102 research outputs found
Joint Design of Digital and Analog Processing for Downlink C-RAN with Large-Scale Antenna Arrays
In millimeter-wave communication systems with large-scale antenna arrays,
conventional digital beamforming may not be cost-effective. A promising
solution is the implementation of hybrid beamforming techniques, which consist
of low-dimensional digital beamforming followed by analog radio frequency (RF)
beamforming. This work studies the optimization of hybrid beamforming in the
context of a cloud radio access network (C-RAN) architecture. In a C-RAN
system, digital baseband signal processing functionalities are migrated from
remote radio heads (RRHs) to a baseband processing unit (BBU) in the "cloud" by
means of finite-capacity fronthaul links. Specifically, this work tackles the
problem of jointly optimizing digital beamforming and fronthaul quantization
strategies at the BBU, as well as RF beamforming at the RRHs, with the goal of
maximizing the weighted downlink sum-rate. Fronthaul capacity and per-RRH power
constraints are enforced along with constant modulus constraints on the RF
beamforming matrices. An iterative algorithm is proposed that is based on
successive convex approximation and on the relaxation of the constant modulus
constraint. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is validated by numerical
simulation results
Full-Duplex Cloud Radio Access Network: Stochastic Design and Analysis
Full-duplex (FD) has emerged as a disruptive communications paradigm for
enhancing the achievable spectral efficiency (SE), thanks to the recent major
breakthroughs in self-interference (SI) mitigation. The FD versus half-duplex
(HD) SE gain, in cellular networks, is however largely limited by the
mutual-interference (MI) between the downlink (DL) and the uplink (UL). A
potential remedy for tackling the MI bottleneck is through cooperative
communications. This paper provides a stochastic design and analysis of FD
enabled cloud radio access network (C-RAN) under the Poisson point process
(PPP)-based abstraction model of multi-antenna radio units (RUs) and user
equipments (UEs). We consider different disjoint and user-centric approaches
towards the formation of finite clusters in the C-RAN. Contrary to most
existing studies, we explicitly take into consideration non-isotropic fading
channel conditions and finite-capacity fronthaul links. Accordingly,
upper-bound expressions for the C-RAN DL and UL SEs, involving the statistics
of all intended and interfering signals, are derived. The performance of the FD
C-RAN is investigated through the proposed theoretical framework and
Monte-Carlo (MC) simulations. The results indicate that significant FD versus
HD C-RAN SE gains can be achieved, particularly in the presence of
sufficient-capacity fronthaul links and advanced interference cancellation
capabilities
A Comprehensive Survey on Resource Allocation for CRAN in 5G and Beyond Networks
The diverse service requirements coming with the
advent of sophisticated applications as well as a large number
of connected devices demand for revolutionary changes in the
traditional distributed radio access network (RAN). To this end,
Cloud-RAN (CRAN) is considered as an important paradigm
to enhance the performance of the upcoming fifth generation
(5G) and beyond wireless networks in terms of capacity, latency,
and connectivity to a large number of devices. Out of several
potential enablers, efficient resource allocation can mitigate various
challenges related to user assignment, power allocation, and
spectrum management in a CRAN, and is the focus of this paper.
Herein, we provide a comprehensive review of resource allocation
schemes in a CRAN along with a detailed optimization taxonomy
on various aspects of resource allocation. More importantly,
we identity and discuss the key elements for efficient resource
allocation and management in CRAN, namely: user assignment,
remote radio heads (RRH) selection, throughput maximization,
spectrum management, network utility, and power allocation.
Furthermore, we present emerging use-cases including heterogeneous
CRAN, millimeter-wave CRAN, virtualized CRAN, Non-
Orthogonal Multiple Access (NoMA)-based CRAN and fullduplex
enabled CRAN to illustrate how their performance can
be enhanced by adopting CRAN technology. We then classify
and discuss objectives and constraints involved in CRAN-based
5G and beyond networks. Moreover, a detailed taxonomy of
optimization methods and solution approaches with different
objectives is presented and discussed. Finally, we conclude the
paper with several open research issues and future directions
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