Virtualized radio access networks (vRAN) are emerging as a key component of wireless cellular networks, and it is therefore imperative to optimize their architecture. vRANs are decentralized systems where the Base Station (BS) functions can be split between the edge Distributed Units (DUs) and Cloud computing Units (CUs); hence they have many degrees of design freedom. We propose a framework for optimizing the number and location of CUs, the function split for each BS, and the association and routing for each DU-CU pair. We combine a linearization technique with a cutting-planes method to expedite the exact problem solution. The goal is to minimize the network costs and balance them with the criterion of centralization, i.e., the number of functions placed at CUs. Using data-driven simulations we find that multi-CU vRANs achieve cost savings up to 28% and improve centralization by 77%, compared to single-CU vRANs. Interestingly, we see non-trivial trade-offs among centralization and cost, which can be aligned or conflicting based on the traffic and network parameters. Our work sheds light on the vRAN design problem from a new angle, highlights the importance of deploying multiple CUs, and offers a rigorous optimization tool for balancing costs and performance.

In this paper, the impact of imperfect channel state information (CSI) on a downlink coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission system with non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is investigated since perfect knowledge of a channel can not be guaranteed in practice. Furthermore, the channel estimation error is applied to estimate the channel information wherein its priori of variance is assumed to be known. The impact of the number of coordinated base stations (BSs) on downlink CoMP NOMA is investigated. Users are classified into one of two groups according to their position within the cell, namely cell-center user (CCU) and cell-edge user (CEU). In this paper, ergodic capacity and sum capacity for both CCU and CEU are derived as closed form. In addition, various experiments are conducted with different parameters such as SNR, error variance, and power allocation to show their impact on the CoMP method. The results show that CoMP NOMA outperforms the CoMP orthogonal multiple access (OMA) wherein the condition of the channel impacts the performance of CoMP NOMA less. It is worth noting that a higher number of coordinated BSs enhances the total capacity of CoMP NOMA. Finally, the performance analysis is validated due to the close accordance between the analytical and simulation results.

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