Graph-based Framework for Flexible Baseband Function Splitting and Placement in C-RAN

LANGUAGE
English
SOURCE
IEEE ICC
Published Date:2015-6
ABSTRACT
The baseband-up centralization architecture of radio access network (C-RAN) has recently been proposed to support efficient cooperative communications and reduce deployment and operational costs. However, the massive fronthaul bandwidth required to aggregate baseband samples from remote radio heads (RRHs) to the central office incurs huge fronthaul cost, and the existing baseband compression algorithms can hardly solve this issue. In this paper, we propose a graph-based framework to efficiently reduce fronthauling cost through properly splitting and placing baseband processing functions in the network. Baseband transceiver structures are represented with directed graphs, in which nodes correspond to baseband functions, and edges to the information flows between functions. By mapping graph weighs to computational and fronthauling costs, we transform the problem of finding the optimum location to place some baseband functions into the problem of finding the optimum clustering schemes for graph nodes. We then solve the problem using a genetic algorithm with customized fitness function and mutation module. Simulation results show that proper splitting and placement schemes can significantly reduce fronthauling cost at the expense of increased computational cost. We also find that cooperative processing structures and stringent delay requirements will increase the possibility of centralized placement.