Experimental demonstration of fronthaul flexibility for enhanced CoMP service in 5G radio and optical access networks

Abstract

The RAN architecture towards mobile 5G and beyond is undergoing a fundamental evolution, which brings optics into the radio world. Fronthaul is a new segment that leverages on the advantages of optical communication for RAN transport. However, the current fronthaul architecture shows a fixed connection between an RRH and a BBU, which leads to inefficient resource utilization. In this paper, we focus on the fronthaul flexibility that allows "any-RRH to any-BBU" connection. In particular, we consider a CoMP service and discuss how flexible optical fronthaul helps to improve its performance. To achieve this goal, we propose an SDN-enabled orchestration for coordinating radio and optical access networks. Under this unified control manner, the agile RRH-BBU mapping can be reached through lightpath reconfiguration. To further verify the benefits of flexibility, we experiment the CoMP service in the cloud radio over flexible optical fronthaul (CRoFlex) testbed. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed SDN-enabled flexible optical fronthaul can improve the CoMP performance by optimizing the RRH-BBU mapping.

Key Technologies and Development Trends of 5G Optical Networks

“…This places an incredibly high demand on the transmission and processing of wireless communication in 5G fronthaul networks. The adaptation, transmission, and exchange of wireless communication in optical networks must be completed in an extremely short time, which constitutes a great challenge faced by 5G fronthaul optical networks [6]. Therefore, some optical communication discussions have been initiated to solve the bandwidth and latency problems faced by future 5G networks.…”

“…Given the considerable potential business opportunities 5G and IoT technologies could engender, governments worldwide are actively facilitating technology development and establishing related infrastructure [18]. The topic of incorporating optical network technologies into the development and application of 5G has sparked the attention of both academia and industry [6][7][8][9]. For example, an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) working group on Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) included the application of optical networks in its research agenda [19].…”

“…The development of 5G requires more optical resources. For example, the radio access network (RAN) architecture for mobile 5G and beyond is undergoing a fundamental evolution, bringing optics into the world of radio [6]. Using optical networks could increase transmission distances and data bandwidths, while simultaneously reducing energy consumption.…”

“…To date, studies have held preliminary discussions on the topic of 5G optical networks [4, [6][7][8][9]; however, such studies have mostly focused on discussions on the technical [6][7][8] or the market aspects [4,9]. Furthermore, their findings have not indicated the key development domains for 5G optical networks.…”

Enhancing RAN Throughput by Optimized CoMP Controller Placement in Optical Metro Networks

“…Authors of [19] study the effectiveness of CoMP on an end-user level, i.e., they study the users-cells association and emitted power allocation required to maximize data rate provisioning for small cells users. The idea of dynamic association between RRH and BBU (namely, "any-RRH to any-BBU"), obtained by means of flexible optical fronthaul lightpaths reconfiguration is exploited in [20] to improve the performance of CoMP service. Finally, the impact of CoMP utilization and specifically of the required coordination traffic onto the C-RAN is investigated in [21], where the authors evaluate the benefit of data compression in the context of wireless fronthauling.…”