Control-data separation architecture for cellular radio access networks: a survey and outlook

Conventional cellular systems are designed to ensure ubiquitous coverage with an always present wireless channel irrespective of the spatial and temporal demand of service. This approach raises several problems due to the tight coupling between network and data access points, as well as the paradigm shift towards data-oriented services, heterogeneous deployments and network densification. A logical separation between control and data planes is seen as a promising solution that could overcome these issues, by providing data services under the umbrella of a coverage layer. This article presents a holistic survey of existing literature on the control-data separation architecture (CDSA) for cellular radio access networks. As a starting point, we discuss the fundamentals, concepts, and general structure of the CDSA. Then, we point out limitations of the conventional architecture in futuristic deployment scenarios. In addition, we present and critically discuss the work that has been done to investigate potential benefits of the CDSA, as well as its technical challenges and enabling technologies. Finally, an overview of standardisation proposals related to this research vision is provided

Future RAN architecture: SD-RAN through a general-purpose processing platform

In this article, we identify and study the potential of an integrated deployment solution for energy-efficient cellular networks combining the strengths of two very active current research themes: 1) software-defined radio access networks (SD-RANs) and 2) decoupled signaling and data transmissions, or beyond cellular green generation (BCG2) architecture, for enhanced energy efficiency. While SD-RAN envisions a decoupled centralized control plane and data-forwarding plane for flexible control, the BCG2 architecture calls for decoupling coverage from the capacity and coverage provided through an always-on low-power signaling node for a larger geographical area; the capacity is catered by various on-demand data nodes for maximum energy efficiency. In this article, we show that a combined approach that brings both specifications together can not only achieve greater benefits but also facilitate faster realization of both technologies. We propose the idea and design of a signaling controller that acts as a signaling node to provide always-on coverage, consuming low power, and at the same time host the control plane functions for the SDRAN through a general-purpose processing platform. The phantom cell concept is also a similar idea where a normal macrocell provides interference control to densely deployed small cells, although our initial results show that the integrated architecture has a much greater potential for energy savings than phantom cells

A survey of component carrier selection algorithms for carrier aggregation in long term evolution-advanced

Given that the demand for real-time multimedia contents that require significantly high data rate are getting of high popularity, a new mobile cellular technology known as Long term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) was standardized. The LTE-A is envisaged to support high peak data rate by aggregating more than one contiguous or non-contiguous Component Carriers (CCs) of the same or different frequency bandwidths. This paper provides a survey on the case where the LTE-A is working in backward compatible mode as well as when the system contains only LTE-A users. Note that the backward compatible mode indicates that the LTE-A contains a mixture of the legacy Long Term Evolution Release 8 (LTE) users that support packets (re)transmission on a single CC and the LTE-A users that are capable of utilizes more than one CCs for packets (re)transmission. It can be concluded from the study that the CC selection algorithms for newly-arrived LTE users can benefit from the channel diversity and the load status whereas the carrier aggregation that does not allocate all of the available CCs to the newly arrived LTE-A users shown to be more efficient

Comparative Analysis between OFDMA and SC-FDMA: Model, Features and Applications

This paper represents Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) and Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SCFDMA) techniques along with the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). The concept, model, features, scopes, applications and limitation for both types of multiple access have been discussed in this paper. In present 4G and 5G cellular communication system, both OFDMA and SC-FDMA have a notable applications. Dividing the available spectrum into overlapping orthogonal narrowband sub bands, OFDMA ensures high spectral efficiency. Besides by allocating multiple sub carriers to each user, OFDMA provides high data rate, reduces inter blockage interference, minimizes frequency selective fading and so on. But it suffers from high peak to average power ration (PAPR) which results in high power consumption at the transmitter end. SC-FDMA is one of the most promising techniques to solve the PAPR problems. Besides it also removes the capacity problem of wireless cellular systems and provides higher spectral efficiency, depending on multiplexing signals based on their spatial signature. On the other hand, in OFDM due to fixed subcarrier allocations for each user and its performance can suffer from narrowband fading and interference

LTE performance evaluation with realistic channel quality indicator feedback

In the context of mobile communications, the availability of new services and mobile applications along with the constant evolution in terminals run up the need of higher data rates. In order to fulfill such expectations, mobile operators are continually optimizing and upgrading their networks. The Long Term Evolution (LTE) of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) seems to be the path to follow in a very short term. The objective of this project is to study the behaviour of the radio resource assignment in LTE under realistic conditions. The scheduling is a key process in the functioning of the radio interface. Thus, two types of schedulers can be identified, the opportunistic, where the scheduler considers the state of the radio channel to make the best allocation possible, and the non-opportunistic, where the allocation has no knowledge of the radio channel‘s state. As the opportunistic option adapts to the radio channel conditions it requires the transmission of a certain level of signalling from users informing about how the channel evolves along time. One of the objectives of this project is to evaluate the system performance under different degrees of feedback. To do this, different CQI reporting methods have been programmed and simulated. So, to achieve this objective it is obvious that a second one is necessary: program and simulate in a more realistic way the LTE radio channel. The followed methodology has been fundamentally the programming of different mathematical models and algorithms, as well as its simulation. In concrete, one of the main tasks in this work has been to extent a software platform of the research group Wicomtec to obtain more realistic results through dynamic simulations over a dynamic radio channel

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF CARRIER ASSIGNMENT AND PACKET SCHEDULING IN LTE-A AND Wi-Fi

The highly competitive environment in today's wireless and cellular network industries is making the management of systems seek for better and more advance techniques to keep masses of data, complexity of systems and deadline constrains under control with a lower cost and higher efficiency. Therefore, the management is getting significant attentions by researchers in order to increase the efficiency of the resource usage to provide high quality services. Two of the cornerstones of the management system in wireless and cellular network are carrier assignment and packet scheduling. Therefore, this work focuses on analysis and development of carrier assignment and packet scheduling methods in multi-band Wi-Fi and LTE-A networks. First, several existing carrier assignment methods which are developed by considering different strategists in LTE and LTE-A are analyzed. Secondly, a new technique for the carrier assignment methods for LTE and LTE-A is developed to improve the efficiency of carrier assignment methods. Thirdly, a novel carrier assignment method is proposed by considering the behaviors of mobile users for LTE and LTE-A. Then, a novel architecture with packet scheduling scheme is proposed for next generation mobile routers in multi-band Wi-Fi environment as similar to LTE-A. Finally, the scheme is improved based on energy awareness. Results show that the developed methods improve the performance of the systems in comparison to existing methods. The proposed methods and related analysis should help network engineers and service providers build next generation carrier assignment and packet scheduling methods to satisfy users in LTE, LTE-A and Wi-Fi