Cloud-Based Convergence of Heterogeneous RANs in 5G Disaggregated Architectures

Connecting Remote eNodeB with Containerized 5G C-RANs in OpenStack Cloud

“…With this achievement, a way is paved towards forming a fully functional 5G network using proprietary 4G virtualized hardware without the requirement for the NR (New Radio) 5G interfaces, and as the technologies emerge, implement the 5G new radio entities subsequently. Furthermore, it is showed that the differences in the core networking between 4G and 5G are minimal, that can result also into consecutive interworking between the two technologies and therefore, as planned, reuse the existing 4G EPC network cores and implement them together with the new 5G cores [27] [28].…”

Optimal Topology Formation and Adaptation of Integrated Access and Backhaul Networks

“…The separation of the layers of the protocol stack into different physical equipment (Makris et al, 2018) and the virtualization (Mijumbi et al, 2016), i.e., the usage of softwarebased protocol stack implementations, can lower the capex and opex by reducing the complexity of individual base stations. To this end, integrated access and backhaul (IAB), in which only a fraction of next-generation node base stations (gNBs) connect to traditional fiber-like infrastructures, while the others wirelessly relay the backhaul traffic, is considered a promising solution (Dhillon and Caire, 2015).…”

Design and experimental study of heterogeneous disaggregated 5G mobile wireless networks

“…In this chapter, we build on top of a real Cloud-RAN setup, in order to introduce coordination functions for heterogeneous technologies. We use the OpenAirInterface [83] platform for our developments, and make use of the extensions to the platform [65] that introduce heterogeneous wireless technologies to the RAN, controlled by a single point located at the CU side of the base station. The implementation makes use of dedicated signaling between the CU and heterogeneous DUs, introduced as F1-over-IP (F1oIP) due to its resemblance with the F1AP protocol.…”

“…In this section, we detail the existing signaling between the disaggregated heterogeneous base stations, and the extensions to support the heterogeneous cell coordination in terms of spectrum. We use as our starting point the F1oIP implementation for the disaggregation of base stations as CUs and DUs, detailed in [65], and extend it accordingly in order to enable the spectrum coordination between the heterogeneous entities of the network. The implementation is introducing a new signaling mode between the PDCP and RLC layers, resembling the F1AP standardized interface for the communication between CUs and DUs.…”

“…Especially when considering heterogeneous technologies in the RAN, efficient coordination is required in order to achieve spectral efficiency in a given area. In this chapter, we deal with the proposed CU/DU split of the base station stack, integrated with non-3GPP technologies, based on our prior contributions in [65]. In such a setup, our contributions are the following:…”