Several new architectures are under investigation for cloud radio access networks, assuming distinct splits of functionality among the network elements. Consequently, the research on radio data compression for the fronthaul is based on assumptions that correspond to a wide variety of tradeoffs among data rate, signal distortion, latency and computational cost. This paper describes a method for LTE downlink point-topoint signal compression based on linear prediction and Huffman coding, which is suitable for low cost encoding and decoding units with stringent restrictions on power consumption. The proposed method can work at various compression factors, such as 3.3:1 at an average EVM of 0.9%, or 4:1 at an average EVM of 2.1%.

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