china mobile cran white paper v26 2014
DESCRIPTION
Data explosion in the big data era is in fact putting operators in a dilemma situation. On the one hand, operators have to spend huge investment on network infrastructure upgrade to accommodate the explosively increasing traffic, resulting in a significant increase of the total cost of ownership. On the other hand, operators are not seeing proportional revenue growth with the data traffic. Under the circumstance, traditional RAN architecture where a dedicated equipment room with supporting facilities is needed for each base station is facing more and more challenges and issues for network deployment and operation, especially for LTE.TRANSCRIPT
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C-RAN
The Road Towards Green RAN
White Paper
Version 2.6 (Sep., 2013)
China Mobile Research Institute
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China Mobile Research Institute
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................... 1
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 3
1.1 Background ......................................................................................................................... 3
1.2 Vision of C-RAN .................................................................................................................. 3
1.3 Objectives of This White Paper ....................................................................................... 4
1.4 Status of This White Paper .............................................................................................. 4
2 Challenges of Todays RAN ............................................................................................... 5
2.1 Large Number of BS and Associated High Power Consumption .............................. 5
2.2 Rapid Increasing CAPEX/OPEX of RAN.......................................................................... 6
2.3 Explosive Network Capacity Need with Falling ARPUs............................................... 8
2.4 Dynamic Mobile Network Load and Low BS Utilization Rate .................................... 9
2.5 Growing Internet Service Pressure on Operators Core Network............................ 9
3 Architecture of C-RAN ....................................................................................................... 11
3.1 Advantages of C-RAN ..................................................................................................... 13
3.2 Technical Challenges of C-RAN ..................................................................................... 14
4 Technology Trends and Feasibility Analysis ...................................................................... 15
4.1 Wireless Signal Transmission on Optical Network.................................................... 15
4.2 Dynamic Radio Resource Allocation and Cooperative Transmission/Reception . 22
4.3 Large Scale Baseband Pool and Its Interconnection ........................................................... 26
4.4 Open Platform Based Base Station Virtualization ................................................................ 27
4.5 Distributed Service Network ................................................................................................. 31
5 Evolution Path ...................................................................................................................... 33
5.1 C-RAN Centralized Base Station Deployment ........................................................... 33
5.2 Multi-standard SDR and Joint Signal Processing ...................................................... 33
5.3 Virtual BS on Real-time Cloud Infrastructure ............................................................ 34
6 Recent Progress .................................................................................................................. 35
6.1 TD-SCDMA and GSM Field Trial .................................................................................... 35
6.2 TD-LTE C-RAN Field Trial ............................................................................................... 41
6.3 Large Scale Baseband Pool Equipment Development ............................................. 43
6.4 C-RAN Prototype Based on General Purpose Processor .................................................. 45
6.5 Progress on C-RAN Virtualization ................................................................................. 47
7 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 52
8 Acknowledgement .............................................................................................................. 53
9 Terms and Definitions ....................................................................................................... 54
Cover is for
position only
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China Mobile Research Institute ii
10 Reference ............................................................................................................................ 56
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China Mobile Research Institute 1
Executive Summary
Data explosion in the big data era is in fact putting operators in a dilemma situation. On the one hand, operators have to spend huge investment on network infrastructure upgrade to accommodate the explosively increasing traffic, resulting in a significant increase of the total cost of ownership. On the other hand, operators are not seeing proportional revenue growth with the data traffic. Under the circumstance, traditional RAN architecture where a dedicated
equipment room with supporting facilities is needed for each base station is facing more and more challenges and issues for network deployment and operation, especially for LTE.
First, LTE site density is higher and thus requires more such equipment rooms, which is increasingly difficult to obtain since available real estate is becoming scarcer. Moreover, LTE suffers much more severe interference issue than 2G, 3G networks due to its universal frequency reuse OFDM nature and its higher cell density. Existing collaborative technologies
such as joint transmission or joint reception can not perform effectively under traditional architecture with X2 interface which is of low bandwidth and high latency. Last but not the least traditional base stations are deployed for their peak scale to accommodate the peak traffic. This practice, however, due to the time-varying nature of the traffic, not only lowers the equipment utilization efficiency, but also greatly increases the power consumption unnecessarily.
Featuring centralized, collaborative, cloud and clean system, the cloud RAN (C-RAN) is proposed by CMCC to help operators to address the above-mentioned challenges. A C-RAN network centralizes the BBU processing resource together into a pool so that the resource could
be managed and allocated dynamically on demand. C-RAN offers many benefits to operators, including but not limited to: Energy saving, mainly because of facility sharing in the centralization office, especially
air-conditioning sharing and due to improved resource efficiency by virtualization. TCO reduction since lots of site rooms could be saved and power consumption is
significantly decreased. Also, site construction can be sped up since there is no need to find the separate equipment room for every base station. Instead, one centralized site office can accommodate several dozens of base stations.
Improved spectral efficiency due to facilitation of advanced technology implementation, especially Coordinated Multi-point technique by providing high-speed low-latency switching networks in the centralized site office to enable timely information exchange among BBU within the pool.
Improved resource efficiency thanks to resource virtualization.
To enable service on edge and boost service innovation when open general-purposed platform is adopted for C-RAN implementation.
To leverage such benefits, however, three major challenges must be addressed. A cost-effective fronthaul solution which minimizes fiber consumption while
maximizing the number of transported TD-LTE carriers (especially 8-antenna TD-LTE carriers).
A scalable BBU pool architecture which efficiently supports various key technologies
including CoMP and live migration.
Virtualization technology meeting the strict real-time constraints of wireless signal
processing. This includes the optimization on hypervisor, operating systems, management functions, I/O virtualization, and so on.
China Mobile has been developing and deploying C-RAN systems since 2009. In particular, CMCC has conducted extensive field trials in more than 10 cities across China. Our field trials in GSM and TD-SCDMA have vigorously demonstrated the benefits that C-RAN centralization can
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bring to operators. For example, compared to distributed TD-SCDMA networks, up to 15% CAPEX and 50% OPEX could be saved using C-RAN centralization. Moreover, system roll out time is saved by 1/3 and in view of green deployment, the saving on power consumption can be as high as 70%. In the meantime, the TD-LTE C-RAN trials in the cities of Fuzhou, Chengdu and Guangzhou
have verified the maturity and effectiveness of CPRI compression and single fiber bi-direction (SFBD) technologies in fronthaul implementation. Using SFBD and CPRI compression with 2:1 compression ratio, we can save the fiber consumption by 4 folds while maintaining a lossless system performance. Moreover, WDM-based fronthaul solutions are being tested currently, which promises even greater potential to further save on fiber resource and make it much easier for large-scale C-RAN deployment.
Simulation results also demonstrated C-RANs advantages in achieving higher CoMP gain than using traditional architecture. Average cell spectrum efficiency and cell-edge spectrum efficiency by C-RAN CoMP are 20% and 45% higher than SU-MIMO respectively. On the road toward virtualization to realize resource cloudization in C-RAN BBU pool, we have developed an x86-based 3-mode base station prototype in which GSM, TS-SCDMA and TD-LTE
are realized in a pure software manner. We demo-ed an end-to-end call using commercial UE and CN. However, currently the real-time wireless signal processing in pure software implementation is not achieved cost effectively; the power-performance ratio is very low. We therefore concluded that a dedicated hardware accelerator is needed for processing some L1 functions that are computation-intensive, e.g. iFFT/FFT. There is also some discussion and viewpoints regarding how to implement virtualization from data center in C-RAN in this White Paper.
C-RAN is a multi-stage RAN evolution which requires joint efforts from every partner in the ecosystem including both IT and telecom industry. We would also like to take this WP as an opportunity to call for more action, contribution and commitment on C-RAN research and development, which we believe is the sure trend to the future.
--- End of Executive Summary
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1 Introduction
1.1 Background
Todays mobile operators are facing a strong competition environment. The cost to build,
operate and upgrade the Radio Access Network (RAN) is becoming more and more expensive
while the revenue is not growing at the same rate. The mobile internet traffic is surging, while
the ARPU is flat or even decreasing slowly, which impacts the ability to build out the networks
and offer services in a timely fashion. To maintain profitability and growth, mobile operators
must find solutions to reduce cost as well as to provide better services to the customers.
On the other hand, the proliferation of mobile broadband internet also presents a unique
opportunity for developing an evolved network architecture that will enable new applications
and services, and become more energy efficient.
The RAN is the most important asset for mobile operators to provide high data rate, high
quality, and 24x7 services to mobile users. Traditional RAN architecture has the following
characteristics: first, each Base Station (BS) only connects to a fixed number of sector
antennas that cover a small area and only handle transmission/reception signals in its coverage
area; second, the system capacity is limited by interference, making it difficult to improve
spectrum capacity; and last but not least, BSs are built on proprietary platforms as a vertical
solution. These characteristics have resulted in many challenges. For example, the large
number of BSs requires corresponding initial investment, site support, site rental and
management support. Building more BS sites means increasing CAPEX and OPEX. Usually, BSs
utilization rate is low because the average network load is usually far lower than that in peak
load; while the BS processing power cant be shared with other BSs. Isolated BSs prove costly
and difficult to improve spectrum capacity. Lastly, a proprietary platform means mobile
operators must manage multiple none-compatible platforms if service providers want to
purchase systems from multiple vendors. Causing operators to have more complex and costly
plan for network expansion and upgrading. To meet the fast increasing data services, mobile
operators need to upgrade their network frequently and operate multiple-standard network,
including GSM, WCDMA/TD-SCDMA and LTE. However, the proprietary platform means mobile
operators lack the flexibility in network upgrade, or the ability to add services beyond simple
upgrades.
In summary, traditional RAN will become far too expensive for mobile operators to keep
competitive in the future mobile internet world. It lacks the efficiency to support sophisticated
centralized interference management required by future heterogeneous networks, the flexibility
to migrate services to network edge for innovative applications and the ability to generate new
revenue from revenue from new services. Mobile operators are faced with the challenge of
architecting radio network that enable flexibility. In the following sections, we will explore ways
to address these challenges.
1.2 Vision of C-RAN
The future RAN should provide mobile broadband Internet access to wireless customers with
low bit-cost, high spectral and energy efficiency. The RAN should meet the following
requirements:
Reduced cost (CAPEX and OPEX)
Lower energy consumption
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High spectral efficiency
Based on open platform, support multiple standards, and smooth evolution
Provide a platform for additional revenue generating services.
Centralized base-band pool processing, Co-operative radio with distributed antenna equipped
by Remote Ratio Head (RRH) and real-time Cloud infrastructures RAN (C-RAN) can address the
challenges the operators are faced with and meet the requirements. Centralized signal
processing greatly reduces the number of sites equipment room needed to cover the same
areas; Co-operative radio with distributed antenna equipped by Remote Radio Head (RRH)
provides higher spectrum efficiency; real-time Cloud infrastructure based on open platform and
BS virtualization enables processing aggregation and dynamic allocation, reducing the power
consumption and increasing the infrastructure utilization rate. These novel technologies provide
an innovative approach to enabling the operators to not only meet the requirements but
advance the network to provide coverage, new services, and lower support costs.
C-RAN is not a replacement for 3G/B3G standards, only an alternative approach to current
delivery. From a long term perspective, C-RAN provides low cost and high performance green
network architecture to operators. In turn operators are able to deliver rich wireless services in
a cost-effective manner for all concerned.
C-RAN is not the only RAN deployment solution that will replace all todays macro cell station,
micro cell station, pico cell station, indoor coverage system, and repeaters. Different
deployment solutions have their respective advantages and disadvantages and are suitable for
particular deployment scenarios. C-RAN is targeting to be applicable to most typical RAN
deployment scenarios, like macro cell, micro cell, pico cell and indoor coverage. In addition,
other RAN deployment solution can serve as complementary deployment of C-RAN for certain
case.
1.3 Objectives of This White Paper
The objective of this white paper is to present China Mobiles vision of C-RAN and provide a
research framework by identifying the technical challenges of C-RAN architecture. We would
like to invite both industry and academic research institutes to join the research to guide the
vision into reality in the near future.
1.4 Status of This White Paper
This document version 2.5 is a revised version of version 2.0 released in December 2010. It is
not yet fully complete and there may still be some inconsistencies. However, it is considered to
be useful for distribution at this stage. It is expected that new research challenges might be
added in future versions. Comments and contributions to improve the quality of this white
paper are welcome.
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2 Challenges of Todays RAN
2.1 Large Number of BS and Associated High Power Consumption
As operators constantly introduce new air interface and increase the number of base stations to
offer broadband wireless services, the power consumption gets a dramatic rise. For example: in
the past 5 years, China Mobile has almost doubled its number of BS, to provide better network
coverage and capacity. As a result, the total power consumption has also doubled. The higher
power consumption is translated directly to the higher OPEX and a significant environmental
impact, both of which are now increasingly unacceptable.
The following figure 1 shows the components of the power consumption of China Mobile. It
shows the majority of power consumption is from BS in the radio access network. Inside the BS,
only half of the power is used by the RAN equipment; while the other half is consumed by air
condition and other facilitate equipments.
Obviously, the best way to save energy and decrease carbon-dioxide emissions is to decrease
the number of BS. However, for traditional RAN, this will result in worse network coverage and
lower capacity. Therefore, operators are seeking new technologies to reduce energy
consumption without reducing the network coverage and capacity. Today, there are quite a
number of amendment technologies that helps reduce BS power consumption, such as the
software solutions which save power through turning off selected carriers on idle hours like
midnight, the green energy solutions which offer solar, wind and other renewable energy for
base stations power supply according to local natural conditions, and the energy-saving air
conditioning technology which combined with the local climate and environment characteristics,
reduce the energy consumption of the air conditioning equipment, etc. However, these
technologies are supplementary methods and cannot address the fundamental problems of
power consumption with the number of increasing BS.
In the long run, mobile operators must plan for energy efficiency from the radio access network
architecture planning. A change in infrastructure is the key to resolve the power consumption
challenge of radio access network. Centralized BS would reduce the number of BS equipment
rooms, reduce the A/C need, and use resource sharing mechanisms to improve the BS
utilization rate efficiency under dynamic network load.
Channel, 6%
Transmission,
15%
Management
office, 7%
Cell site, 72%
Major
Equipment,
51%Air
Conditioners,
46%
Other Support
Equipment,
3%
Fig.1 Power Consumption of Base Station
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2.2 Rapid Increasing CAPEX/OPEX of RAN
Over recent years, mobile data consumption has experienced a record growth among the
worlds operators as subscribers use more smart phones and mobile devices, like tablets. To
satisfy this consumer usage growth, mobile operators must significantly increase their network
capacity to provide mobile broadband to the masses. However, in an intensifying competitive
marketplace, high saturation levels, rapid technological changes and declining voice revenue,
operators are challenged with deployment of traditional BS as the cost is high, the return is not
high enough. Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) are all affecting mobile operators profitability.
They become more and more cautious about the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of their
network in order to remain profitable and competitive.
Fig. 2: Increasing CAPEX of 3G Network Construction and Evolution
Analysis of the TCO
The TCO including the CAPEX and the OPEX results from the network construction and
operation. The CAPEX is mainly associated with network infrastructure build, while OPEX is
mainly associated with network operation and management.
In general, up to 80% CAPEX of a mobile operator is spent on the RAN. This means that most
of the CAPEX is related to building up cell sites for the RAN. The historical CAPEX expenditure of
2007-2012 forest are shown in Fig.2. Because 3G/B3G signals deployed frequency 2GHz have
higher path loss and penetration loss than 2G signals (deployed frequency 900MHz), multiple
cell sites are needed for the similar level of 2G coverage. Thus, the dramatic increase was
found in the CAPEX when building a 3G network.
The CAPEX is mainly spent at the stage of cell site constructions and consists of purchase and
construction expenditures. Purchase expenditures include the purchases of BS and
supplementary equipments, such as power and air conditioning equipments etc. Construction
expenditures include network planning, site acquisition, civil works and so on. As shown is Fig.3,
it is noticeable that the cost of major wireless equipments makes up only 35% of CAPEX, while
the cost of the site acquisition, civil works, and equipment installation is more than 50% of the
total cost. Essentially, this means that more than half of CAPEX is not spent on productive
wireless functionality. Therefore, ways to reduce the cost of the supplementary equipment and
the expenditure on site installation and deployment is important to lower the CAPEX of mobile
operators.
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Fig. 3: CAPEX and OPEX Analysis of Cell Site
OPEX in network operation and the maintenance stage play a significant part in the TCO.
Operational expenditure includes the expense of site rental, transmission network rental,
operation /maintenance and bills from the power supplier. Given a 7-year depreciation period of
BS equipment, as shown in Fig.4, an analysis of the TCO shows that OPEX accounts for over 60%
of the TCO, while the CAPEX only accounts for about 40% of the TCO. The OPEX is a key factor
that must be considered by operators in building the future RAN.
The most effective way to reduce TCO is to decrease the number of sites. This will bring down
the cost for the construction of the major equipment; and will minimize the expenditure on the
installation and rental of the equipment incurred by their occupied space. Fewer sites means
the corresponding cost of supplementary equipment will also be saved. This can significantly
decrease the operators CAPEX and OPEX, but results in poorer network coverage and user
experience in the traditional RAN. Therefore, a more cost-effective way must be found to
minimize the non-productive part of the TCO while simultaneously maintaining good network
coverage.
Fig. 4 TCO Analysis of Cell Site
Multi-standard environment
It is understood that the large number of legacy terminals, 2G, 3G, and B3G infrastructure will
coexist for a very long time to meet consumers demand. Most of the major mobile operators
worldwide will thus have to use two or three networks (Table 1) [1]. In the new economic
climate, operators must find ways to control CAPEX and OPEX while growing their businesses.
The base station occupies the largest part of infrastructure investment in a mobile network.
Multi-mode base station is expected as a cost efficient way for operators to alleviate the cost of
network construction and O&M. In addition, sharing of hardware resources in a multi-mode
base station is the key approach to lower cost.
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Table 1. Multi-Network Operation of Major Mobile Service Providers
Cellular Technologies Vodafone China Mobile
France Telecom
T-Mobile
Verizon SK Telecom
Telstra China Unicom
TD-SCDMA
WCDMA
CDMA One & 2000 &
EVDO
GSM GPRS EDGE
LTE
2.3 Explosive Network Capacity Need with Falling ARPUs
Data rate of mobile broadband network grows significantly with the introduction of air-interface
standards such as 3G and B3G; this in turn speeds up end users mobile data consumption.
Some forecasts indicated the number of people who access mobile broadband will triple in next
several years, after LTE and LTE-A are deployed. These findings reflect the fact that the
increasing bandwidth of wireless broadband triggers the increase in mobile traffic, because the
mobile users can use a variety of high-bandwidth services, such as video-based applications.
This new trend will become a serious challenge to future RAN.
Based on the forecast data [2], global mobile traffic increases 66-fold with a compound annual
growth rate (CAGR) of 131% between 2008 and 2013. The similar trend is observed in current
CMCC network. On the contrary, the peak data rate from UMTS to LTE-A only increases with a
CAGR of 55%. Clearly, as shown in Fig.5, there is a large gap between the CAGR of new air
interface and the CAGR of customers need. In order to fill this gap, new infrastructure
technologies need to be developed to further improve the performance of LTE/LTE-A.
Fig. 5 Mobile Broadband Data-rates/Traffic Growth
On the other hand, the revenue of mobile operators is not increasing at the same pace as the
network capacity they provide. Mobile operators voice volumes are steadily increasing and the
data volume grows quickly, but revenues are not and ARPUs are even falling in some case. In
order to face the slow growth in revenue, operators are forced to constantly hold down costs
notably operating costs. That means mobile operators must find a low cost, high-capacity
access network with novel techniques to meet the growth of mobile data traffic while keeping a
healthy, profitable growth.
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2.4 Dynamic Mobile Network Load and Low BS Utilization Rate
One characteristic of the mobile network is that subscribers are frequently moving from one
place to another. From data based on real operation network, we noticed that the movement of
subscribers shows a very strong time-geometry pattern. Around the beginning of working time,
a large number of subscribers move from residential areas to central office areas for work;
when the work hour ends, subscribers move back to their homes. Consequently, the network
load moves in the mobile network with a similar patternso called "tidal effect". As shown in
Fig.6, during working hours, the core office areas Base Stations are the busiest; in the non-
work hours, the residential or entertainment areas Base Stations are the busiest.
Fig. 6 Mobile Network Load in Daytime
Each Base Stations processing capability today can only be used by the active users in its cell
range, causing idle BS in some areas/times and oversubscribed BS in other areas. When
subscribers are moving to other areas, the Base Station just stays in idle with a large of its
processing power wasted. Because operators must provide 7x24 coverage, these idle Base
Stations consume almost the same level of energy as they do in busy hours. Even worse, the
Base Stations are often dimensioned to be able to handle a maximum number of active
subscribers in busy hours, thus they are designed to have much more capacity than the
average needed, which means that most of the processing capacity is wasted in non-busy time.
Sharing the processing and thus the power between different cell areas is a way to utilize these
BS more effectively.
2.5 Growing Internet Service Pressure on Operators Core Network
With the hyper-growth of smart phones as well as emerging 3G embedded Internet Notebook,
the mobile internet traffic has been grown exponentially in the last few years and will continue
to grow more than 66x in the next 5-6 years. However because of increasingly competition
between mobile operators, the projected revenue growth will be much lower than the traffic
growth. There will be a huge gap between the cost associated with this mobile internet traffic
and the revenue generated, let alone the mobile operators needing to spend billions of dollars
to upgrade their back-haul and core network to keep up with the growing pace. This is a huge
common challenge to all the mobile operators in the wireless industry.
The exponential growth of mobile broadband data puts pressure on operators existing packet
core elements such as SGSNs and GGSNs, increasing mobile Internet delivery cost and
challenging the flat-rate data service models. The majority of this traffic is either Internet
bound or sourced from the Internet. Catering to this exponential growth in mobile Internet
traffic by using traditional 3G deployment models, the older 3G platform is resulting in huge
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CAPEX and OPEX cost while adding little benefit to the ARPU. Additional issues are the
continuous CAPEX spending on older SGSNs & GGSNs, the higher Internet distribution cost, the
congestion on backhaul and the congestion on limited shared capacity of base stations.
Therefore, offloading the Internet traffic, as close to the base stations as possible, can be an
effective way to reduce the mobile Internet delivery cost.
Fig. 7 Wireless traffic on a commercial 3G
Meanwhile it is interesting to understand how people are using todays mobile internet. A recent
research paper [3] published by one major TEM may give us a glimpse of the most popular
mobile applications. It is surprising to see that people are gradually using mobile internet just
like they use the fixed broadband network. Content services which include content delivered
through web and P2P are actually dominating the network traffic. Fig.7 is an example of
wireless traffic on a commercial 3G operator. Considering this usage pattern, do we have better
choice than just blindly spending billions of dollars to upgrade back-haul and the core network?
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3 Architecture of C-RAN
We believe Centralized processing, Cooperative radio, Cloud, and Clean (Green) infrastructure
Radio Access Network (C-RAN) is the answer to solve the challenges mentioned above. Its a
natural evolution of the distributed BTS, which is composed of the baseband Unit (BBU) and
remote radio head (RRH). According to the different function splitting between BBU and RRH,
there are two kinds of C-RAN solutions: one is called full centralization, where baseband (i.e.
layer 1) and the layer 2, layer 3 BTS functions are located in BBU; the other is called partial
centralization, where the RRH integrates not only the radio function but also the baseband
function, while all other higher layer functions are still located in BBU. For the solution 2,
although the BBU doesnt include the baseband function, it is still called BBU for the simplicity.
The different function partition method is shown in Fig.8.
Fig. 8 Different Separation Method of BTS Functions
Based on these two different function splitting methods, there are two C-RAN architectures.
Both of them are composed of three main parts: first, the distributed radio units which can be
referred to as Remote Radio Heads (RRHs) plus antennas which are located at the remote site;
second, the high bandwidth low-latency optical transport network which connect the RRHs and
BBU pool; and third, the BBU composed of high-performance programmable processors and
real-time virtualization technology.
RRH
RRH
RRH
RRH
RRH
RRH
RRH
Virtual BS Pool
L1/L2/L3/O&M L1/L2/L3/O&M L1/L2/L3/O&M
Fiber
Fig. 9 C-RAN Architecture 1: Fully Centralized Solution
GPS
Main Control & Clock
Core net-work
Base-band
process-ing
Transmitter/Receiver
PA&
LNA
Antenna
DigitalIF
Solution 1Solution 2
BBU RRU
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RRH/L1
RRH/L1
RRH/L1
RRH/L1
RRH/L1
RRH/L1
RRH/L1
Virtual BS Pool
L2/L3/O&M L2/L3/O&M L2/L3/O&M
Fiber or
Microwave
Fig. 10 C-RAN Architecture 2: Partial Centralized Solution
The fully centralized C-RAN architecture, as shown in figure 9, has the advantages of easy
upgrading and network capacity expansion; it also has better capability for supporting multi-
standard operation, maximum resource sharing, and its more convenient towards support of
multi-cell collaborative signal processing. Its major disadvantage is the high bandwidth
requirement between the BBU and to carry the baseband I/Q signal. In the extreme case, a TD-
LTE 8 antenna with 20MHz bandwidth will need a 10Gpbs transmission rate.
The partial centralized C-RAN architecture, as shown in figure 10, has the advantage of
requiring much lower transmission bandwidth between BBU and RRH, by separating the
baseband processing from BBU and integrating it into RRH. Compared with the full centralized
one, the BBU-RRH connection only need to carry demodulated data, which is only 1/20~1/50 of
the original baseband I/Q sample data. However, it also has its own shortcomings. Because the
baseband processing is integrated into RRH, it has less flexibility in upgrading, and less
convenience for multi-cell collaborative signal processing.
With either one of these C-RAN architectures, mobile operators can quickly deploy and make
upgrades to their network. The operator only needs to install new RRHs and connect them to
the BBU pool to expand the network coverage or split the cell to improve capacity. If the
network load grows, the operator only needs to upgrade the BBU pools HW to accommodate
the increased processing capacity. Moreover, the fully centralized solution, in combination with
open platform and general purpose processors, will provide an easy way to develop and deploy
software defined radio (SDR) which enables upgrading of air interface standards by software
only, and makes it easier to upgrade RAN and support multi-standard operation.
Different from traditional distributed BS architecture, C-RAN breaks up the static relationship
between RRHs and BBUs. Each RRH does not belong to any specific physical BBU. The radio
signals from /to a particular RRH can be processed by a virtual BS, which is part of the
processing capacity allocated from the physical BBU pool by the real-time virtualization
technology. The adoption of virtualization technology will maximize the flexibility in the C-RAN
system.
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Both solutions described above are under development and evaluation. They could be properly
deployed in different networks depending on the situation of the network. The following
discussion will focus on the Fully Centralized Solution.
3.1 Advantages of C-RAN
The benefits of the C-RAN architecture are listed as follows:
Energy Efficient/Green Infrastructure
C-RAN is an eco-friendly infrastructure. Firstly, with centralized processing of the C-RAN
architecture, the number of BS sites can be reduced several folds. Thus the air conditioning
and other site support equipments power consumption can be largely reduced. Secondly,
the distance from the RRHs to the UEs can be decreased since the cooperative radio
technology can reduce the interference among RRHs and allow a higher density of RRHs.
Smaller cells with lower transmission power can be deployed while the network coverage
quality is not affected. The energy used for signal transmission will be reduced, which is
especially helpful for the reduction of power consumption in the RAN and extend the UE
battery stand-by time. Lastly, because the BBU pool is a shared resource among a large
number of virtual BS, it means a much higher utilization rate of processing resources and
lower power consumption can be achieved. When a virtual BS is idle at night and most of
the processing power is not needed, they can be selectively turned off (or be taken to a
lower power state) without affecting the 7x24 service commitment.
Cost-saving on CAPEX &OPEX
Because the BBUs and site support equipment are aggregated in a few big rooms, it is much
easier for centralized management and operation, saving a lot of the O&M cost associated
with the large number of BS sites in a traditional RAN network. Secondly, although the
number of RRHs may not be reduced in a C-RAN architecture its functionality is simpler, size
and power consumption are both reduced and they can sit on poles with minimum site
support and management. The RRH only requires the installation of the auxiliary antenna
feeder systems, enabling operators to speed up the network construction to gain a first-
mover advantage. Thus, operators can get large cost saving on site rental and O&M.
Capacity Improvement
In C-RAN, virtual BSs can work together in a large physical BBU pool and they can easily
share the signaling, traffic data and channel state information (CSI) of active UEs in the
system. It is much easier to implement joint processing & scheduling to mitigate inter-cell
interference (ICI) and improve spectral efficiency. For example, cooperative multi-point
processing technology (CoMP in LTE-Advanced), can easily be implemented under the C-
RAN infrastructure.
Adaptability to Non-uniform Traffic
C-RAN is also suitable for non-uniformly distributed traffic due to the load-balancing
capability in the distributed BBU pool. Though the serving RRH changes dynamically
according to the movement of UEs, the serving BBU is still in the same BBU pool. As the
coverage of a BBU pool is larger than the traditional BS, non-uniformly distributed traffic
generated from UEs can be distributed in a virtual BS which sits in the same BBU pool.
Smart Internet Traffic Offload
Through enabling the smart breakout technology in C-RAN, the growing internet traffic from
smart phones and other portable devices, can be offloaded from the core network of
operators. The benefits are as follows: reduced back-haul traffic and cost; reduced core
network traffic and gateway upgrade cost; reduced latency to the users; differentiating
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China Mobile Research Institute 14
service delivery quality for various applications. The service overlapping the core network
also supplies a better experience to users.
3.2 Technical Challenges of C-RAN
The centralized C-RAN brings lots of benefits in cost, capacity and flexibility over traditional
RAN, however, it also has some technical challenges that must be solved before deployment by
mobile operators.
Radio over Low Cost Optical Network
In C-RAN architecture 1, the optical fiber between BBU pool and RRHs has to carry a large
amount of baseband sampling data in real time. Due to the wideband requirement of LTE/LTE-A
system and multi-antenna technology, the bandwidth of optical transport link to transmit
multiple RRHs baseband sampling data is 10 gigabit level with strict requirements of
transportation latency and latency jitter.
Advanced Cooperative Transmission/Reception
Joint processing is the key to achieve higher system spectrum efficiency. To mitigate
interference of the cellular system, multi-point processing algorithms that can make use of
special channel information and harness the cooperation among multiple antennas at different
physical sites should be developed. Joint scheduling of radio resources is also necessary to
reduce interference and increase capacity.
To support the above Cooperative Multi-Point Joint processing algorithms, both end-user data
and UL/DL channel information needs to be shared among virtual BSs. The interface between
virtual BSs to carry this information should support high bandwidth and low latency to ensure
real time cooperative processing. The information exchanged in this interface includes one or
more of the following types: end-user data package, UE channel feedback information, and
virtual BSs scheduling information. Therefore, the design of this interface must meet the real-
time joint processing requirement with low backhaul transportation delay and overhead.
Baseband Pool Interconnection
The C-RAN architecture centralizes a large number of BBUs within one physical location, thus
its security is crucial to the whole network. To achieve high reliability in case of unit failure, in
order to recover from error, and to allow flexible resource allocation of BBU, there must be a
high bandwidth, low latency, low cost switch network with flexible, extensible topology that
interconnects the BBUs in the pool. Through this switch network, the digital baseband signal
from any RRH can be routed to any BBU in the pool for processing. Thus, any individual BBU
failure wont affect the functionality of the system.
Base Station Virtualization Technology
After the baseband processing units have been put in a centralized pool, it is essential to design
virtualization technologies to distribute/group the processing units into virtual BS entities. The
major challenges of virtualization are: real-time processing algorithm implementation,
virtualization of the baseband processing pool, and dynamic processing capacity allocation to
deal with the dynamic cell load in system.
Service on Edge
Unlike service in a data center, distributing services on the edge of the RAN has its unique
challenges. In the following research framework part, we try to summarize these challenges
into the following three categories: services on the edges integration with the RAN, intelligence
of DSN, and the deployment and management of distributed service.
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China Mobile Research Institute 15
4 Technology Trends and Feasibility Analysis
In order to solve the technical challenges of C-RAN architecture, based on current technical
conditions and future development trends, we suggest to do further research in the following
areas. The purpose is to solve the low cost high bandwidth wireless signal transmission problem
based on an optical network, dynamic resource allocation and collaborative radio technology. It
also comprehends the large scale BBU pool and associated interconnection problem, virtualized
BS based on open platforms and distributed service network solutions. The following is a
detailed analysis and discussion of these challenges.
4.1 Wireless Signal Transmission on Optical Network
The C-RAN architecture, which consists of the distributed RRH and BBU, means that need to
transport untreated wireless signals between BBU and RRH. The BBU-RRH connectivity
requirements pose challenges to the optical transmission speed and capacity. Usually, optical
fiber transmission must be used to carry the BBU-RRH signal to meet the strict bandwidth and
delay requirements.
BBU-RRH Bandwidth Requirement
Air interface is upgrading rapidly, new technologies like multiple antenna technology (2 ~ 8
antenna in every sector), wide bandwidth (10 MHz ~ 20 MHz every carrier) has been widely
adopted in LTE/LTE-A, thus the bandwidth of CPRI/Ir/OBRI (Open BBU-RRH Interface) link
bandwidth is much higher than the 2G and 3G era. In general, the system bandwidth, the
MIMO antenna configuration and the RRH concatenation levels are the main factors which have
an impact on the OBRI bandwidth requirement. For example, the bandwidth for 200 kHz GSM
systems with 2Tx/2Rx antennas and 4xsampling rate is up to 25.6Mbps. The bandwidth for
1.6MHz TD-SCDMA systems with 8Tx/8Rx antennas and 4 times sampling rate is up to
330Mbps. The transmission of this level of bandwidth on fiber link is matured and economic.
However, with the introducing of multi-hop RRH and high orders MIMO supporting 8Tx/8Rx
antenna configuration, the wireless baseband signal bandwidth between BBU-RRH would rise to
dozens of Gbps. Therefore, exploring different transport schemes for the BBU-RRH wireless
baseband signal is very important for C-RAN.
Transportation Latency, Jitter and Measurement Requirements
There are also strict requirements in terms of latency, jitter and measurement. In CPRI/Ir/OBRI
transmission latency, due to the strict requirements of LTE/LTE-A physical layer delay
processing also improve the baseband wireless signal transmission delay jitter and
requirements indirectly. Not including the transmission medium between the round-trip time
(i.e., regardless of delays caused by the cable length), for the user plane data (IQ data) on the
CPRI/Ir/OBRI links, the overall link round-trip delay may not exceed 5s. The OBRI interface
requires periodic measurement of each link or multi-hop cable length. In terms of calibration,
the accuracy of round trip latency of each link or hop should satisfy 16.276ns [4].
System Reliability
For the reliability of the system, because the traditional optical transmission networks
(SDH/PTN) in the access network links provide reliable loop protection, automatic replace and
fiber optic link management function, C-RAN architecture in the access network must also
provide comparative reliability and manageability. In traditional RAN architecture, each BBU on
the access ring usually has access to the corresponding transmission equipment of the center
transmission machine room through SDH/PTN. Through the SDH/PTN ring routing and
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protection function, the system can quickly switch to the safe routing mode when any point on
this loop experiences optical fiber failure, ensuring that business is not interrupted. Under the
C-RAN architecture, it also should offer a similar optical fiber ring network protection function.
Centralized BBU should support more than 10~1000 base station sites, and then the optical
fiber connected OBRI link between distributed RRH and centralized BBU is long. If only point-2-
point optical fiber transmission occurred between each distributed RRH and centralized BBU,
then any fault on the optical fiber link will lead to the corresponding RRH loosing service. In
order to ensure the normal operation of the whole system under the condition of any single
point of failure in the optical fiber, the CPRI/Ir/OBRI link connecting the BBU-RRH should use
fiber ring network protection technology, using the main/minor optical fiber of different
channels to realize CPRI/Ir/OBRI link real-time backup.
Operation and Management
At the same time, under the traditional RAN architecture, the transmission network which
consists of SDH/PTN also provides the unified optical fiber network management ability for the
access ring. This includes unified management of the access ring fiber optic link of the entire
network, supervisory control of the access ring optical fiber breakdown, etc. BBU-RRH wireless
signal transport directly on the access ring, whose CPRI/Ir/OBRI interface should also, provides
similar management ability and fit into unified optical fiber network management.
Cost Requirements
Finally, in terms of cost, the high speed optical module necessary for the CPRI/Ir/OBRI optical
interface will be amongst the important factors affecting the C-RAN economic structure.
Compared to traditional architecture, the wireless signal transmission data rate on C-RAN is
more than 100-200 times higher than the bearer service data rate after demodulation. Building
the fiber transportation network in developed city is very hard. This is less of an issue for
operators that already deploy optical fiber and particularly for operators own their own optical
network.
Although the cost of the optical fiber employing CPRI/Ir/OBRI for high speed wireless signal
transmission doesn't need to increase, the high speed optic module or optical transmission
equipment costs must compare to traditional SDH/PTN transmission equipment in order to
make C-RAN architecture more attractive on the CAPEX and OPEX fronts .Therefore, how to
achieve a low cost, high bandwidth and low latency wireless signal optical fiber transmission will
become a key challenge for realization of the future LTE and LTE network deployment by C-RAN.
For the above problems and corresponding technical progress trend, we will analyze and put
forward ideas for solving these problems.
4.1.1 Data Compression Techniques of CPRI/Ir/OBR Link
In view of the above LTE/LTE-A BBU-RRH wireless signal transmission bandwidth problems,
several data compression techniques that can reduce the burden on the OBRI interface are
being investigated to deal with the inevitable bandwidth issue, including time domain
schemes (e.g. reducing signal sampling, non-linear quantization, and IQ data compression)
as well as frequency domain schemes (e.g. sub-carrier compression).
For LTE system with 20MHz bandwidth, the BBU uses 2048 FFT / IFFT but the effective
number of subcarriers is only 1,200, so if the FFT / IFFT is implemented in the RRH, then
the Ir interface between BBU and the RRH only has to transmit effective data subcarriers,
such that the Ir interface load can be reduced about 40%, However, frequency domain
compression leads to an increase in IQ mapping complexity, which would increase the
interface logic design and processing complexity. Meanwhile, the RRH needs to process
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China Mobile Research Institute 17
parts of the RACH, Therefore, RRH cannot treat different RACH configurations transparently,
instead RRH needs to process RACH based on configuration. Since there are hundreds of
different configurations, each has to be controlled by different timing algorithms in the RRH,
which could greatly increase the complexity of system design. Therefore, considering the
implementation complexity and cost, such frequency domain compression is not feasible at
the moment.
DAGC time-domain based compression technology is a method used for IQ compression.
The basic principle of DAGC is to select the average power reference based on the best
baseband demodulation range, normalize the power of each symbol, and reduce the signal
dynamic range. DAGC compression will adversely affect system performance. The receiver
dynamic range of the uplink will be reduced, which leads to deterioration of the signal to
noise ratio. At the same time, the EVM indicators will worsen on the downlink. With
increased compression ratio, the system performance will deteriorate even more. Currently,
we still need to investigate the impacts caused by different compression schemes.
Table 2 lists the advantages and disadvantages of various compression schemes. As
indicated, there is no ideal OBRI link data compression scheme. More studies in this area
are required.
Table 2. Comparison of Pros and Cons for Various Data Compression Techniques
Bandwidth
Compression
Schemes
Pros Cons
Reducing signal
sampling
Low complexity;
Efficient compression to 66.7%;
Less impacts on protocols.
Severe performance loss.
Non-linear
quantization
Improve the QSNR;
Mature algorithms available, e.g. A law
and U law;
High compression efficiency to 53%.
Some impacts on the OBRI interface
complexity.
IQ data
Compression
Potential high compression efficiency;
Only need extra decompression and
compression modules.
High complexity;
Difficult to set up a relativity model;
Real-time and compression distortion
issues;
No mature algorithm available.
Sub-carrier
Compression
High compression efficiency to 40%
~58%;
Easy to be performed in downlink.
Increase the system complexity;
Extra processing ability on optical chips
and the thermal design;
High device cost;
Difficulty for maintenance;
RACH processing is a big challenge; More
storage, larger FPGA processing
capacity.
4.1.2 Transmission delay and jitter of CPRI/Ir/OBRI link
As mentioned previously, CPRI/Ir/OBRI link have strict demands on transmission delay,
jitter and measurement. However, because the link round trip delay requirements (5 us) of
the user plane data (IQ data) in CPRI/Ir/OBRI link do not include the transmission medium
round-trip time (i.e. delay in optical transmission), this requirement can be satisfied by the
existing technical conditions. At the same time, because CPRI/Ir/OBRI optical fiber routing
generally does not change with time and delay jitter caused by transmission is relatively
small, it is easy to meet the corresponding requirements.
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On the other hand, because LTE/LTE-A has strict requirements about physical layer
treatment delay, CPRI/Ir/OBRI total transmission delay on the link should not exceed a
certain level. The physical layer HARQ process places the highest demand on processing
delay. HARQ is an important technology to improve the performance of the physical layer,
its essence is testing the physical layer on the receiving end of a sub-frame for correct or
incorrect transmission, and rapid feedback ACK/NACK to the launching end physical layer,
then let launching physical layer to make the decision whether or not to send again. If sent
again, the receiver does combined processing for multi-launching signal in the physical
layer, and then provides feedback to the upper protocol after demodulation success.
According to the LTE/LTE-A standard, the ACK/NACK HARQ on uplink and downlink process
should be finished in 3 ms after receiving the signals in the shortest case, which requires
that sub-frame processing delay in the physical layer should be generally less than 1 ms.
Because the physical layer processing itself takes 800-900 us, then CPRI/Ir/OBRI optical
transmission delay may be 100-200 us at the most. According to the light speed(200,000
kilometers per hour) estimated in the fiber, CPRI/Ir/OBRI interface maximum transmission
distance under the C-RAN framework is limited from 20 km to 40 km. Specific value is
related to delay margin the physical layer treatment itself.
4.1.3 Optical Transmission Technology Progress and Cost Reduction
As mentioned above, BBU-RRH wireless signal connection supporting LTE and LTE-Advance
creates new challenges to optical transmission network rates and cost. The rapid
development of the optical transmission technology provides more economic solutions to
solve the problem. A single fiber capacity of current commercial WDM system can be up to
3.2 T.10 Gpbs optical transmission technology applies generally and become fundamental
40 G system is mature and gradually being commercialized, 100 G technology is still not
mature and costs too much, there is still 2-3 years until the telecommunication
commercial level, but along with coherent technical breakthroughs, promoting of
standardization has already become a now advantage. 10GE standardization and
industrialization will greatly improve the relevant market capacity of the optical
transmission module, which will help to reduce the cost of 10 Gbps optical modules. 40GE
technology is still in the research process. On the other hand, at the access network level,
1.25 G,2.5 G EPON is already widely used in solving FTTX access, 10G PON technology can
be commercial in one or two years, the future PON technological development have several
directions like WDM-PON, Hybrid PON and 40G PON.
Similar to what the Moore's Law is doing in the transformation of the semiconductor
industry, the field of optical communication has a similar trend: Every year, the speed of
optical transmission increases while the cost of the said module declines. Transceiver
modules that are capable of supporting multi-wavelength WDM have emerged in the
market place. Since commercial LTE deployment has just begun, we can safely predict that
it will take about 5 years before the commercial LTE-A multi-carrier system deployment is
needed. By then, if the optical module advancement and cost reduction has reached an
acceptable level, then the RRH-BBU bottleneck will be effectively removed.
Figure 11 shows the 2.5G SFP and 10G SFP / XFP / XENPAK optical modules pricing trends.
We can deduce that optical modules pricing has dropped by 66% to 77% in nearly 3 years,
and the trend will continue in the coming years, further reducing the cost of optical
transmission network. If this price trend continues, it would greatly help to reduce CAPEX
of a C-RAN network.
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0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
Aug-07 Feb-08 Aug-08 Feb-09 Aug-09
Pri
ce h
isto
ry o
f 2
.5G
mo
dule
s (
RM
B).
10Km 40Km 80Km
66.7%
54.2%
62.2%
60%
61.5%
35.2%
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
10000
Aug-07 Feb-08 Aug-08 Feb-09 Aug-09Pri
ce h
isto
ry o
f 1
0G
mo
dule
s (
RM
B).
550m 10Km 40Km
Fig. 11 Price history of Commercial 2.5G/10G Optical Modules
4.1.4 BBU-RRH Optical Fiber Network Protection
Although BBU-RRH direct transmission under C-RAN framework does not provide a ring
network protection function like traditional SDH/PTN, the CPRI/Ir/OBRI interface rate
standards provide a similar ring network protection function, and are supported by
manufacturers. At the same time, in order to avoid having every RRH fully occupy two
optical fibers on a physically routed pair the RRHs can be connected to each in a cascaded
manner according to the CPRI/Ir/OBRI interface specification. This permits two different
routing trunk cables to form a ring and be connected to the same BBU, as shown in Figure
10. As long as the CPRI/Ir/OBRI interface rate is high enough, the BBU-RRH ring network
protection technology can save the use of many optical fibers and ensure a short round trip
delay. Taking a TD-SCDMA system for example, a 6.144 Gpbs CPRI/Ir/OBRI link can
support 15 TD-SCDMA carriers of 8-antenna RRH and a typical TD-SCDMA macro station
with 3 sectors, 5/5/5 configuration at most. The IQ data of a RRH with three sectors
connected to the same BBU machine through two different physical routing backbone
optical cables. When a trunk cable fails, three RRHs will connect to the BBU through
another trunk cable under less than 40ms protection rotated time to guarantee that all
business does not interrupt. For lower-rate GSM system, it is even simpler to connect six or
more RRHs through such a CPRI/Ir/OBRI annular link and achieve the same functions.
However, according to LTE/LTE-A system with higher wireless signal transmission rate, it is
necessary to introduce WDM technology to realize a similar loop protection function.
Transmission ring
Trunk cable 2
Trunk cable 1
Optical
switching box
Central apparatus
room
Radio remote
head
Fig. 12 RRH Ring Protection Loop
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4.1.5 Current Deployment Solutions
In order to meet the high bandwidth transmission between RRH and BBU, operators can
use different solutions based on their current transmission network resources. In China
Mobile, the current backhaul is mainly an optical transport network with three layers of
transmission network: the core transmission layer, the convergence transmission layer and
the access transmission layer. All the layers are using ring topology to provide fail safe
protection. The optical resources of different layers are similar to the following: at the core
transmission layer, each optical route has 144 to 576 fibers; at the convergence
transmission layer, each route has 96-144 fibers; while at the access transmission layer,
each route has 24-48 fibers. If the Baseband pool is located in the transmission
convergence equipment room, the optical fiber resource to and from the equipment room
determines the coverage of the baseband pool.
According to the resourcing of the optical transmission network, especially the fiber
resource in the access transmission network, there are four different solutions to carry
CPRI/Ir/OBRI over it: 1. Dark fiber; 2. WDM/OTN; 3. Unified Fixed and Mobile access like
UniPON; 4. Passive WDM. These solutions have different advantages and disadvantages,
and they are each suitable for different deployment scenarios. From the trials conducted,
for a BBU pool with less than 10 macro BSs, it is preferred to use a dark fiber solution while
other solutions still need more field tests and verification, because they may introduce new
transmission devices and associated O&M issues.
The first solution is Dark fiber. It is suitable when there is plenty of fiber resource. It is easy
to deploy if there are a lot spare fiber resources. The benefits of this solution are: fast
deployment and low cost because no additional optical transport network equipment is
needed. The concerns of this solution are: it consumes significant fiber resource, thus the
network extensibility will be a challenge; new protection mechanisms are required in case
of fiber failure; and it is hard to implement O&M, therefore it will introduce some difficulties
for optical network O&M. However, there are feasible solutions to address such challenges.
For fiber resources, if there is already a channel route available, it is fairly inexpensive to
add new fiber cables or upgrade existing fibers. To address fiber failure protection, there
are CPRI/Ir/OBRI compliant products available now that have the 1+1 backup or ring
topology protection features. If deployed with physical ring topology that provides
alternative fiber route, it will be able to provide similar recoverability capability as SDH/PTN.
For the O&M of the fiber in the access ring, we are considering introducing new O&M
capabilities in the CPRI/Ir/OBRI standard to satisfy the fiber transport network
management requirement.
The second solution is WDM/OTN solution. It is suitable for Macro cellular base station
systems when there is limited fiber resource, especially where the fiber resource in the
access ring is very limited, or adding new fiber in existing route is too difficult or cost is too
high. By upgrading the optical access transmission network to WDM/OTN, the bandwidth of
transporting CPRI/Ir/OBRI interface on BBU-RRH link is largely improved. Through
transmitting as many as 40 or even 80 wavelength with 10Gpbs in one fiber, it can support
a large number of cascading RRH on one pair of optical fiber. This technology can reduce
the demand of dark fiber, however, upgrading existing access ring into WDM/OTN
transmission network means higher costs. On the other hand, because the access transport
network is usually within a few tens of kilometers, the WDM/OTN equipment can be much
cheaper than those used in long distant backbone networks.
The third solution is based on CWDM technology. It combines the fixed broadband and
mobile access network transmission at the same time for indoor coverage with passive
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optical technology, thus named as Unified PON. It can provide both PON services and
CPRI/Ir/OBRI transmission on the same fiber [5]. In this solution, an optical fiber can
support as many as 14 different wavelengths. In the UniPON standard, the uplink and
downlink channel are transmitted on two difference wavelengths, thus other free
wavelengths can be used for CPRI/Ir/OBRI data transmission between the BBU and RRH.
Because of sharing the optical fiber resources, it can reduce the overall cost. It is suitable
for C-RAN centralized baseband pool deployment of indoor coverage.
4.1.6 Summarize
Based on the above analysis, fully centralized C-RAN architecture requires a high
bandwidth, low latency, high reliability and low cost optical solution to transmit high speed
baseband signal between BBU and RRH. Its promising to find feasible solutions emerging in
the near future. However, there are still many challenges in the current solutions. For
example, current data compression schemes fail to satisfy OBRI transmission in the LTE-A
phase. The rapid development of high-speed optical modules and the associated cost
reduction is heading in the right direction but we still need a breakthrough in optical devices.
Failure protection schemes for BBU-RRH connection are able to provide similar functions to
SDH/PTN in case of fiber cut, but we still need to find solutions for unified O&M with
traditional transmission networks. UniPON based on passive WDM technology is a promising
solution for certain deployment scenarios but it must be designed to be competitive in cost.
In conclusion, we have various directions to solve the high-speed baseband signal
transmission requirement of C-RAN but we still need to explore new technology or a
combination of existing technology to find a more economical and effective solution.
Considering the technical challenges as well as the limitation in current optical network
resources, it is clear that C-RAN can be widely applied in a short time frame. Instead, a
stepped plan should be used to gradually construct the centralized network: first,
centralized deployment can be applied in some green field or replacement of old network in
a small scale. Dark fiber can be used as the BBU-RRH transmission solution. One access
ring that connects 8~12 macro sites can be centralized together, with a maximum ring
range of 40km. In the future, a larger number of macro BS in various deployment scenarios
can be further tested.
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4.2 Dynamic Radio Resource Allocation and Cooperative
Transmission/Reception
One key target for C-RAN system is to significantly increase average spectrum efficiency and
the cell edge user throughput efficiency. However, users at the cell boundary are known to
experience large inter-cell interference (ICI) in a fully-loaded OFDM cellular environment, which
will cause severe degradation of system performance and cannot be mitigated by increasing the
transmit power of desired signals. At the same time, in view of the analysis, single cell wireless
resources usage efficiency is low. To improve system spectrum efficiency, advanced multi-cell
joint RRM and cooperative multi-point transmission schemes should be adopted in the C-RAN
system.
Cooperative Radio Resource Management for multi-cells
The multi-cell RRM problem has been addressed in various academic studies. Many uses
various optimization techniques in trying to determine the optimal resource scheduling and the
power control solutions to maximize the total throughput of all cells with some specific
constraints. To reduce the complexity incurred in the C-RAN network architecture and the
scheduling process, the joint processing/scheduling should be limited to a number of cells
within a cluster. The complexity of scheduling among the eNBs clusters is determined by the
velocity of mobile users and the number of UEs and RRHs in the cluster. Thus, choosing an
optimal clustering approach will require balancing among the performance gain, the
requirement of backhaul capacity and the complexity of scheduling.
As shown in Fig.13, UEs will be served by one of the available clusters which are formed in a
static or semi-static way based on the feedback or measurements reports of UEs. In this
scenario, a subset of cells within a cluster will cooperate in transmission to the UEs associated
with the cluster. To further reduce the complexity, it is possible to limit the number of cells
cooperating in joint transmission to a UE at each scheduling instant. The cells in actual
transmission to a UE are called active cells for the UE. The active cells can be defined from the
UE perspective based on the signal strength (normally cells with strong signal strength are
chosen among cells within the supercell). The activation/de-activation of a cell can be done by
a super eNB, which is the control entity in cell clustering and can adjust the sets scope based
on the UE feedback.
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Cell cluster 1Cell cluster 2
Cell cluster 3
Fig. 13 The UE assisted network controlled cell clustering
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Cooperative Transmission / Reception
Cooperative transmission / reception (CT/CR) is well accepted as a promising technique to
increase cell average spectrum efficiency and cell-edge user throughput. Although CT/CR
naturally increases system complexity, it has potentially significant performance benefits,
making it worth a more detailed consideration. To be specific, the cooperative transmission /
reception is characterized into two classes, as shown in Fig.14:
Joint processing/transmission (JP)
The JP scheme incurs a large system overhead: UE data distribution and joint
processing across multiple transmission points (TPs); and channel state information
(CSI) is required for all the TP-UE pairs.
Coordinated scheduling and/or Coordinated Beam-Forming (CBF)
With a minimum cooperation overhead, to improve the cell edge-user throughput via
coordinated beam-forming: No need for UE data sharing across multiple TPs; Each TP
only needs CSI between itself and the involved UEs (no need for CSI between other
TPs and UEs).
Fig. 14 JP scheme and CBF scheme
In this section, the performance of the JP scheme with intra-cell collaboration, and performance
with inter-cell collaboration in C-RAN architecture are evaluated in a TDD system. We assume
that full DL channel state information (CSI) can be obtained ideally at the eNB side. The
downlink throughput and spectrum efficiency results with different schemes in both 2 antenna
and 8 antenna configuration are shown in Fig.15. Detailed simulation parameters can be found
in [6-9].
3GPP Case 1 (TDD)
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1.9 2.542.47
5.46
2.81
6.15
3.01
6.58
0
2
4
6
8
2Tx (X)/2Rx 8Tx(XXXX)/2Rx
Ave. cell spectrum efficiency (bps/Hz)
SU-MIMO
MU-MIMO
0.0560.098
0.047
0.1830.0780.227
0.101
0.266
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
2Tx (X)/2Rx 8Tx(XXXX)/2Rx
Cell-edge spectrum efficiency (bps/Hz)
SU-MIMO
MU-MIMO
ITU UMi (TDD)
1.44 1.971.8
3.78
1.93
4.54
1.97
5.35
0
2
4
6
2Tx (X)/2Rx 8Tx(XXXX)/2Rx
Ave. cell spectrum efficiency (bps/Hz)
SU-MIMO MU-MIMO
Intra-site CoMP C-RAN CoMP
0.0410.0520.039
0.0920.07 0.161
0.075
0.202
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
2Tx (X)/2Rx 8Tx(XXXX)/2Rx
Cell-edge spectrum efficiency (bps/Hz)
SU-MIMO
MU-MIMO
Fig. 15 Compare of Downlink Throughput and SE
From the simulation results we can see, compared to the non-cooperative transmission
mechanism (MU-BF in LTE-A), the spectrum efficiency of intra-cell collaboration and inter-cell
collaboration under C-RAN architecture could achieve a 13% and 20% gain, respectively, while
the cell edge users spectrum efficiency, from the above two mechanisms can get 75% and 119%
gain respectively.
Technical Challenges
Cooperative transmission / reception (CT/CR) has great potentials in reducing interference and
improving spectrum efficiency of system. However, this technology has many problems that
need to be further studied before it can be applied to the practical networks. There are many
challenges listed as follows:
Advanced joint processing schemes
DL channel state information (CSI) feedback mechanism
User pairing and joint scheduling algorithms for multi-cells
Coordinated Radio resource allocation and power allocation schemes for multi-cells.
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4.3 Large Scale Baseband Pool and Its Interconnection
Centralized Baseband Pool
There are many distributed BS products using RRH+BBU architecture in market. Some TEMs
products have realized dynamic allocation of carrier processing within one BBU to adapt to
dynamic workloads among different RRH connected to it. This architecture can be viewed as the
first step of centralized baseband pool concept, but in general a single BBU has limited
processing capability, typically only supporting about 10 macro BSs carriers. Its not yet
capable of supporting dynamic resource allocation across different BBU, thus hard to resolve
the dynamic network load in a larger area. In the current RRH+BBU architecture, the RRH is
usually connected to a particular BBU by a fixed link, and it can only transmits its baseband
signal and O&M signaling to the BBU its connected to. This makes it difficult for another BBU to
obtain any uplink baseband data from that RRH. Similarly, any other BBU has difficulty sending
downlink baseband data to this RRH. Because of this limitation, the processing resources of
different BBUs can hardly be shared: the idle BBUs processing resources are wasted and it
cannot be used to help the BBU with a heavy workload.
The centralized baseband pool should provide a high bandwidth, low latency switch matrix with
an appropriate protocol to support the high speed, low latency and low cost interconnection
among multiple BBUs. In a medium sized dense urban network coverage (approximately 25 sq.
km in area), with an average distance between BS of 500m, a centralized baseband pool that
can cover the whole area needs to support about 100 BS. For a typical TD-SCDMA system with
3 sectors per macro BS and 3 carriers/sectors, it means that the centralized baseband pool
needs to support 900 TD-SCDMA carriers. Imagine if the centralized Baseband pool coverage
is even larger, such as 15 km X 15 km, then the baseband pool would need to support up to
1000 macro BSs carriers. Because of the limitation in the high-speed differential signal
transmission, the traditional BBU architecture cannot scale up to support such capacity by
simply expanding the backplane dimensions.
Infinite Band technology can provide significant switching bandwidth (20Gbps-40Gpbs/port)
and very low switching latency. It is widely used in supercomputers. However, the cost per port
is very high (20,000RMB) and as such does not meet the C-RAN cost requirement. Inspired by
the data center networks distributed inter-connect architecture, the centralized BBU pool in C-
RAN can also use a distributed optic interconnection to combine multiple BBU into a scalable
baseband pool. Based on that, the RRHs signal can be routed to any one of BBUs in the pool.
Thus load balance according to dynamic network load among BBUs can be achieved, and
system power consumption can be reduced. It also makes the deployment of multi-point MIMO
technology and interference mitigation algorithms easier, which can improve radio system
capacity.
Dynamic carrier scheduling
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The dynamic carrier scheduling of resources within baseband pools enhances redundancy of the
BBU and increases overall operational reliability of the baseband pool. When a baseband card or
a carrier processing unit fails, the work load can be promptly redistributed to other available
resources within the pool, and restore the normal operation. In addition, for areas that have
strong dynamic network load, the operator can deploy fewer baseband resources to meet the
demands of different sites that have opposite peak loads at different times. For example,
operator can use the same BBU pool with multiple RRHs to cover both residential areas and
office areas. Then dynamically allocates baseband resources to ensure basic coverage for both
areas. Remaining baseband resources can be dynamically allocated to cover the business area
during working hours and the residential area during after working hours. This will increase the
overall carrier resource utilization.
Large-scale BBU Inter-connection
A large scale baseband inter-connect solution should be able to support 10-1000 macro BS,
with the following requirements:
Inter-connection between BBUs must satisfy the wireless signals requirements of low
latency, high speed, and high reliability. The requirements are similar to the CPRI/Ir/OBRI
interface, and should support real-time transmission of 2.5/6.144/10Gbps rate.
Dynamic carrier scheduling among BBUs to achieve efficient load balance within the
system and failure protection without service interruption.
Support multipoint collaboration (CoMP). It needs to consider the data flow between
different BBUs to support collaboration radio.
Fault-tolerance. Fiber inter connection should support 1+1 failure protection, BBU frame
and baseband processing board N +1 protection to achieve high system robustness.
High scalability: it can extend the system capability smoothly without services interruption.
4.4 Open Platform Based Base Station Virtualization
Current Multi-Standard BS Solutions
Nowadays, most major mobile operators in the world have to operate multiple standards
simultaneously. It is a natural choice to use multi-mode base stations for low cost operation.
Therefore, SDR based on a common platform to support multi-standards has become the
mainstream in TEMs products. The following are the two types of multi-mode base stations.
Unified BBU system platform supporting multi-mode by plugging in different processing
boards. The processing board which supports multi-standard (such as GSM, TD-SCDMA,
TD-LTE) has a unified interface and can be plugged in the same BBU system platform.
Operators can use one set of a BBU system platform to support multi-standard operation.
In this case, some modules of BBU system such as control module, timing module and RRH
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I/O modules can be shared between BBU processing boards which support different
standards. However, this structure can't share processing resources between different
processing boards and usually need to replace or add new processing board hardware for
upgrades.
Unified BBU system platform and unified processing board hardware platform to support
multi-mode through the software re-configuration. Through software upgrades or
configuration, the same processing board can support different standards (e.g. LTE or TD-
SCDMA). In some of the latest products, the RRH can also be SDR-enabled to support
different standards in the same spectrum band. This solution allows the base station to be
upgraded to a new standard without changing the hardware. However, current products
usually require the BBU to restart in order to download new DSP / FPGA software for
standards upgrade. This limits the sharing of hardware between different standards. In
fact, this prevents the dynamic resources allocation according to real-time traffic load
without interrupt of services.
Current SDR base station products partially meets the requirements of multistandards
support, however, it does not satisfy the operator flexible operation requirement of dynamically
shared resources among multiple standards, load-balancing, etc.
Evolution of Software Defined Radio
Driven by Moore's law in semiconductor industry, Digital Signal Processor (DSP) and General
Purpose Processors (GPP) have made a lot of progresses in the architecture, performance and
power consumption in recent years. This provides more choices for SDR base stations. Multi-
core technology is widely used in DSP and 3 ~ 6 cores processors have been commercially
available. At the same time, DSP floating-point processing capacity is also improving at a fast
pace. The emergence of the DSP system based on SoC architecture combines traditional DSP
core and communication accelerator together has improved the BBU processing density and
improved the power efficiency. Moreover, real-time OS running on DSP pave the path to
virtualization of DSP processing resources. On the other hand, DSP from different
manufacturers and even a same manufacturer cannot guarantee backwards compatibility. The
real-time operating systems are different from each other, and there is no de fact standard yet.
Generally BBUs based on DSP platform are proprietary platforms. And it is still difficult to
achieve smooth upgrading and resource virtualization.
Meanwhile, General Purpose Processors have progressed rapidly, and they are now capable of
efficiently processing wireless signals. Therefore, the telecom industry now has more choices
for software defined radio. Technology evolution in areas such as multi-core, SIMD (single-
instruction multiple data), large on-chip caches, low latency off-chip system memory are
facilitating the use of GPP in traditional signal processing applications such as baseband
processing in base stations. Traditional general processors usually have lower performance than
DSP in power efficiency; however, in recent years the general processor has made a lot of
improvements in this respect. Fig.14 shows the general processor technical progress in
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processing performance and power consumption in nearly 6-7 years. It is can be seen that the
floating point computing capacity per watt improves very fast. These data points prove that the
evolution in GPP has made it an attractive solution for various data processing tasks in the base
station.
The advantage of GPP is that they have a long history of backward compatibility, ensuring that
software can run on each new generation of processor without any change, and this is
beneficial for smooth upgrade of the BBU. On the operating system side, there are multiple
OSs available on GPP that have real-time capability, and also allow the virtualization of BS
baseband signal processing.
Fig. 14: Compute performance evolution of GPP *
(CPUs in 50-65 watt power envelopes used as basis for comparison in graph)
Technical progress in DSP and GPP has provided more powerful signal processing with less
power consumption. This progress has made the SDR based BS solutions more attractive.
Traditional DSP has become matured solution for product, and will continue to evolve. The
advanced research on wireless signal processing on GPP has provided more choices for the base
station, and has the potential to become part of the future open, unified multi-mode BS
platform.
Base Station Virtualization
Once the large scale BBU pool with high-speed, low-latency interconnection, plus the common
platform of DSP/GPP and open SDR solution could be realized, it has set the base for a a virtual
BS.
Virtualization is a term that refers to the abstraction of computer resources. It hides the
physical characteristics of a computing platform from users, instead showing another abstract
computing platform. If such a concept can be utilized in a base station system, the operator
can dynamically allocate processing resources within a centralized baseband pool to different
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virtualized base stations and different air interface standards. This allows the operator to
efficiently support the variety of air interfaces,