733 research outputs found
Fronthaul-Constrained Cloud Radio Access Networks: Insights and Challenges
As a promising paradigm for fifth generation (5G) wireless communication
systems, cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) have been shown to reduce both
capital and operating expenditures, as well as to provide high spectral
efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE). The fronthaul in such networks,
defined as the transmission link between a baseband unit (BBU) and a remote
radio head (RRH), requires high capacity, but is often constrained. This
article comprehensively surveys recent advances in fronthaul-constrained
C-RANs, including system architectures and key techniques. In particular, key
techniques for alleviating the impact of constrained fronthaul on SE/EE and
quality of service for users, including compression and quantization,
large-scale coordinated processing and clustering, and resource allocation
optimization, are discussed. Open issues in terms of software-defined
networking, network function virtualization, and partial centralization are
also identified.Comment: 5 Figures, accepted by IEEE Wireless Communications. arXiv admin
note: text overlap with arXiv:1407.3855 by other author
Separation Framework: An Enabler for Cooperative and D2D Communication for Future 5G Networks
Soaring capacity and coverage demands dictate that future cellular networks
need to soon migrate towards ultra-dense networks. However, network
densification comes with a host of challenges that include compromised energy
efficiency, complex interference management, cumbersome mobility management,
burdensome signaling overheads and higher backhaul costs. Interestingly, most
of the problems, that beleaguer network densification, stem from legacy
networks' one common feature i.e., tight coupling between the control and data
planes regardless of their degree of heterogeneity and cell density.
Consequently, in wake of 5G, control and data planes separation architecture
(SARC) has recently been conceived as a promising paradigm that has potential
to address most of aforementioned challenges. In this article, we review
various proposals that have been presented in literature so far to enable SARC.
More specifically, we analyze how and to what degree various SARC proposals
address the four main challenges in network densification namely: energy
efficiency, system level capacity maximization, interference management and
mobility management. We then focus on two salient features of future cellular
networks that have not yet been adapted in legacy networks at wide scale and
thus remain a hallmark of 5G, i.e., coordinated multipoint (CoMP), and
device-to-device (D2D) communications. After providing necessary background on
CoMP and D2D, we analyze how SARC can particularly act as a major enabler for
CoMP and D2D in context of 5G. This article thus serves as both a tutorial as
well as an up to date survey on SARC, CoMP and D2D. Most importantly, the
article provides an extensive outlook of challenges and opportunities that lie
at the crossroads of these three mutually entangled emerging technologies.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figures, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 201
Energy Efficient Resource Allocation Optimization in Fog Radio Access Networks with Outdated Channel Knowledge
Fog Radio Access Networks (F-RAN) are gaining worldwide interests for
enabling mobile edge computing for Beyond 5G. However, to realize the future
real-time and delay-sensitive applications, F-RAN tailored radio resource
allocation and interference management become necessary. This work investigates
user association and beamforming issues for providing energy efficient F-RANs.
We formulate the energy efficiency maximization problem, where the F-RAN
specific constraint to guarantee local edge processing is explicitly
considered. To solve this intricate problem, we design an algorithm based on
the Augmented Lagrangian (AL) method. Then, to alleviate the computational
complexity, a heuristic low-complexity strategy is developed, where the tasks
are split in two parts: one solving for user association and Fog Access Points
(F-AP) activation in a centralized manner at the cloud, based on global but
outdated user Channel State Information (CSI) to account for fronthaul delays,
and the second solving for beamforming in a distributed manner at each active
F-AP based on perfect but local CSIs. Simulation results show that the proposed
heuristic method achieves an appreciable performance level as compared to the
AL-based method, while largely outperforming the energy efficiency of the
baseline F-RAN scheme and limiting the sum-rate degradation compared to the
optimized sum-rate maximization algorithm
Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation Optimization for Multimedia Heterogeneous Cloud Radio Access Networks
The heterogeneous cloud radio access network (H-CRAN) is a promising paradigm
which incorporates the cloud computing into heterogeneous networks (HetNets),
thereby taking full advantage of cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) and
HetNets. Characterizing the cooperative beamforming with fronthaul capacity and
queue stability constraints is critical for multimedia applications to
improving energy efficiency (EE) in H-CRANs. An energy-efficient optimization
objective function with individual fronthaul capacity and inter-tier
interference constraints is presented in this paper for queue-aware multimedia
H-CRANs. To solve this non-convex objective function, a stochastic optimization
problem is reformulated by introducing the general Lyapunov optimization
framework. Under the Lyapunov framework, this optimization problem is
equivalent to an optimal network-wide cooperative beamformer design algorithm
with instantaneous power, average power and inter-tier interference
constraints, which can be regarded as the weighted sum EE maximization problem
and solved by a generalized weighted minimum mean square error approach. The
mathematical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that a tradeoff
between EE and queuing delay can be achieved, and this tradeoff strictly
depends on the fronthaul constraint
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