on Communications and Networking in China.

[20]  Jeffrey G. Andrews,et al.  Networked MIMO with clustered linear precoding , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[21]  Zhi-Quan Luo,et al.  An iteratively weighted MMSE approach to distributed sum-utility maximization for a MIMO interfering broadcast channel , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP).

[22]  Wei Yu,et al.  Multi-Cell MIMO Cooperative Networks: A New Look at Interference , 2010, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[23]  Reinaldo A. Valenzuela,et al.  Ieee Transactions on Wireless Communications, Accepted for Publication Compressed Transport of Baseband Signals in Radio Access Networks , 2022 .

[24]  C-ran the Road towards Green Ran , 2022 .

[25]  Joseph R. Cavallaro,et al.  Baseband signal compression in wireless base stations , 2012, 2012 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM).

[26]  Martin L. Puterman,et al.  Markov Decision Processes: Discrete Stochastic Dynamic Programming , 1994 .

[27]  Shlomo Shamai,et al.  Robust and Efficient Distributed Compression for Cloud Radio Access Networks , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[28]  Rui Zhang,et al.  Downlink and Uplink Energy Minimization Through User Association and Beamforming in C-RAN , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[29]  Shlomo Shamai,et al.  Fronthaul Compression for Cloud Radio Access Networks: Signal processing advances inspired by network information theory , 2014, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

[30]  Brian L. Evans,et al.  Time-domain compression of complex-baseband LTE signals for cloud radio access networks , 2013, 2013 IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing.

[31]  Peter Rost,et al.  Opportunistic Hybrid ARQ—Enabler of Centralized-RAN Over Nonideal Backhaul , 2014, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters.

[32]  Shlomo Shamai,et al.  Uplink Macro Diversity of Limited Backhaul Cellular Network , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[33]  Gerhard Fettweis,et al.  Large scale field trial results on frequency domain compression for uplink joint detection , 2012, 2012 IEEE Globecom Workshops.

[34]  umer. salim,et al.  Final definition and evaluation of MAC and RRM approaches for RANaaS and a joint backhaul / access design , 2015 .

[35]  Arturo Azcorra,et al.  Xhaul: toward an integrated fronthaul/backhaul architecture in 5G networks , 2015, IEEE Wireless Communications.

[36]  J. Lorca,et al.  Lossless compression technique for the fronthaul of LTE/LTE-advanced cloud-RAN architectures , 2013, 2013 IEEE 14th International Symposium on "A World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks" (WoWMoM).

[37]  Thomas M. Cover,et al.  Network Information Theory , 2001 .

[38]  David Gesbert,et al.  Optimized Data Sharing in Multicell MIMO With Finite Backhaul Capacity , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

[39]  James V. Krogmeier,et al.  Millimeter Wave Beamforming for Wireless Backhaul and Access in Small Cell Networks , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Communications.

[40]  Michael P. McGarry,et al.  IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award , 2013 .

[41]  Gerhard Fettweis,et al.  Uplink CoMP under a Constrained Backhaul and Imperfect Channel Knowledge , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[42]  Francisco Facchinei,et al.  Parallel and Distributed Methods for Nonconvex Optimization-Part I: Theory , 2014 .

[43]  Jingxian Wu,et al.  Queue-Aware Joint Remote Radio Head Activation and Beamforming for Green Cloud Radio Access Networks , 2014, 2015 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM).

[44]  Tony Q. S. Quek,et al.  Cross-Layer Resource Allocation With Elastic Service Scaling in Cloud Radio Access Network , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[45]  Yu Cheng,et al.  CONCERT: a cloud-based architecture for next-generation cellular systems , 2014, IEEE Wireless Communications.

[46]  Frank Schaich,et al.  Quantitative analysis of split base station processing and determination of advantageous architectures for LTE , 2013, Bell Labs Technical Journal.

[47]  Wei Yu,et al.  Optimized beamforming and backhaul compression for uplink MIMO cloud radio access networks , 2014, 2014 IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps).

[48]  Vincent K. N. Lau,et al.  Joint Power and Antenna Selection Optimization in Large Cloud Radio Access Networks , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

[49]  Yuanming Shi,et al.  Group Sparse Beamforming for Green Cloud-RAN , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[50]  Wei Yu,et al.  Performance comparison of data-sharing and compression strategies for cloud radio access networks , 2015, 2015 23rd European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO).

[51]  Gerhard Fettweis,et al.  Benefits and Impact of Cloud Computing on 5G Signal Processing: Flexible centralization through cloud-RAN , 2014, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

[52]  Shlomo Shamai,et al.  Fronthaul Compression and Precoding Design for C-RANs Over Ergodic Fading Channels , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[53]  H. Vincent Poor,et al.  Contract-Based Interference Coordination in Heterogeneous Cloud Radio Access Networks , 2015, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[54]  Mugen Peng,et al.  Delay-aware cooperative multipoint transmission with backhaul limitation in cloud-RAN , 2014, 2014 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC).

[55]  Shlomo Shamai,et al.  Joint Decompression and Decoding for Cloud Radio Access Networks , 2013, IEEE Signal Processing Letters.

[56]  Dirk Wübben,et al.  Cloud technologies for flexible 5G radio access networks , 2014, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[57]  Wei Yu,et al.  Uplink Multicell Processing with Limited Backhaul via Per-Base-Station Successive Interference Cancellation , 2012, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[58]  M.J. Wainwright,et al.  Sparse Graph Codes for Side Information and Binning , 2007, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

[59]  Mugen Peng,et al.  Dynamic resource optimization with congestion control in heterogeneous cloud radio access networks , 2014, 2014 IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps).

[60]  Rahim Tafazolli,et al.  Graph-Based Multicell Scheduling in OFDMA-Based Small Cell Networks , 2014, IEEE Access.

[61]  Michael S. Berger,et al.  Cloud RAN for Mobile Networks—A Technology Overview , 2015, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[62]  P. Tseng.  Convergence of a Block Coordinate Descent Method for Nondifferentiable Minimization , 2001 .

[63]  H. Vincent Poor,et al.  Cluster formation in cloud-radio access networks: Performance analysis and algorithms design , 2015, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC).

[64]  Vincent K. N. Lau,et al.  Backhaul Limited Asymmetric Cooperation for MIMO Cellular Networks via Semidefinite Relaxation , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.