Benefits and Challenges of Cloud Technologies for 5G Architecture (original) (raw)
Related papers
IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 2014
C loud computing draws significant attention in the information technology (IT) community as it provides ubiquitous ondemand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources with minimum management effort. It gains also more impact on the communication technology (CT) community and is currently discussed as an enabler for flexible, cost-efficient and more powerful mobile network implementations. Although centralized baseband pools are already investigated for the radio access network (RAN) to allow for efficient resource usage and advanced multicell algorithms, these technologies still require dedicated hardware and do not offer the same characteristics as cloud-computing platforms, i.e., on-demand provisioning, virtualization, resource pooling, elasticity, service metering, and multitenancy. However, these properties of cloud computing are key enablers for future mobile communication systems characterized by an ultradense deployment of radio access points (RAPs) leading to severe multicell interference in combination with a significant increase of the number of access nodes and huge fluctuations of the rate requirements over time. In this article, we will explore the benefits that cloud computing offers for fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks and investigate the implications on the signal processing algorithms.
2014
C loud computing draws significant attention in the information technology (IT) community as it provides ubiquitous ondemand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources with minimum management effort. It gains also more impact on the communication technology (CT) community and is currently discussed as an enabler for flexible, cost-efficient and more powerful mobile network implementations. Although centralized baseband pools are already investigated for the radio access network (RAN) to allow for efficient resource usage and advanced multicell algorithms, these technologies still require dedicated hardware and do not offer the same characteristics as cloud-computing platforms, i.e., on-demand provisioning, virtualization, resource pooling, elasticity, service metering, and multitenancy. However, these properties of cloud computing are key enablers for future mobile communication systems characterized by an ultradense deployment of radio access points (RAPs) leading to severe multicell interference in combination with a significant increase of the number of access nodes and huge fluctuations of the rate requirements over time. In this article, we will explore the benefits that cloud computing offers for fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks and investigate the implications on the signal processing algorithms.
Modelling and implementation of virtual radio resources management for 5G Cloud RAN
EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking
The virtualisation of Radio Access Networks (RANs) is one of the goals in designing 5G mobile networks. This paper aims at presenting a proof of concept for the virtualisation of radio resources using Open Air Interface (OAI), a software-based Long-Term Evolution (LTE) eNodeB physical emulator. OAI was extended to support multi-tenancy, representing diverse Virtual mobile Network Operators (VNOs) with different Service Level Agreements (SLAs). A comprehensive analytical model for managing the virtual radio resources has been proposed, with two key parts: estimation of available radio resources and their allocation to different VNOs. The estimation is performed by the model, and the allocation is managed by OAI scheduling. Various scenarios and use cases are studied in this virtual RAN environment, network performance being evaluated for different situations, by varying guaranteed levels, serving weights, and used services. Results show that the proposed approach offers almost the same capacity to guaranteed VNOs regardless of other existing VNOs, experiencing at worst a degradation of 32% of its initial allocated data rate, without violation of the guaranteed data rate. The data rate allocated to best effort VNOs may decrease up to 7% of its initial value, which is acceptable, to guarantee other more demanding SLAs.
5G Radio Access Networks: Centralized RAN, Cloud-RAN, and Virtualization of Small Cells
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Virtualized Cloud Radio Access Network for 5G Transport
IEEE Communications Magazine, 2017
Current Radio Access Networks (RANs) need to evolve to handle diverse service requirements coming from the growing number of connected devices and increasing data rates for the upcoming 5G era. Incremental improvements on traditional distributed RANs cannot satisfy these requirements, so the novel and disruptive concept of cloud-RAN (CRAN) has been proposed to decouple digital units (DUs) and radio units (RUs) of base stations (BSs), and centralize DUs into a central office, where virtualization and cloud computing technologies are leveraged to move DUs in the "cloud". However, separating RUs and DUs requires low-latency and high-bandwidth connectivity links, called "fronthaul", as opposed to traditional backhaul links. Hence, design of the 5G transport network, i.e., the part of the network that carries mobile data traffic between BSs and the core network and data centers, is key to meet the new 5G mobile service requirements and effectively transport the fronthaul traffic. Today, consensus has not yet been achieved on how the fronthaul traffic will be transported between RUs and DUs, and how virtualization of network resources will occur from radio network segment to the centralized baseband processing units. In this article, we present a new 5G architecture called virtualized-CRAN (V-CRAN) moving towards a cell-less 5G network architecture. We leverage the concept of a "virtualized-BS" (V-BS) that can be optimally formed by exploiting several enabling technologies such as softwaredefined radio (SDR) and Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) Transmission/Reception. V-BS can be formed on a per-cell basis or peruser basis by allocating virtualized resources on demand. For the fronthaul solution, our approach exploits the passive optical network (PON), where a wavelength can be dynamically assigned and shared to form "virtualized" PON (VPON). Several use cases of V-CRAN are presented to show how network architecture evolution can enhance system throughput, energy efficiency, and mobility management.
On the Benefits of RAN Virtualisation in C-RAN Based Mobile Networks
2014 Third European Workshop on Software Defined Networks, 2014
With ever growing data traffic the traditional mobile network architecture is struggling to cope. Network densification using heterogeneous networks supported by Cloud-RAN is one of the core concepts in terms of physical resources. The system achieves increased capacity by reducing the number of devices (commonly refered to as user equipment-UE) connected to any individual cell. Cloud-RAN decouples the baseband processing from the radio units, allowing the processing power to be pooled at a central location thus reducing the required redundancy. The decoupling also supports innovation in many other RAN technologies by simplifying intercell coordination. While Cloud-RAN differs significantly from traditional base station architectures, interactions with the core network do not reflect these differences. We argue that there is a strong need for an intermediate stage that will reconcile the core network and Cloud-RAN. In this paper we propose a virtual network architecture for Cloud-RAN base stations that will allow us to present the core network with an abstracted view of the physical network. By logically grouping macro cells with collocated small cells we can provide the core network with a simplified overview, reducing signalling overhead. Meanwhile, low latency decisions, such as cell load balancing and interference management, can be made entirely within the Cloud-RAN base station. We present practical applications of the proposed scheme and assess its interoperability with other improvements to the wider infrastructure proposed in related works. The principles presented in this paper lend themselves to evolving key concepts and themes for future 5G networks and beyond.
Dynamic Allocation of Processing Resources in Cloud-RAN for a Virtualised 5G Mobile Network
2018 26th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), 2018
One of the main research directions for 5G mobile networks is resource virtualisation and slicing. Towards this goal, the Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) architecture offers mobile operators a flexible and dynamic framework for managing resources and processing data. This paper proposes a dynamic allocation approach for processing resources in a C- RAN supported by the concept of Network Function Vitualisation (NFV). To achieve this objective, we virtualised the Baseband Unit (BBU) resources for Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile network into a BBU pool supported by Linux Container (LXC) technology. We report on experiments conducted in the Iris testbed with high-definition video streaming by implementing Software-Defined Radio (SDR)-based LTE functionality with the virtualised BBU pool. Our results show a significant improvement in the quality of the video transmission with this dynamic allocation approach.
System Architecture and Key Technologies for 5G Heterogeneous Cloud Radio Access Networks
Compared with the fourth generation (4G) cellular systems, the fifth generation wireless communication systems (5G) are anticipated to provide spectral and energy efficiency growth by a factor of at least 10, and the area throughput growth by a factor of at least 25. To achieve these goals, a heterogeneous cloud radio access network (H-CRAN) is presented in this article as the advanced wireless access network paradigm, where cloud computing is used to fulfill the centralized large-scale cooperative processing for suppressing co-channel interferences. The state-of-the-art research achievements in aspects of system architecture and key technologies for H-CRANs are surveyed. Particularly, Node C as a new communication entity is defined to converge the existing ancestral base stations and act as the base band unit (BBU) pool to manage all accessed remote radio heads (RRHs), and the software-defined H-CRAN system architecture is presented to be compatible with software-defined networks (SDN). The principles, performance gains and open issues of key technologies including adaptive large-scale cooperative spatial signal processing, cooperative radio resource management, network function virtualization, and self-organization are summarized. The major challenges in terms of fronthaul constrained resource allocation optimization and energy harvesting that may affect the promotion of H-CRANs are discussed as well.
Load balancing for a user-level virtualized 5G cloud-RAN
Proceedings of the 17th ACM Workshop on Mobility in the Evolving Internet Architecture
5G cellular networks support a wide variety of applications with different Service Level Objectives (SLOs) over a shared infrastructure using virtualization. Virtualization enables network operators to allocate a tailored set of computational resources in the cloud to users from different applications based on their SLOs. Existing virtualization approaches use slices to create logically independent networks for each different application. However, these approaches fail to provide adequate performance isolation among different slices, leading to performance degradation. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a load balancer called Dynamic Greedy Spike (DGS), for a cloud Radio Access Network (RAN) architecture with user-level virtualization. With user-level virtualization, network operators can now allocate new users to any host in the cloud irrespective of their source base station. DGS allocates these new users to different hosts to reduce interference between users and improve isolation by modeling the problem similar to weighted improper graph coloring. We implement a prototype of the user-level virtualized RAN architecture called uvRAN using OpenAirInterface. We also perform large-scale evaluations and show that uvRAN along with DGS provides significant improvement in isolation, which improves performance while reducing the compute resources required for baseband processing. CCS CONCEPTS • Networks → Mobile networks; Cloud computing; Network resources allocation.
IEEE Access, 2017
Wireless network virtualization (WNV) has drawn attention from the researchers ranging from academia to industry as one of the significant technologies in the cellular network communication. It is considered as a pioneer to achieve effective resource utilization with decreased operating expenses (OPEX) and capital expenses (CAPEX) by decoupling the networks functionalities of coexisting virtual networks (VNs). It facilitates fast deployment of new services and novel technologies. WNV paradigm is in the early stages, and there is a large room for the research community to develop new architectures, systems, and applications. The availability of Software-defined networking (SDN) and cloud/centralized radio access network (C-RAN) steers up the hope for the WNV realization. This paper surveys WNV along with the recent developments in SDN and C-RAN technologies. Based on these technologies and WNV concepts, we identify the requirements and opportunities of future cellular networks. We then propose a general architectural framework for the WNV based on SDN. In-depth discussion of challenges and research issues as well as promising approaches for future networks communication improvements are also proposed. Finally, we give several promising candidates of future network services for residential customers and business customers.