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CRAN White Paper v2 5 en
CRAN White Paper v2 5 en
White Paper
Version 2.5 (Oct, 2011)
Table of Contents
C-RAN............................................................................................................................................... i The Road Towards Green RAN ..................................................................................................... i 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Background ......................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Vision of C-RAN .................................................................................................................. 1 1.3 Objectives of this White Paper ....................................................................................... 2 1.4 Status of this White Paper ............................................................................................... 2 2 Challenges of Todays RAN ............................................................................................... 3 2.1 Large Number of BS and Associated High Power Consumption .............................. 3 2.2 Rapid Increasing CAPEX/OPEX of RAN.......................................................................... 4 2.3 Explosive Network Capacity Need with Falling ARPUs ............................................... 6 2.4 Dynamic mobile network load and low BS utilization rate ....................................... 7 2.5 Growing Internet Service Pressure on Operators Core Network ............................ 7 3 Architecture of C-RAN ......................................................................................................... 9 3.1 Advantages of C-RAN ..................................................................................................... 11 3.2 Technical Challenges of C-RAN ..................................................................................... 12 4 Technology Trends and Feasibility Analysis ...................................................................... 13 4.1 Wireless Signal Transmission on Optical Network .................................................... 13 4.2 Dynamic Radio Resource Allocation and Cooperative Transmission/Reception . 20 4.3 Large Scale Baseband Pool and Its Interconnection ........................................................... 22 4.4 Open Platform Based Base Station Virtualization ................................................................ 24 4.5 Distributed Service Network ................................................................................................. 27 5 Evolution Path ...................................................................................................................... 28 5.1 C-RAN Centralized Base Station Deployment ........................................................... 28 5.2 Multi-standard SDR and Joint Signal Processing ...................................................... 28 5.3 Virtual BS on Real-time Cloud Infrastructure ............................................................ 28 6 Recent Progress .................................................................................................................. 30 6.1 TD-SCDMA and GSM Field Trial .................................................................................... 30 6.2 Large Scale Baseband Pool Equipment Development ............................................. 35 6.3 C-RAN prototype based on General Purpose Processor ................................................... 37 7 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 39 8 Acknowledgement .............................................................................................................. 40 9 Terms and Definitions ....................................................................................................... 41 10 Reference ............................................................................................................................ 43
1 Introduction
1.1 Background
Todays mobile operators are facing a strong competition environment. The cost to build, operate and upgrade the Radio Access Network (RAN) is becoming more and more expensive while the revenue is not growing at the same rate. The mobile internet traffic is surging, while the ARPU is flat or even decreasing slowly, which impacts the ability to build out the networks and offer services in a timely fashion.. To maintain profitability and growth, mobile operators must find solutions to reduce cost as well as to provide better services to the customers. On the other hand, the proliferation of mobile broadband internet also presents a unique opportunity for developing an evolved network architecture that will enable new applications and services, and become more energy efficient. The RAN is the most important asset for mobile operators to provide high data rate, high quality, and 24x7 services to mobile users. Traditional RAN architecture has the following characteristics: first, each Base Station (BS) only connects to a fixed number of sector antennas that cover a small area and only handle transmission/reception signals in its coverage area; second, the system capacity is limited by interference, making it difficult to improve spectrum capacity; and last but not least, BSs are built on proprietary platforms as a vertical solution. These characteristics have resulted in many challenges. For example, the large number of BSs requires corresponding initial investment, site support, site rental and management support. Building more BS sites means increasing CAPEX and OPEX. Usually, BSs utilization rate is low because the average network load is usually far lower than that in peak load; while the BS processing power cant be shared with other BSs. Isolated BSs prove costly and difficult to improve spectrum capacity. Lastly, a proprietary platform means mobile operators must manage multiple none-compatible platforms if service providers want to purchase systems from multiple vendors. Causing operators to have more complex and costly plan for network expansion and upgrading. To meet the fast increasing data services, mobile operators need to upgrade their network frequently and operate multiple-standard network, including GSM, WCDMA/TD-SCDMA and LTE. However, the proprietary platform means mobile operators lack the flexibility in network upgrade, or the ability to add services beyond simple upgrades. In summary, traditional RAN will become far too expensive for mobile operators to keep competitive in the future mobile internet world. It lacks the efficiency to support sophisticated centralized interference management required by future heterogeneous networks, the flexibility to migrate services to network edge for innovative applications and the ability to generate new revenue from revenue from new services. Mobile operators are faced with the challenge of architecting radio network that enable flexibility. In the following sections, we will explore ways to address these challenges.
High spectral efficiency Based on open platform, support multiple standards, and smooth evolution Provide a platform for additional revenue generating services.
Centralized base-band pool processing, Co-operative radio with distributed antenna equipped by Remote Ratio Head (RRH) and real-time Cloud infrastructures RAN (C-RAN) can address the challenges the operators are faced with and meet the requirements. Centralized signal processing greatly reduces the number of sites equipment room needed to cover the same areas; Co-operative radio with distributed antenna equipped by Remote Radio Head (RRH) provides higher spectrum efficiency; real-time Cloud infrastructure based on open platform and BS virtualization enables processing aggregation and dynamic allocation, reducing the power consumption and increasing the infrastructure utilization rate. These novel technologies provide an innovative approach to enabling the operators to not only meet the requirements but advance the network to provide coverage, new services, and lower support costs. C-RAN is not a replacement for 3G/B3G standards, only an alternative approach to current delivery. From a long term perspective, C-RAN provides low cost and high performance green network architecture to operators. In turn operators are able to deliver rich wireless services in a cost-effective manner for all concerned. C-RAN is not the only RAN deployment solution that will replace all todays macro cell station, micro cell station, pico cell station, indoor coverage system, and repeaters. Different deployment solutions have their respective advantages and disadvantages and are suitable for particular deployment scenarios. C-RAN is targeting to be applicable to most typical RAN deployment scenarios, like macro cell, micro cell, pico cell and indoor coverage. In addition, other RAN deployment solution can serve as complementary deployment of C-RAN for certain case.
Transmission, 15%
Management office, 7%
Channel, 6%
The TCO including the CAPEX and the OPEX results from the network construction and operation. The CAPEX is mainly associated with network infrastructure build, while OPEX is mainly associated with network operation and management. In general, up to 80% CAPEX of a mobile operator is spent on the RAN. This means that most of the CAPEX is related to building up cell sites for the RAN. The historical CAPEX expenditure of 2007-2012 forest are shown in Fig.2. Because 3G/B3G signals deployed frequency 2GHz have higher path loss and penetration loss than 2G signals (deployed frequency 900MHz), multiple cell sites are needed for the similar level of 2G coverage. Thus, the dramatic increase was found in the CAPEX when building a 3G network. The CAPEX is mainly spent at the stage of cell site constructions and consists of purchase and construction expenditures. Purchase expenditures include the purchases of BS and supplementary equipments, such as power and air conditioning equipments etc. Construction expenditures include network planning, site acquisition, civil works and so on. As shown is Fig.3, it is noticeable that the cost of major wireless equipments makes up only 35% of CAPEX, while the cost of the site acquisition, civil works, and equipment installation is more than 50% of the total cost. Essentially, this means that more than half of CAPEX is not spent on productive wireless functionality. Therefore, ways to reduce the cost of the supplementary equipment and the expenditure on site installation and deployment is important to lower the CAPEX of mobile operators.
It is understood that the large number of legacy terminals, 2G, 3G, and B3G infrastructure will coexist for a very long time to meet consumers demand. Most of the major mobile operators worldwide will thus have to use two or three networks (Table 1) [1]. In the new economic climate, operators must find ways to control CAPEX and OPEX while growing their businesses. The base station occupies the largest part of infrastructure investment in a mobile network. Multi-mode base station is expected as a cost efficient way for operators to alleviate the cost of network construction and O&M. In addition, sharing of hardware resources in a multi-mode base station is the key approach to lower cost.
CAPEX and OPEX cost while adding little benefit to the ARPU. Additional issues are the continuous CAPEX spending on older SGSNs & GGSNs, the higher Internet distribution cost, the congestion on backhaul and the congestion on limited shared capacity of base stations. Therefore, offloading the Internet traffic, as close to the base stations as possible, can be an effective way to reduce the mobile Internet delivery cost.
3 Architecture of C-RAN
We believe Centralized processing, Cooperative radio, Cloud, and Clean (Green) infrastructure Radio Access Network (C-RAN) is the answer to solve the challenges mentioned above. Its a natural evolution of the distributed BTS, which is composed of the baseband Unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH). According to the different function splitting between BBU and RRH, there are two kinds of C-RAN solutions: one is called full centralization, where baseband (i.e. layer 1) and the layer 2, layer 3 BTS functions are located in BBU; the other is called partial centralization, where the RRH integrates not only the radio function but also the baseband function, while all other higher layer functions are still located in BBU. For the solution 2, although the BBU doesnt include the baseband function, it is still called BBU for the simplicity. The different function partition method is shown in Fig.8.
Solution 2 Solution 1 GPS Core network Baseband processing PA & LNA Antenna
Digital IF
Transmitter /Receiver
RRU
L1/L2/L3/O&M
L1/L2/L3/O&M
L1/L2/L3/O&M
Fiber
RRH
RRH
RRH
RRH
RRH
RRH
RRH
Fig. 9 C-RAN Architecture 1: Fully Centralized Solution China Mobile Research Institute 9
Virtual BS Pool
L2/L3/O&M
L2/L3/O&M
L2/L3/O&M
Fiber or Microwave
RRH/L1
RRH/L1
RRH/L1
RRH/L1
RRH/L1
RRH/L1
RRH/L1
10
Both solutions described above are under development and evaluation. They could be properly deployed in different networks depending on the situation of the network. The following discussion will focus on the Fully Centralized Solution.
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service delivery quality for various applications. The service overlapping the core network also supplies a better experience to users.
Service on Edge
Unlike service in a data center, distributing services on the edge of the RAN has its unique challenges. In the following research framework part, we try to summarize these challenges into the following three categories: services on the edges integration with the RAN, intelligence of DSN, and the deployment and management of distributed service.
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System Reliability
For the reliability of the system, because the traditional optical transmission networks (SDH/PTN) in the access network links provide reliable loop protection, automatic replace and fiber optic link management function, C-RAN architecture in the access network must also provide comparative reliability and manageability. In traditional RAN architecture, each BBU on the access ring usually has access to the corresponding transmission equipment of the center transmission machine room through SDH/PTN. Through the SDH/PTN ring routing and
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protection function, the system can quickly switch to the safe routing mode when any point on this loop experiences optical fiber failure, ensuring that business is not interrupted. Under the C-RAN architecture, it also should offer a similar optical fiber ring network protection function. Centralized BBU should support more than 10~1000 base station sites, and then the optical fiber connected OBRI link between distributed RRH and centralized BBU is long. If only point-2point optical fiber transmission occurred between each distributed RRH and centralized BBU, then any fault on the optical fiber link will lead to the corresponding RRH loosing service. In order to ensure the normal operation of the whole system under the condition of any single point of failure in the optical fiber, the CPRI/Ir/OBRI link connecting the BBU-RRH should use fiber ring network protection technology, using the main/minor optical fiber of different channels to realize CPRI/Ir/OBRI link real-time backup.
Cost Requirements
Finally, in terms of cost, the high speed optical module necessary for the CPRI/Ir/OBRI optical interface will be amongst the important factors affecting the C-RAN economic structure. Compared to traditional architecture, the wireless signal transmission data rate on C-RAN is more than 100-200 times higher than the bearer service data rate after demodulation. Building the fiber transportation network in developed city is very hard. This is less of an issue for operators that already deploy optical fiber and particularly for operators own their own optical network. Although the cost of the optical fiber employing CPRI/Ir/OBRI for high speed wireless signal transmission doesn't need to increase, the high speed optic module or optical transmission equipment costs must compare to traditional SDH/PTN transmission equipment in order to make C-RAN architecture more attractive on the CAPEX and OPEX fronts .Therefore, how to achieve a low cost, high bandwidth and low latency wireless signal optical fiber transmission will become a key challenge for realization of the future LTE and LTE network deployment by C-RAN. For the above problems and corresponding technical progress trend, we will analyze and put forward ideas for solving these problems.
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parts of the RACH, Therefore, RRH cannot treat different RACH configurations transparently, instead RRH needs to process RACH based on configuration. Since there are hundreds of different configurations, each has to be controlled by different timing algorithms in the RRH, which could greatly increase the complexity of system design. Therefore, considering the implementation complexity and cost, such frequency domain compression is not feasible at the moment. DAGC time-domain based compression technology is a method used for IQ compression. The basic principle of DAGC is to select the average power reference based on the best baseband demodulation range, normalize the power of each symbol, and reduce the signal dynamic range. DAGC compression will adversely affect system performance. The receiver dynamic range of the uplink will be reduced, which leads to deterioration of the signal to noise ratio. At the same time, the EVM indicators will worsen on the downlink. With increased compression ratio, the system performance will deteriorate even more. Currently, we still need to investigate the impacts caused by different compression schemes. Table 2 lists the advantages and disadvantages of various compression schemes. As indicated, there is no ideal OBRI link data compression scheme. More studies in this area are required.
Table 2. Comparison of Pros and Cons for Various Data Compression Techniques
Pros
Cons
Severe performance loss.
Efficient compression to 66.7%; Less impacts on protocols. Improve the QSNR; Mature algorithms available, e.g. A law and U law; High compression efficiency to 53%. Potential high compression efficiency; High complexity; Difficult to set up a relativity model; Real-time and compression distortion issues; No mature algorithm available. High compression efficiency to 40% ~58%; Easy to be performed in downlink. Increase the system complexity; Extra processing ability on optical chips and the thermal design; High device cost; Difficulty for maintenance; RACH processing is a big challenge; More storage, larger FPGA processing capacity. Only need extra decompression and compression modules. Some impacts on the OBRI interface complexity.
IQ data Compression
Sub-carrier Compression
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On the other hand, because LTE/LTE-A has strict requirements about physical layer treatment delay, CPRI/Ir/OBRI total transmission delay on the link should not exceed a certain level. The physical layer HARQ process places the highest demand on processing delay. HARQ is an important technology to improve the performance of the physical layer, its essence is testing the physical layer on the receiving end of a sub-frame for correct or incorrect transmission, and rapid feedback ACK/NACK to the launching end physical layer, then let launching physical layer to make the decision whether or not to send again. If sent again, the receiver does combined processing for multi-launching signal in the physical layer, and then provides feedback to the upper protocol after demodulation success. According to the LTE/LTE-A standard, the ACK/NACK HARQ on uplink and downlink process should be finished in 3 ms after receiving the signals in the shortest case, which requires that sub-frame processing delay in the physical layer should be generally less than 1 ms. Because the physical layer processing itself takes 800-900 us, then CPRI/Ir/OBRI optical transmission delay may be 100-200 us at the most. According to the light speed(200,000 kilometers per hour) estimated in the fiber, CPRI/Ir/OBRI interface maximum transmission distance under the C-RAN framework is limited from 20 km to 40 km. Specific value is related to delay margin the physical layer treatment itself.
standardization has already become a now advantage. 10GE standardization and transmission module, which will help to reduce the cost of 10 Gbps optical modules. 40GE technology is still in the research process. On the other hand, at the access network level, 1.25 G,2.5 G EPON is already widely used in solving FTTX access, 10G PON technology can be commercial in one or two years, the future PON technological development have several directions like WDM-PON, Hybrid PON and 40G PON. Similar to what the Moore's Law is doing in the transformation of the semiconductor industry, the field of optical communication has a similar trend: Every year, the speed of optical transmission increases while the cost of the said module declines. Transceiver modules that are capable of supporting multi-wavelength WDM have emerged in the market place. Since commercial LTE deployment has just begun, we can safely predict that it will take about 5 years before the commercial LTE-A multi-carrier system deployment is needed. By then, if the optical module advancement and cost reduction has reached an acceptable level, then the RRH-BBU bottleneck will be effectively removed. Figure 11 shows the 2.5G SFP and 10G SFP / XFP / XENPAK optical modules pricing trends. We can deduce that optical modules pricing has dropped by 66% to 77% in nearly 3 years, and the trend will continue in the coming years, further reducing the cost of optical transmission network. If this price trend continues, it would greatly help to reduce CAPEX of a C-RAN network.
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3000
Price history of 10G modules (RMB).
7000
6000 5000
35.2%
4000
3000 2000
61.5% 60%
1000
0 Aug-07 Feb-08 550m Aug-08 10Km Feb-09 Aug-09 40Km
Feb-08
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Aug-08
40Km
Feb-09
Aug-09
80Km
Fig. 11 Price history of Commercial 2.5G/10G Optical Modules 4.1.4 BBU-RRH Optical Fiber Network Protection
Although BBU-RRH direct transmission under C-RAN framework does not provide a ring network protection function like traditional SDH/PTN, the CPRI/Ir/OBRI interface rate standards provide a similar ring network protection function, and are supported by manufacturers. At the same time, in order to avoid having every RRH fully occupy two optical fibers on a physically routed pair the RRHs can be connected to each in a cascaded manner according to the CPRI/Ir/OBRI interface specification. This permits two different routing trunk cables to form a ring and be connected to the same BBU, as shown in Figure 10. As long as the CPRI/Ir/OBRI interface rate is high enough, the BBU-RRH ring network protection technology can save the use of many optical fibers and ensure a short round trip delay. Taking a TD-SCDMA system for example, a 6.144 Gpbs CPRI/Ir/OBRI link can support 15 TD-SCDMA carriers of 8-antenna RRH and a typical TD-SCDMA macro station with 3 sectors, 5/5/5 configuration at most. The IQ data of a RRH with three sectors connected to the same BBU machine through two different physical routing backbone optical cables. When a trunk cable fails, three RRHs will connect to the BBU through another trunk cable under less than 40ms protection rotated time to guarantee that all business does not interrupt. For lower-rate GSM system, it is even simpler to connect six or more RRHs through such a CPRI/Ir/OBRI annular link and achieve the same functions. However, according to LTE/LTE-A system with higher wireless signal transmission rate, it is necessary to introduce WDM technology to realize a similar loop protection function.
Radio remote head
Trun kc
Optical switching box
able
Transmission ring
Trunk c a ble 1
Central apparatus room
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optical technology, thus named as Unified PON. It can provide both PON services and CPRI/Ir/OBRI transmission on the same fiber [5]. In this solution, an optical fiber can support as many as 14 different wavelengths. In the UniPON standard, the uplink and downlink channel are transmitted on two difference wavelengths, thus other free wavelengths can be used for CPRI/Ir/OBRI data transmission between the BBU and RRH. Because of sharing the optical fiber resources, it can reduce the overall cost. It is suitable for C-RAN centralized baseband pool deployment of indoor coverage.
4.1.6 Summarize
Based on the above analysis, fully centralized C-RAN architecture requires a high bandwidth, low latency, high reliability and low cost optical solution to transmit high speed baseband signal between BBU and RRH. Its promising to find feasible solutions emerging in the near future. However, there are still many challenges in the current solutions. For example, current data compression schemes fail to satisfy OBRI transmission in the LTE-A phase. The rapid development of high-speed optical modules and the associated cost reduction is heading in the right direction but we still need a breakthrough in optical devices. Failure protection schemes for BBU-RRH connection are able to provide similar functions to SDH/PTN in case of fiber cut, but we still need to find solutions for unified O&M with traditional transmission networks. UniPON based on passive WDM technology is a promising solution for certain deployment scenarios but it must be designed to be competitive in cost. In conclusion, we have various directions to solve the high-speed baseband signal transmission requirement of C-RAN but we still need to explore new technology or a combination of existing technology to find a more economical and effective solution. Considering the technical challenges as well as the limitation in current optical network resources, it is clear that C-RAN can be widely applied in a short time frame. Instead, a stepped plan should be used to gradually construct the centralized network: first, centralized deployment can be applied in some green field or replacement of old network in a small scale. Dark fiber can be used as the BBU-RRH transmission solution. One access ring that connects 8~12 macro sites can be centralized together, with a maximum ring range of 40km. In the future, a larger number of macro BS in various deployment scenarios can be further tested.
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8 6 4 2
0.3 0.2
0.1 0
0
8Tx(XXXX)/2Rx
2Tx (X)/2Rx
8Tx(XXXX)/2Rx
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Ave. cell spectrum efficiency (bps/Hz) SU-MIMO Intra-site CoMP MU-MIMO C-RAN CoMP 5.35 4.54 3.78 1.97
4 2
0
SU-MIMO MU-MIMO
0.202
0.041 0.039
0.07
0.075
0.092 0.052
0.161
2Tx (X)/2Rx
8Tx(XXXX)/2Rx
2Tx (X)/2Rx
8Tx(XXXX)/2Rx
Technical Challenges
Cooperative transmission / reception (CT/CR) has great potentials in reducing interference and improving spectrum efficiency of system. However, this technology has many problems that need to be further studied before it can be applied to the practical networks. There are many challenges listed as follows: Advanced joint processing schemes DL channel state information (CSI) feedback mechanism User pairing and joint scheduling algorithms for multi-cells Coordinated Radio resource allocation and power allocation schemes for multi-cells.
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km in area), with an average distance between BS of 500m, a centralized baseband pool that can cover the whole area needs to support about 100 BS. For a typical TD-SCDMA system with 3 sectors per macro BS and 3 carriers/sectors, it means that the centralized baseband pool needs to support 900 TD-SCDMA carriers. Imagine if the centralized Baseband pool coverage is even larger, such as 15 km X 15 km, then the baseband pool would need to support up to 1000 macro BSs carriers. Because of the limitation in the high-speed differential signal transmission, the traditional BBU architecture cannot scale up to support such capacity by simply expanding the backplane dimensions. Infinite Band technology can provide significant switching bandwidth (20Gbps-40Gpbs/port) and very low switching latency. It is widely used in supercomputers. However, the cost per port is very high (20,000RMB) and as such does not meet the C-RAN cost requirement. Inspired by the data center networks distributed inter-connect architecture, the centralized BBU pool in CRAN can also use a distributed optic interconnection to combine multiple BBU into a scalable baseband pool. Based on that, the RRHs signal can be routed to any one of BBUs in the pool. Thus load balance according to dynamic network load among BBUs can be achieved, and system power consumption can be reduced. It also makes the deployment of multi-point MIMO technology and interference mitigation algorithms easier, which can improve radio system capacity.
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processing in base stations. Traditional general processors usually have lower performance than DSP in power efficiency; however, in recent years the general processor has made a lot of improvements in this respect. Fig.14 shows the general processor technical progress in processing performance and power consumption in nearly 6-7 years. It is can be seen that the floating point computing capacity per watt improves very fast. These data points prove that the evolution in GPP has made it an attractive solution for various data processing tasks in the base station. The advantage of GPP is that they have a long history of backward compatibility, ensuring that software can run on each new generation of processor without any change, and this is beneficial for smooth upgrade of the BBU. On the operating system side, there are multiple OSs available on GPP that have real-time capability, and also allow the virtualization of BS baseband signal processing.
Fig. 14: Compute performance evolution of GPP * (CPUs in 50-65 watt power envelopes used as basis for comparison in graph)
Technical progress in DSP and GPP has provided more powerful signal processing with less power consumption. This progress has made the SDR based BS solutions more attractive. Traditional DSP has become matured solution for product, and will continue to evolve. The advanced research on wireless signal processing on GPP has provided more choices for the base station, and has the potential to become part of the future open, unified multi-mode BS platform.
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real time virtualized baseband pools will be part of the next generation wireless network, as shown in Fig. 15. Within in given centralized baseband pool, all the physical layer processing resources would be managed and allocated by a real time virtualized operating system. So, a base station instance can be easily built up through the flexible resource combination. The real time virtualized OS would adjust, allocate and re-allocate resources based on each virtualized base station requirements, in order to meet its demands.
Physical Hardware
Processors
C C
MAC/Trans. Layer (Packet processing) resource pool
A A
M M
P P
Processors
BS of standard 2
Processors
C C
A A
M M
P P
BS of standard 3
Processors
C C
A A
M M
P P
Technical Challenges
Since wireless base stations have stringent real-time and high performance requirements, traditional virtualization technique is challenged to solve the latency requirements of wireless signal processing. In order to implement real time virtualized base station in a centralized base band pool, the following challenges have to be solved: High-performance low-power signal processing for wireless signals. General purpose processor and advanced processing algorithm for real time signal processing The high-bandwidth, low latency, low cost BBU inter-connection topology among physical processing resources in the baseband pool. It includes the interconnection among the chips in a BBU, among the BBUs in a physical rack, and among multiple racks. Efficient and flexible real-time virtualized operating system, to achieve virtualization of hardware processing resources management, and dynamic allocation of physical processing resources to each virtual base station, in order to ensure processing latency and jitter control HW level support on virtualization in order to minimize latency.
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5 Evolution Path
The novel C-RAN architecture is a revolution of the traditional RAN deployment. It is impossible to replace todays RAN overnight. Moreover, the technical challenges of C-RAN should be carefully developed and tested in labs and field environments to ensure its reliability. This naturally leads to a step-by-step evolution path of C-RAN to gradually replace traditional RAN. The following is our vision on how the evolution could take place:
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Through the cooperation of BBU in the baseband pool and RRH to send and receive wireless signals, it can be achieved that multi-standard wireless network functions in the same platform. In the system software instructions of the baseband pool based on real-time cloud architecture, CPRI/Ir/OBRI optical fiber transmission network and optical Internet architecture in large-scale centralized baseband pool can send the baseband signal signals transmitted by RRH to the virtual base station running on the designated BBU. Then virtual base station uses the calculation resources of the designated BBU to finish the real-time processing of wireless baseband signals. Moreover, in a C-RAN system which has several baseband pools, CPRI/Ir/OBRI optical fiber transmission network should have the ability to forward the baseband signals from RRHs to other baseband pools in order to improve system reliability and realize load balance across different baseband pools.
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6 Recent Progress
To accelerate the development and commercialization of C-RAN, China Mobile has been working actively with industry partners. We have made good progress in field trial, large scale BBU pool implementation, and baseband PoC based on IT platform. This chapter will first introduce the advantages and disadvantages observed in C-RAN field trial, followed by discussion of large scale BBU pool solution, up to 1000 carriers, based on current BBU device, and lastly the recent R&D result of multi-mode PoC based on IT platform.
Overall situation
The first trial in Zhuhai City only took 3 months to complete. The commercial trial has 18 TDSCDMA macro sites covering about 30 square km area. This trial has verified some centralized deployment technologies feasibility. The construction and operation of a commercial clearly highlighted the C-RANs advantage over tradition RAN in cost, flexibility and energy savings. At the same time, it also exposed challenges on fiber resource, as well as transmission construction. After that, there have been several trials on centralized deployment solutions of GSM system. The network layout is mainly consisted of replacing and upgrading existing sites. There are total15 sites covering 15 square km in the trial, where only 2 of them are new sites. Compared with TD-SCDMA network, GSM solutions have unique features, for example, it could support daisy-chain of 18 RRHs with only 1 pair of fiber. This could significantly reduce the number of fiber resources needed in C-RAN centralized deployment with dark fiber solution. The following sections will describe the network status before and after C-RAN deployment, key technology introduced, field test results and challenges observed. .
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these 9 sites have to be connected with new fiber channels and they are spread in 30 square km. This is a challenge for fiber construction. The trial area in Changsha city is consisted of a few campuses near Yuelu Mountains. The traffic load and traffic density is quite high here. In addition, there is a lot of dormitories, and local residential apartments. The propagation environment is very complex and the coverage KPI still has room to be improved. This makes it suitable to verify C-RANs capacity in urban city environment. Finally, since most of the trial sites are reusing or upgrading existing ones, there is plenty of fiber resources.
Overall Solution
The solution starts with planning of system capacity in centralized deployment. In the Zhuhai trial, each TD-SCDMA sites configuration is 4/4/4, which means that there are 3 sectors in each site, and every sector has 4 carriers. Overall, the 18 trial sites need 216 carriers. When considering the BBU pool capacity, the total BBU pool can be planned to support the maximum co-current traffic for the same area. There are two kinds of TD-SCDMA carriers, R4 carrier is mainly used for voice traffic, and HSDPA carrier is mainly used for data traffic. Based on China Mobiles planning requirements, every sites traffic load should not exceed 75%. As a result, each R4 carrier supports up to 203 voice users, and each HSDPA carrier can support up to 93 users. There are total 17,000 effective users in the trial area. When BBU pool is deployed, 160 carriers will be able to support 20,000 effective users. This means the C-RAN centralized deployment can save the BBU capacity by roughly 25%, compared with traditional deployment method. Similarly, the trial in Changsha also has used the co-current capacity to decide the total capacity of the BBU pool. The second part of the solution involves dynamic carrier allocation. In TD-SCDMA system, each RRH/sector can support maximum 6 R4 and HSDPA carriers. In the idle situation, each RRH/sector has only one R4 carrier and one HSDPA carrier. There are different carrier allocation decision criteria whether more R4 and HSDPA carriers should be added. Whenever the existing R4 carriers loading rate is above a threshold, there should be more R4 carriers allocated in this site. For HSDPA carrier, similar rule applies. Where there is not enough load in multiple R4 or HSDPA carrier, it is also possible to reduce the number of R4 and HSDPA carriers in one sector. For GSM system similar rule also applies but the criteria is the utilization rate of each GSM carrier. The third portion of the solution involves RRH daisy chain and fiber failure protection technologies. These technologies are derived from the distributed BBU-RRH deployment method which usually uses point-to-point dark fiber connections. When BBU-RRHs are separated by significant distance, it is important to consider the saving of fiber resource and protection against unpredictable fiber failure caused by external factors. In TD-SCDMA, each fiber link can handle up to 6.144Gpbs transmission, enough to support 15 TD-SCDMA carriers. Thus, one pair of fiber is able to support one site with 3 sectors and maximum carrier of 15. In the Zhuhai trial, each access ring has 9 sites and used 9 pair of fibers to support the 9 sites connected to the ring. On the other hand, GSM has far less baseband requirement due to its narrow band nature; therefore it can support more capacity in daisy-chain configuration. There are commercial products that can support 18 to 21 RRH daisy chained on one pair of dark fiber. We can calculate the fiber resource required per access ring as following: usually, each access ring has 8~ 12 physical sites and each site has 3 sectors, and has 900M and 1800M dual bands. This
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means, each access ring may has up to 16~24 logical sites, which is 48 to 72 sectors/RRH. To connect all the RRH in daisy chain, we would need 4~5 pair of fibers in the ring. Lastly, the field trial has also verified key technology for outdoor deployment, like power supply for remote sites. In the Zhuhai Trial, there is no BTS equipment room in the 9 new sites. Thus the traditional DC power supply is not available. External power booth is used instead. Existing outdoor power solution met the need of network deployment: with sufficient operation temperature range, -40+70, C-level anti-flash capacity and theft-proof solution to ensure the safety of device without on-site attendance. GSM and TD-SCDMA remote site both can apply this outdoor power solution.
Technical Performance
This section will outline the technical performance data from selected test cases in the trial, starting with the dynamic carrier allocation procedure. The following figure illustrates the total number of carriers allocated to one sector in a typical day on one site in Zhuhai trial. The blue curve represents this sectors total carrier capacity, while the purple curve represents the actual network load for this sector. It is clearly shown that the dynamic carrier allocation has adapted effectively to dynamic load in network.
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Economic analysis
The trial in Zhuhai city shows that, compared with traditional RAN deployment method, C-RAN centralized deployment can reduce the TD-SCDMA networks CAPEX and OPEX significantly, especially for new TD-SCDMA site which is not reusing existing GSM site. In the following figure, it is shown that OPEX and CAPEX can be reduced by 53%, and 30% respectively for new cell sites.
Construction Impact
The centralized deployment of C-RAN greatly simplifies the remote site selection and construction requirements, construction time required for new base stations, which lead to faster network deployment. Table 3 shows the comparison of the construction process between traditional base station and C-RAN centralized approach in the China Mobiles TD-SCDMA network deployment in Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province. From figure 17, C-RAN showcases the advantage of deployment time. The savings are mainly from site selection/purchasing, base station equipment room construction and transmission system debug, etc.
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Table 4. Power consumption comparison RAN architecture Traditional C-RAN Base Station equipment 0.65 KW 0.55KW Air conditioning 2.0 KW 0 Switching Supply 0.2 KW 0.2KW Storage Battery 0.2 KW 0.10KW Transmission System 0.2 KW 0 Total 3.45KW 0.85KW
Summary
C-RAN centralized commercial access network demonstrates several benefits including: 1) simplified site selection and improve the speed of location selection negotiations; 2) reduced base station construction and maintenance cost, improved network deployment efficiency; 3) reduced supporting facilities of remote cell sites, led to construction cost reduction by 1/3 per site. In terms of network operation, C-RAN takes advantage of low cost, energy efficiency RRH. Centralized BBU facilitates easy maintenance and flexible upgrade. The overall network utilization can be improved due to virtualization technology and resource sharing which not only increases utilization but also lowers overall power consumption thru various power management schemes.
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The objective of Fat-Tree Network topology is to implement a non-blocking connecting data communication network. When a computer networks use a single root node and binary tree structure, the data communications between the computers that connect to separate trees will go through the same root node. The switch capacity of the root node becomes the bottleneck. The Fat-Tree topology introduces multiple nodes switch architecture with the load-balance capability. With the benefit of two or multilayer of the switch architecture, any one high node maintains connectivity to multiple low nodes. Then several high nodes can act as backups for each other, and have the same capability of switch and connection. Under this structure, each switch node has the same number of switch ports, and maintains the same required transmission bandwidth. Therefore reduces switch capability requirement for each node. There is at least one connection between any lower processing node and other processing node. If one connection is out of service, redundant connections can play a backup role, which results in a highly fault tolerant networks. As shown in the following figure:
Current commercial BBU equipment primarily used stack of baseband processing units, plus a backplane with switching capability. It switches the RRH baseband IQ data to a specified baseband processing unit, thereby creating a pre-planned processing capability of baseband pool. The limitation of this approach is the amount of data flow from the interconnection between any two equipments is limited by the capability of the backplane of single equipment. So todays design can only support connection between 2 sets of equipment. Consequently upgrading a single equipment capacity by adding more baseband process units will demand higher switch capability of the backplanes. To combat this limitation, China Mobile Research Institute proposed to apply the Fat-Tree structure into existing wireless BBU equipment. Without significant changes to the existing equipment, the proposal adds a set of high layer switch unit to form Fat-Tree Topology to gain higher switch and baseband pool processing capacities. Similar to how the Computer network works, at this network structure, each baseband processing Board, through the high layer network, can transfer its data to other baseband board that is in lower utilization state. improving the reliability of the equipment. However, contrasting to the computer network, IQ data routing switch has additional characteristics. First of all, Baseband signals require real time processing, and bound by its frame structure of GSM/TD-SCDMA/TD-LTE protocols. Each frame has strict timing requirements. IQ data routing switch cannot send a data packet belonging to a single carrier, over different connections to the receiver. Otherwise it will require the receiver to rearrange the received data packet, which will generate additional delay. The End-to-end transmission cannot be routed multiple times, which .causes delay and jitter at the received end. China Mobile Research Institute has proposed a Pre-distribution Routing technology to solve this problem. Its principle is to preallocate resource before connection is established, making each switching node setting aside adequate resources and identifying of the next routing port. Secondly, IQ data transmission requires relatively large bandwidth, it is important to consider transmission path load balancing, otherwise it could easily cause the route blockage during overload. Therefore China Mobile Research institute has proposed the Load Balanced technology. The principle is that: for a routing node receiving a data flow, the data flow with the source address of Src, the object address of Dst, the flow (each data spread sent of is 1 or multiple carriers) data numbered the Num, routing node finds the routing table based on Dst. If the routing table includes multiple suitable next jumps, the routing node will generate a random number according to (Src, Dst, Num), then determining the address of next Jump based on the random number. This has resulted in path selection of randomization. With the Path selection of randomization, even if the Src and Dst are same, the difference of the carrier number (Num) will generate different path/route, so as to achieve the load balancing. Distributed Architecture In addition to IQ data routing, we need to consider implementation of resource management, signal processing functions and so on, for a large scale baseband pool. China Mobile Research Institute has introduced the Distribute Architecture. Use ZTE equipment as an example, a single baseband processor BBU module can handle the Iub interface signaling and servicing processing, based on the largest capacity in a network with 108 carriers. A distributed framework can solve the problem of large scale processing, retain service processing unit for each box. At the same time, a separate Ethernet switch handles dynamic resource management. Each box has separate and independent Iub ports; it logically becomes independent network elements of NodeB. In addition, one extra master network element manages entire resource of Furthermore having several redundancy boards in the baseband pool will increase redundancy, and achieve real-time protection, thus
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the rack, and controls redistribution of individual physical resources. This approach is simple to implement, adding a box means gaining one more independent NoteB network element, without any impact to other network elements. Also, when a baseband processing unit fails, the failed unit, under the master redistribution mechanism, can redistribute its original signaling information to other box over the Ethernet.
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5ms, while TD-LTE protocol requires every frame has to be completely processed within 1ms. Typical IT operating system is not designed to meet telecom grade real time requirements, therefore subframe scheduling delay, resource management are not typically guaranteed to complete fewer than 1ms. In addition, IT platform generally lacks the stringent timing required by base station. Lastly, traditional signal processing algorithm is typically designed to be implemented on ASIC, FPGA and DSP. Therefore, many believe that IT server is not capable of handling complex signal processing such those of LTE. However, the C-RAN trial has so far proved that IT server can meet the aforementioned challenges with technology innovations. First step is to expand the real time capability on IT server to meet the subframe processing timing and accuracy demand. In addition, by adding hard real time and synchronization on the CPRI/Ir interface card, we can separate the RRH hard real time CPRI/Ir functions from the IT signal processing tasks which only require soft real time. Finally, significant effort had been spent to optimize LTE algorithm on general purpose processor, fully utilizing every available instruction set and memory to the maximum advantages, therefore significantly increases the CPU processing efficiency. We were able to implement 3GPP release 8 TD-LTE physical layer entirely on software running on general purpose processor and meeting all the timing and delay benchmarks. The TD-LTE implementation parameters are: 20Mhz bandwidth, 2x2 MIMO downlink, 1x2 SIMO uplink, 64QAM/15QAM/QPSK modulation, Turbo decoder with adaptive early termination. Under peak throughput, every subframe was being processed under 1ms TTI, meeting the most stringent HARQ processing latency requirements in TD-LTE. As expected, GSM and TD-SCDMA processing met the timing requirements with flying colors. Based on trial results to date, we can conclude that CPU is capable to process baseband signal processing work load and associated real time requirements. Cycle counts of certain modules take up higher proportion of the overall processing time, such as turbo decoder, convolution decoding, FFT processing etc. By introducing co-processing of such tasks, we can expect to increase overall efficiency by 5 times or higher. In the not too distant future, general purpose CPU implementing BBU functions, combining with DSN, will be the foundation of an open platform that serves a large scale dynamic baseband pool, evolving into a virtualized, cloud computing C-RAN solution.
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7 Conclusions
With the arrival of the mobile Internet era, todays RAN architecture is facing more and more challenges that the mobile operators need to solve: mobile data flow increase drastically caused by the popularization of smart terminals, very hard to improve spectrum efficiency, lack of flexibility to multi-standard, dynamic network load because of tides effect and expensive to provide ever increasing internet service to end users. Mobile operators must consider the evolution of the RAN to a high efficient and lost cost architecture. C-RAN is a promising solution to the challenges mentioned above. By using new technologies, we can change the network construction and deployment ways, fundamentally change the cost structure of mobile operators, and provide more flexible and efficient services to end users. With the distributed RRH and centralized BBU architecture, advanced multipoint transmission/reception technology, SDR with multi-standard support, virtualization technology on general purpose processor, more efficient way of dealing with the tides effect and service on the edge of the RAN, C-RAN will be able to provide todays mobile operator with a competitive infrastructure to keep profitable growth in the dynamic market environment. Wed like to invite all the mobile operators, the telecom equipment vendors, the traditional IT system vendors, and industry/academic research institutes who are concerned on the future evolution of the RAN to devote their intelligence and resources in the research of C-RAN to make it a reality.
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8 Acknowledgement
We would like to thank IBM China Research Lab, Intel Cooperation and Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences for their valuable contribution to this white paper.
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OTN O&M P2P PA PHY Pon QoS RAN RF RNC RRH RRM SDR SFP SGSN TCO TDD TD-SCDMA TEM TP UE UL/DL UMTS UniPon VNI VoIP WCDMA WDM XENPAK XFP
Optical Transmission Net Operations and Maintenance Peer to Peer Power Amplifier Physical Layer Passive Optical Network Quality of Service Radio Access Network Radio Frequency Radio Network Controller Remote Radio Head Radio Resource Management Software defined Radio Small Form-factor Pluggable Serving GPRS Supporting Node Total Cost of Ownership Time Division Dual Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access Telecom Equipment Manufacturer Transmission Point User Equipment Uplink/Downlink Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Unified Passive Optical Network Visual Networking Index Voice over IP Wideband Code Division Multiple Access wavelength Division Multiplexing 10 Gigabit Ethernet Transceiver Package 10-Gigabit small Form-factor Pluggable
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10 Reference
[1] Co-Platform Multi-Mode BTS (C-P MMBTS): Leading the Trend of Multi-Mode Network Convergence, white paper from In-Stat, 2009.Multi standard [2] Cisco Visual Networking Index, URL: www.cisco.com/web/go/vni [3] Geza Szabo,Daniel Orincsay,Balazs, Peter Gero,Sandor Gyori,Tamas Borsos, Traffic Analysis of Mobile Broadband Networks, Third Annual International Wireless Internet Conference October 22-24, 2007, Austin, Texas, USA [4] CPRI Specification V4.1, Specification. 2009-02-18 Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI); Interface
[5] F.-Joachim Westphal. Trends and evolution of transport networks. SL SI, IBU Telco, SSC ENPS [6] 3GPP, R1-093273, SRS feedback mechanism based CoMP schemes in TD-LTE-Advanced [7] Q. H. Spencer, A. L. Swindlehurst and M.Haardt, Zero-forcing methods for downlink spatial multiplexing in multiuser MIMO channels, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 52, pp. 461 471, Feb. 2004. [8] L. U. Choi and R. D. Murch, A transmit preprocessing technique for multiuser mimo systems using a decomposition approach, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 2024, Jan. 2004. [9] Jun Zhang, Runhua Chen, J. G. Andrews and R. W. Heath, Coordinated multi -cell MIMO systems with cellular block diagonalization, Proc.41st Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers (ACSSC 07), pp. 1669 1673, Nov. 2007. [10] Rajesh Gadiyar, John Mangan, Using Intel Architecture for implementing SDR in Wireless Basesations, SDRForum, SDR09. [11] White Paper of Distributed Service Network. China Mobile Research Institute.
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