1656 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO.
3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
A Survey of Resource Management Toward 5G
Radio Access Networks
Thomas O. Olwal, Member, IEEE, Karim Djouani, Member, IEEE, and Anish M. Kurien, Member, IEEE
Abstract—The next generation 5G radio access network
(RAN) system is believed to be a true world wide wireless web
(WWWW). This is because such system will seamlessly and ubiq-
uitously connect everything, and support at least 1000-fold traffic
volumes, 100 billion connected wireless devices, and diversified
use cases as well as quality of service (QoS) requirements (e.g.,
reliability, latency, data rates, coverage, security, and privacy) of
multimedia applications by 2020. Recently, a number of research
challenges including the explosive growth in mobile traffic vol-
umes, unprecedented connected devices, and diversified use cases
have been identified for the 5G RAN systems. In addition, specific
technologies such as multitier communication, massive MIMOs,
mmWave backhauling, extreme densifications of nodes (UDNs),
full-duplex communications (FDCs), and energy harvesting tech-
niques have emerged in the literature to resolve some of these
challenges of the 5G RAN systems. However, the research activ-
ities defining specific technical advancements for 5G RAN systems
are yet to continue in the next half decade before specifica-
tions for standardization and commercialization are concluded.
Motivated by the limited number of existing surveys of such tech-
nical advancements in a broader perspective (i.e., interference,
spectrum-efficient, and energy-efficient management schemes),
this paper seeks to take stock of state-of-the-art (SOTA) on such
technical developments. Our attention focuses on relevant radio
interference and resource management (RIRM) schemes that have
been proposed in the last five years. Our contribution lies in the
analysis, synthesis, and summarized alignments of the conven-
tional RIRM schemes toward overcoming the identified challenges
for the 5G RAN systems. Finally, the review highlights a number
of open research issues deduced from recently proposed RIRM
schemes.
Index Terms—5G RAN QoS challenges (explosive growth in
traffic volumes, massive connected devices and diversified use
cases), 5G RAN techniques (massive MIMOs, mmWave back-
hauling, extreme densification of nodes, full-duplexing, multitier
communications and energy harvesting), radio interference and
resource management (RIRM) schemes.
I. I NTRODUCTION
I N THE RECENT past, the worldwide societal develop-
ment trends have demonstrated unprecedented changes in
the way mobile and wireless communication systems are used
[1], [2]. The Mobile and wireless communications Enablers for
Twenty-twenty (2020) Information Society (METIS) project
has predicted that by 2020, worldwide mobile traffic alone will
increase by 33 times that of the 2010 figures [1]. During
Manuscript received May 28, 2015; revised November 6, 2015 and February
12, 2016; accepted March 28, 2016. Date of publication April 5, 2016; date of
current version August 19, 2016. This work was supported by the TUT R&I
ERSP and Faculty start-up funding.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, French South
African Institute of Technology (FSATI), Tshwane University of Technology
(TUT), Pretoria 0001, South Africa (e-mail: thomas.olwal@gmail.com;
Djouani@gmail.com; kurienAM@tut.ac.za).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/COMST.2016.2550765
1553-877X © 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
this time, the Internet of Things (IoTs) will become domi-
nated by massive wireless devices such as smartphones, tablets,
machines and sensors. In order to carry avalanche of data traffic
ranging up to 100 Gbps/km2 with high mobility, such devices
will require more efficient and ubiquitous radio access tech-
nologies (RATs) [1], [3]. Indeed, these ambitious forecasts
have already stepped up much pressure on many emerging
economies including South Africa to foresee and create further
opportunities for developing dynamic information and knowl-
edge society [4]. It has already been expected that such a society
will be driven by a more seamless, inclusive and prosperous
internet access download of 100 Mbps for every citizen by 2030
[4]. This implies that the future wireless communication sys-
tems will have to accomodate visions of the 5G radio access
network (RAN) systems such as of ensuring at least a 1000-fold
traffic volumes, 100 billion connected devices, the large diver-
sity of use cases and specific performance requirements (e.g.,
reliability, latency, link budget, duty cycle, device capabilities
and data rates) by 2020 and beyond [1], [2].
This next generation RAN system known as the 5G RAN
system will mainly be an integrated or a converged technology
of evolved and revolved multiple cooperating RATs [2], [5].
That is, the architecture of the 5G RAN system will be made up
of evolved versions of 2G (GPRS/EDGE), 3G (HSPA/UMTS),
4G (LTE-Advanced/IEEE 802.16m), WLAN (WiFi), televi-
son white space (TVWS) networks, optical wireless or free
space optical communications (FSOCs), machine-type commu-
nications (MTCs), fibre to the home (FTTH), passive optical
network (PON), and active optical network (AON) as shown
in Figure 1, [6]. Such evolved and different RATs of dynamic
cell sizes will qualify the 5G RAN systems to be become a true
world wide wireless web (WWWW) system that is supported
by a large area synchronised code division multiple access
(LAS-CDMA), orthogonal frequency division multiple access
(OFDMA), multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-
CDMA), ultra-wide band (UWB), local multipoint distribution
service (LMDS) and internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) [5], [7].
Furthermore, technical insights drawn from Figure 1 and
recent research trends reveal that the 5G RAN systems will con-
sist of multiple tiers of heterogeneous networks (HetNets) (right
from the core network side to the user equipment (UEs)’ net-
work side) [8], [9]. Each tier will have different sizes defined
by different RAT base stations (BSs) having asymmetrical
transmit powers as well as complex interference dynamics
down/upstream of macrocell tier/device, respectively. As shown
in Figure 1, the architecture of the 5G RAN systems will consist
of macrocell and smallcells (i.e., microcell, picocell, femto-
cell, relay and device to device (D2D)) based communication
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
Fig. 1. A 5G RAN system architecture.
tiers, each of different RATs [11]. Typically, the macrocells
are served by high power base stations (MeNBs) with trans-
mit powers close to 43 dBm and antennae gains close to
12 − 15 dBi [12]. The MeNBs are suited to wide area applica-
tions such as communication coverage for the remote and rural
areas. The microcells and picocells are served by low power
base stations (µeNBs or PeNBs) whose transmit powers range
from 23 dBm to 30 dBm and 0 − 5 dBi antennae gains. Thus,
because of their fairly short distances, they are suitable for
urban and enterprise applications. The femtocells are served by
consumer-deployable base stations (HeNBs) connected to con-
sumers broadband backhaul such as PONs, FSOCs, etc. The
HeNBs may transmit with powers less than 23 dBm and they
may also have restricted UEs associations. Relay base stations
(ReNBs) use the same spectrum as for MeNBs and PeNBs
but transmit with powers similar to those of PeNBs [8], [11].
Finally, the D2D communications will mainly be enabled by
the harnessed mmWave spectrum as well as the harvested RF
energy within the 5G RAN systems [12], [13].
It should further be noted that the 5G RAN systems
(in Figure 1) will adapt to more frequency spectrums (e.g.,
mmWave or extremely high frequency (EHF) band i.e., 30 −
300 GHz or 1−10 mm) in order to satisfy extremely dense
intra-small cell (UDNs) broadband applications [13], [14]. This
implies that an aggressive exploration and efficient utilisation
of the EHF spectrum will complement the use of existing ultra-
high frequency (UHF) (i.e., 300 MHz–3 GHz) spectrum. The
main trigger for such spectrum exploration aggression is highly
justified by the need to meet communication coverage demands
of wider cells, even beyond the 5th generation [7]. Moreover,
Software-defined Networking (SDN) techniques will be applied
to split the overall network (from the core to RAN) into over-
laying control services mainly at the core network side, and
1657
the underlaying data or infrastructure forwarding planes mainly
at the RAN side [15], [17]. Consequently, the data planes
will exploit the utilisation of massive multi-input multi-output
(massive MIMO) antennae in order to focus energy towards
ever smaller regions of space with a view of bringing huge
improvements in throughput and radiated energy efficiency
(EE) [18]. In addition, the massive MIMO techniques will cre-
ate a platform for developing new radio access protocols for
the flow of heterogeneous traffics, network functions virtuali-
sations (NFV) as well as joint spectrum and energy-efficiency
(SEE). Moreover, seamless SEE connectivity goals between the
hybrid mmWave and optical fibre backhauling will also have to
be guaranteed for such a multi-tier communication system [8],
[9], [19]. Because of such distinct technologies of the 5G RAN
systems [20], the conventional RIRM schemes for 4G RANs
such as the channel allocation, power control, user offloading,
cell association and/or load balancing for single-tier or two-tier
type RAN systems will be deemed infeasible and inefficient
[8], [9].
As identified in the most recent literature [5], [8], [10],
the main challenges for 5G RAN systems include the explo-
sive growth in traffic volumes, the unprecedented increase in
connected wireless devices, and the wide range of QoS require-
ments, characteristics and mobile application use cases [2].
Such challenges have already spawned the emergence of key
technologies of the 5G RAN systems with numerous benefits
[13], [18], [21]. These include much greater spectrum allo-
cations at untapped mmWave frequency spectrum bands [13],
[22], highly directional massive beamforming antennae at both
the mobile devices and BSs [18], [22], longer battery life sus-
tained by energy harvesting techniques [12], full-duplexing
communications (FDCs) [21], lower outage probability, much
higher bit rates in larger portions of the coverage area, lower
1658 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
infrastructure costs, and higher aggregate capacity [5], [11].
Furthermore, the backbone of 5G RAN systems will move
from mainly copper and fiber to hybrid mmWave wireless,
optical wireless and wired connections (backhauling), allowing
rapid deployment and mesh-like connectivity among different
BSs [13].
While previous surveys have had a narrow focus on par-
ticular issues related to 5G RAN systems, e.g., green com-
munication or interference management etc, this current paper
seeks to provide a holistic perspective of radio interference
and resource management (RIRM) schemes towards 5G RAN
systems. Specifically, the focus emphasizes on the recently pro-
posed (i.e., during the last five years) RIRM schemes classified
in terms of radio interference, spectrum and energy efficient
management solutions. The idea is to reveal a number of press-
ing research issues and deficiencies with the existing RIRM
solutions considering the unique technical features of the 5G
RAN systems.
The rest of this paper is organised as follows: In Section
II, an overview of the main QoS performance challenges for
5G RAN systems has been presented. In Sections III to VI,
discussions on specific RIRM challenges, conventional RIRM
solutions and some open research issues of radio interference,
spectrum-efficient, energy-efficient, and hybrid resource man-
agement have been provided, respectively. Section VII provides
insights on specifications of signalling required in order to
implement the discussed RIRM schemes. Finally, Section VIII
concludes and outlines perspectives of future research direc-
tions for the 5G RAN systems. For convinience to our readers,
we provide the definitions of a list of abbreviations commonly
used in this paper as follows.
BSs base stations
CR cognitive radio
CSI channel state information
D2D device to device
FDCs full-duplex communications
MTCs machine type communications
QoS quality of service
RAN radio access network
RATs radio access technologies
RIRM radio interference and resource management
SDR/SDNs software defined radio/software defined
networks
UDNs ultra-dense networks
UEs users equipment or simply terminal users.
II. OVERVIEW OF 5G RAN S YSTEM Q O S P ERFORMANCE
C HALLENGES
In this section, we provide a brief overview of already iden-
tified QoS performance challenges and requirements towards
achieving main visions of the 5G RAN systems [1], [8], [9].
A. Explosive Growth in the Traffic Volumes
Regarding the challenge of the expected explosive growth in
the traffic volumes, the RIRM schemes of the 5G RAN sys-
tems will have to support more than 1000 times today’s traffic
volumes. Such massive traffic volumes will involve access to
information and sharing of data (both mobile and fixed) any-
where, anytime by anyone or anything within the 5G RAN
systems beyond the performance improvements of the 4G cel-
lular standard [23]. In addition, the system will have to deal
with technical issues of network sustainability and scalability
[2]. To meet such requirements, it is envisaged that the 5G RAN
systems will employ the evolved existing mobile-broadband
RATs (2G, 3G, WLAN, 4G, etc) to operate as mmWave back-
haul of the overall radio access [22]. Furthermore, the RATs
will also have the capability to incorporate super full duplex
BSs whereby each BS sector operates in time division duplex
(TDD) and frequency division duplex (FDD) modes [21]. For
these reasons, efficient and feasible RIRM schemes must be
developed for such BSs to cope up with the new network
structure, air interface, key communication schemes, multiple
access, and duplexing schemes [8], [21], [24].
Recently, researchers have also shown quantitively that
incorporating smart antennae of a very large number of steer-
able antenna elements (Massive MIMOs) [18]); enhancing
more spectrum and larger bandwidths harnessed in the existing
UHF bands (for mobile service levels in a wider area cov-
erage) and EHF bands (for mobile service levels in specific
use case scenarios) [13]; and the provision for coordination
among BSs are some of the strategies to meet the anticipated
demands of the large mobile traffic volumes [13], [19]. In
addition, the deployments of ultra-dense networks (UDNs),
and of new use cases (i.e., massive machine-type commu-
nications (MTCs), multi-hop communications (MHCs), ultra-
reliable communications (URCs), inter-vehicular or vehicular
to road communications (V2RCs)) are some examples of inno-
vative methods to handle network sustainability, flexibility and
scalability issues of the 5G RAN systems [2], [19]. However,
the deployments of evolved backbone RATs together with
underlaid UDNs for emerging application scenarios/use cases
will require more sophisticated radio interference and resource
management (RIRM) schemes to enable the 5G RAN systems
handle the exponentially rising traffic volumes beyond the 4G
access networks.
B. Unprecedented Increase in Connected Wireless Devices
Regarding the unprecedented increase in connected wire-
less devices, the 5G RAN systems will be able to support
between 10 − 100 times connected devices higher than today’s.
Such devices will function as surveillance cameras, smart-city,
smart-home and smart-grid devices, and connected sensors of
anything [2], [25]. This unprecedented challenge will have to
be addressed by extending the conventional cellular technology,
primarily the LTE and alternative or complementary technolo-
gies (e.g., WiFi, FSOCs, TVWS) to support huge numbers of
low-power MTCs devices on one hand. On the other hand, the
MTCs technologies will be able to integrate seamlessly into the
extended cellular RATs in order to provide an ubiquitous con-
nectivity to massive devices [2]. Moreover, the use of massive
MTCs technologies comes with advantages such as creating
lower-complexity and exploiting shorter radio range communi-
cating systems operating in newly explored mmWave spectrum
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
(i.e., the EHF band) for mobile applications [13]. However,
issues of the 5G RAN systems’ scalability and spectrum back-
ward flexibility, the extent of interference and battery lifetime
especially in MTCs and D2D communications, will have to be
investigated further by researchers.
C. Wide Range of QoS Requirements and Characteristics
In the recent past, the 5G RAN systems have been highly
expected to satisfy a wide range of QoS requirements and char-
acteristics such as high data rates, seamless mobility, reduced
latency, high reliability, high security and privacy, high device
battery lifetime and reduced device costs [2]. In terms of the
wide range of data rates requirements, characteristics and use
cases, the multi-Gbps data rates should be available to both high
and low-power access nodes. Furthermore, hundreds of Mbps
data rates should be available to the ultimate consumers in
multi-tier 5G RANs [8]. Moreover, the diversified use cases and
corresponding QoS requirements will demand that the UDNs
are able to operate on very wide transmission bandwidths (i.e.,
100 MHz) within the higher frequency bands (i.e., order of
10 − 100 GHz) [22] so that short-range communications (i.e.,
order of tens to hundreds meters) can be utilised [2].
Therefore, appropriate holistic RIRM schemes must be
developed to enable such UDNs achieve the guaranteed QoS
of different application use case scenarios. This is because
the envisaged radio BSs of UDNs at default will be densely
located, imprecisely planned and transmit at low powers. BSs
within the smallcells will have to offload wireless traffic from
the high power or macrocells’ BSs to the D2D communica-
tion networks or networks of UEs. The BSs of UDNs must
be able to release radio resources efficiently and timely in the
access side of the 5G RAN systems as when they are needed
[6], [25]. In situations where users are close to each other and
particularly where information has a local context (e.g., traffic
safety, national security and public safety and general proximity
services in which the user interacts with and exchanges infor-
mation with immediate environment), the 5G RAN systems
will need to offer a more efficient solution of letting devices
to communcate directly over the D2D link [2]. For industrial
communications and societal functions such as traffic safety,
e-Health and smart-city management, the reliability (always
available) and latency requirements differ significantly [26].
Thus, the combination of ultra-low latency and extreme relia-
bility will require that the design of control-channels, coding,
link adaptation and RIRM methods provide sufficient and opti-
mised low latency and ultra-reliable communication tradeoffs
[2], [5].
In the regime of 5G RAN systems, the energy efficiency
and sustainability (i.e., through innovative energy harvesting),
will be a crucial component of the design [2], [12]. Authors in
[2], [27] assert that the deployment of BSs belonging to UDNs
result in highly reduced link distances and the development
of smart functionalities for node sleep and minimisation of
signalling for network detection and synchronisation can signif-
icantly bring down the energy consumption of future networks.
In addition, the cost of deploying, operating and maintaining a
network as well as the cost of end user devices should factor
1659
in the price charged to the 5G RAN users (5G UEs) on the
popular services, while maintaining attractive business cases for
network operators [2].
D. Concluding Remarks
In the foregoing discussions, we have noted that a real-
istic 5G RAN system must be able to handle operations of
many multi-tier cellular communication systems which are
deployed dynamically and in a heterogeneous manner and that
combine different and flexible RATs. However, such deploy-
ments may induce several stringent technical challenges such
as adverse radio interference scenario or additional backhaul
and mobility management requirements [36], [37]. Moreover,
the research activities defining specific RIRM advancements
needed to address such challenges are yet to continue [2], [5],
[8], [9], [28], [29]. Unfortunately, not so many recent works
have produced surveys that combine radio interference, spec-
trum and energy-efficient techniques for the 5G RAN systems
[29], [30]. Albeit, [30] provides a survey of major existing QoS
and QoE-based cross-layer resource management solutions for
5G RAN systems, many other studies have focussed on archi-
tectural design perspectives with no attention to the holistic
view of the RIRM schemes [5], [31].
As a result of the aforementioned gaps, the current paper
makes a two-fold contribution: (1) the taking of a concise
stock of state-of-the-art (SOTA) RIRM schemes (namely, radio
interference, spectrum-efficient, energy-efficient and hybrid
resource management) proposed in the literature in the recent
past five years. (2) The analysis and synthesis of such schemes
with a view of mapping their alignments to the identified key
5G RAN QoS performance requirements. The ultimate objec-
tive is then to make some recommendations on some open
research issues of the 5G RAN systems to be addressed in the
next half decade and beyond.
III. R ADIO I NTERFERENCE M ANAGEMENT
(RIM) S CHEMES
In this section, we present the RIM challenges, and conven-
tional schemes proposed in the past five years and suggest some
open research issues to be tackled by further research.
A. The Main RIM Challenges
We first begin by reiterating here that the 5G RAN sys-
tems will mainly evolve from the 4G RAN systems, but 4G
RAN systems have already densified their cell deployments
using UDNs technologies. [33], [34]. Unfortunately, the BSs
for UDNs deployments with single frequency and aggressive
frequency reuse have been found to incur co-channel interfer-
ence that adversely impacts on quality of experience (QoEs) of
the cell-edge users [35], [36]. This can possibly be averted
by embracing multi-frequency system scenarios in which, cer-
tain UEs within each UDNs are further clustered so that every
UEs can use different frequencies with minimal interference
in full-duplex communication (FDC) modes [21]. Moreover,
the architecture of the 5G RAN systems architecture (i.e., as
1660 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
shown in Figure 1) will be composed of multiple tiers and
RATs with different dynamic BSs and users that will operate
in a non-overlapping frequency spectrum using a coordinated
transmission power control.
Based on such architecture, Hossain et al. [9] have moti-
vated for the need to evolve RIM in the 5G RAN systems. The
motivations include (i) heterogeneity and dense deployment
of wireless devices, (ii) coverage and traffic load imbalance
due to varying transmit powers of different BSs in the down-
link, (iii) public or private access restrictions in different tiers
that lead to diverse interference levels, and (iv) the priorities
in accessing channels of different frequencies and resource
allocation strategies. Authors [9] add that the application of
carrier aggregation, cooperation among BSs (e.g., by using
coordinated multi-point transmission (CoMP)) as well as direct
communication among users (e.g., D2D communication) could
further exacerbate the designs of RIM schemes [31]. In light of
such new dimensions of RIM, the current paper seeks to pro-
vide a literature review of the recently proposed RIM schemes
for the 5G RAN systems in the past half decade with a view of
outlining the open research issues for the next half decade.
B. The Conventional RIM Schemes
Starting from the research in [9], [96], an excellent effort
has been paid to design interference management perspec-
tives, especially the joint cell association and power control
(JCAPC) schemes in a multi-tier 5G RAN system. Some of
these interesting RIM schemes are discussed as follows [23],
[40]–[43].
1) Advanced Interference Management Scheme: In order to
address co-channel interference problems occuring within BSs
of UDNs and meet demands of explosive traffic volumes related
QoS performance (such as high data rates, more network reli-
ability, seamless mobility, high security and privacy and low
latency), Nam et al. [23] has proposed an advanced interfer-
ence management (AIM) technique. With the AIM approach,
the interference management at the user equipment (UE)-side
is equally weighted with that of the network-side interference
management (i.e, upstream from the D2D network). The main
idea is to make each receiver (i.e., UE) capable of taking
advantage of the structure of the interference signals, including
modulation constellation, coding scheme, channel and resource
allocation [23]. In this manner, each receiver tries to detect and
decode symbols of the interference signals in order to distin-
guish the strong co-channel interference among neighbouring
cells from the thermal noise in its statistical and physical
characteristics. Once decoded, the interference signals can be
reconstructed based on the detector/decoder output and can-
celled from the received signal to improve the desired signal
decoding performance such as high data rates [40].
However, for the case of the 5G RAN systems, it is not
yet clear how each receiver of every tier and RAT BS will
detect and decode symbols of the interference signals aris-
ing from the massive MIMO structure. Furthermore, if proper
cross-tier and inter cell coordinations are not ensured, a high
system processing complexity may be incurred. In addition, a
number of practical issues such as how to determine realistic
interference conditions, design practical receiver architecture
and estimate reliable channel state information (CSI) exists
with the AIM techniques. Thus, avoiding excessive signalling
overheads especially for massive MIMOs, UDNs and FDCs
systems of the 5G RAN will require that most extra information
be decoded blindly at the receiver without explicit signalling.
Blind decoding, nonetheless, creates the processing burden to
the receiver when the interference estimation and cancellation
is inaccurate [41], [44]. Moreover, the simultaneous non-unique
decoding (SND) strategy where the interference signal and the
desired signals are decoded jointly is also highly complex [45].
Over recent years, practical architectures of iterative turbo
receivers aligned to AIM schemes have been suggested in order
to provide capacity performance close to those of wireless
communication systems having separate MIMO, channel mod-
ulation and coding [23], [46]. The coding include space-time
pre-coding and bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) based
on a quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and turbo or low
density parity check (LDPC) codes [23], [46]. However, the
modulation order and code block length are large and the com-
plexity of such turbo-based receivers grows exponentially with
the number of users from the same cell or neighbouring cells
[46]. As a result, such modulation schemes may pose a seri-
ous RIM challenge for numerous smallcell based UDNs of the
5G RAN systems [19]. Unlike in conventional receivers, where
a single CSI report per user is assumed, a multiple CSI feed-
back framework already working in a coordinated multipoint
(CoMP) communication in the 4G LTE Release 11. It is highly
expected that a CoMP communication technique can be mod-
ified to demonstrate a performance improvement for the 5G
RAN systems [40]. Each of the multiple CSI reports in CoMP
technology is based on different interference functions associ-
ated with the different points on the receiver characteristic curve
[23]. However, the costs of CSI overhead remain burdensome
for a realistic implementation of the 5G RAN systems within
the next decade.
2) Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) Transmission Based:
In order to address issues of co-channel interference in 5G
HetNets, a number of studies have proposed the coordinated
multi-point (CoMP) transmissions [42], [77]. Here, the BSs
can jointly provide data transmissions to the receiving nodes
(RNs) and thereby increasing the sum rate and cell-edge per-
formance in HetNets [77]. However, this approach relies on
the availability of both data symbols and CSI sharing among
the transmission points (TPs). The large CSI feedback over-
head, the capacity and latency constraints of backhaul links,
and the imperfect synchronisation between TPs are some of the
challenges with this approach [42].
Inspired by Gesbert et al.’s [42] survey of multi-cell MIMO
cooperative networks, a number of researchers have focused
their attention on clustering of BSs in CoMP transmissions
[50]–[52]. Essentially, instead of allowing joint transmissions
from all the BSs as in [77], the BSs are clustered into disjoint
groups, so that only the members of a group share data with
each other. This fosters a better performance, as well as a lower
signaling overhead. While the problem is combinatorial, the
researchers have tackled it using ideas from a cooperative game
theory [50]–[52]. In particular, authors in [50] first introduce a
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
regret based learning approach to optimise the transmit beam-
forming parameters for the cases when the feedback channel
is temporarily unavailable during deep fades. Cluster-wise joint
beamforming is achieved by proposing a coalition formation
game model that is able to cluster the smallcell BSs. In order to
obtain the recursive core, they adopt the merge-only algorithm
which guarantees the formation stability and show that its out-
come belongs to the recursive core. Numerical simulations are
provided to illustrate the behavior of the coalition formation
among smallcell BSs. The merit of such approach is that BSs
clustering formation can easily be applied to the UDNs oper-
ations of the 5G RAN systems in order to increase a number
of QoS performance. However, due to the existence of cross-
tier and multiple RATs coordinations, the complete elimination
of the CSI overheads in the next generation 5G RAN systems
cannot be guaranteed.
In a similar contribution to [50], researchers in [51] con-
sider the cooperative optimisation of mutual information in
the MIMO Gaussian interference channel in a fully distributed
manner via a game theory. In this work, the transmit covari-
ance matrices leading to the Nash Equilibrium (NE) are derived,
and the existence and uniqueness of the NE are also anal-
ysed. Through proposing coalition formation (CF) among the
smallcell BSs and coalition graph formation (CGF) algorithms,
the authors prove a Nash-stability and a convergence to a
NE. Simulation results show that the proposed CF and CGF
algorithms have significant advantages when the number of
antennae at the transmitters are large, and the proposed network
formation algorithm enhances the sum rate of the system appar-
ently even at low signal-to-noise ratio region and/or with small
number of transmit antennae.
Moreover in [52], the multiple-input single-output (MISO)
interference channel has been considered and each transmit-
ter has been assumed to know the channels between itself and
all receivers perfectly and the receivers are assumed to treat
interference as additive noise. In addition, authors [52] have
proposed a polynomial time distributed coalition formation
algorithm based on a coalition merging and have proven that its
solution lies in the set of thier stable coalition game formation.
Simulation results have shown that there are cooperation gains
obtained with different coalition formation complexities and the
deviation of overhead models. However, one shortcoming of
this method is that coalition formation complexities in the cur-
rent form may not be efficicient and feasible for different tiers of
the 5G RAN systems. This is due to the existence of different
RATs with different interference evolutions [9]. Investigation
into the feasible coalition formation complexities on the perfor-
mance gains for the architecture of the 5G RAN systems remain
an open issue.
Authors in [77] claim that a downlink power allocation
problem of a two-transmission point (TP) two-receiving nodes
(RNs) cooperative system, can be a positive step to solve such
a problem identified in [52]. In this work [77], data symbols of
the RNs are jointly transmitted from the TPs using zero-forcing
precoding. The objective is to maximise the ergodic achievable
rate subject to per-TP average total power constraints, which is
normally considered for systems with limited energy resources
[43], [53]. The proposed optimal power allocation solution is
1661
then proven to fall into two categories: 1) greedy power allo-
cation, when two RNs are located close to one TP and the
per-TP total power budget is below a threshold; 2) power shar-
ing solution, i.e., both RNs receive the data from the TPs, when
different RNs are close to different TPs. Moreover, Li et al.
[77] show that depending on the channel condition and the
RNs activation probability, a system should be able to switch
between cooperative joint transmission and non-cooperative
transmission to improve the sum rate.
In Mayer [43], [53], a control channel model via the assign-
ment of link failure probability (LFP) to backhaul and access
links for the cooperative clusters and three CoMP architectures,
namely the centralised, semi-distributed, and fully distributed
are analysed. By evaluating the average sum rate of users
within a CoMP cluster, authors show that the performance gains
offered by CoMP quickly diminish, as the unreliability of the
control links grows. This is a promising model to solve the reli-
ability issue of the 5G RAN systems’ requirements of many
other use cases. However, clustering of BSs within a single tier
is a trivial issue compared to the multi-tier case for the 5G RAN
systems in which message overheads may be extreme during
heavy load traffics [17]. Further investigations on the impact
of the cross-tier clustering of the different RAT BSs on the
performance of the 5G RAN systems should be conducted.
3) Power Control for Multi-tier RAN Systems: In address-
ing the co-channel and intercell interference management in
mobile networks, sophisticated transmission power control
designs have been around over the past years [9], [54], [56],
[57]. Both the co-channel and intercell interference manage-
ment techniques have been viewed to resolve data rate, mobil-
ity, variable coverage and congestion challenges for 5G RAN
systems. For instance, authors in [56], [57] consider open loop
power control (OLPC) designs in LTE systems whereby power
levels are adjusted to track fast fading variations for adap-
tive modulation and coding (AMC) mechanisms. The closed
loop power control (CLPC) for the LTE systems involves
exchanging control channels among different BSs in order
to obtain the required signal to interference plus noise ratio
(SINR) [56]. Feedback messages from BSs are used by UEs
to adaptively correct the transmission power levels so that high
data rates, seamless mobility management etc are achieved
[57], [163]–[165]. In such schemes, the uplink power control
often manages intercell interference caused by transmissions of
mobile stations (MSs), while the downlink manages co-channel
interference due to BSs transmissions.
However, [56], [57] have considered OFDMA LTE access
systems with two tiers other than a communication system hav-
ing several tiers and different RATs power control requirements
of the 5G RAN systems [8]. In addition, such power control
methods for handling issues of the interference management
across intercells may not directly solve the problems of tight
self-interference dominating in the FDCs for the 5G RAN sys-
tems [81]. As a result, newer methods of the RIM will need to
be devised to address such evolving RIM challenges efficiently.
Uplink power control schemes in CDMA cellular sys-
tems for managing co-channel interference have been pro-
posed exhaustively [58]. However, due to the multiple channel
access requirement property of the 5G RAN systems [7],
1662 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
such uplink power control in themeselves may not be feasi-
ble. Consequently, an hybrid of multiple medium access control
(HM-MAC) schemes such as the LAS-CDMA, MC-CDMA
and OFDMA will have to be designed. The reason is to min-
imise the rapidly changing uplink interference conditions as
described in [7]. Moreover, the 4G RAN standards permit
cell-specific power control techniques that govern UE SINR-
targets and control interference from neighbouring cells within
a specific tier. The 5G RAN systems, on the other hand, will
have to consider such power control adjustments in which
interference challenges across different tiers can be minimised
effectively [59].
In such a scenario, suitable learning based adaptive power
control (LeAP) techniques that capture interference informa-
tion from neighbouring cells would become useful [60]. Thus,
in [60], the LeAP design requires succint but expressive enough
statistics from UE measurements in order to develop two learn-
ing algorithms. The developed learning-based algorithms use
the reported measurements to set the power control parameters
and optimise the network performance such as throughput and
latency [61]. It has been shown that one of the LeAP algorithms
converges to an optimal solution and the other algorithm is a
fast heuristic that can be implemented using off the shelf solvers
in order to improve QoS performance. However, the applica-
tions of such data measurements driven machine learning power
control schemes with minimal CSI overheads for uplink inter-
ference management towards the 5G RAN systems remains an
interesting open issue.
It should further be noted that the uplink power control prob-
lems are much easier than the downlink power control problems
since the total uplink transmit power of every UE device is
pretty much the same [62]–[64]. Thus, authors in [62], propose
a fully decentralised, self-organised heuristic for the downlink
power control and interference mitigation in LTE femtocells.
The proposed power control schemes dynamically adjust the
transmit power to adapt to the UE types and QoS require-
ments. No strong assumptions, such as the knowledge of the
whole network or location of every UE, are needed by the
proposed scheme. Additionally, according to the network envi-
ronment, HeNBs can update their settings to further improve
the QoS performance. The proposed scheme is able to produce
a considerable performance gain interms of RIM using Monte-
Carlo simulations for the massively connected wireless UEs of
the 5G RAN systems. The drawback of this method is that,
although a fully decentralised power control may be feasible
within each tier, it may not be effective for BSs coordination
across multiple tiers with a set of communication relays to the
edge UEs. Moreover, BSs from a number of different tiers are
expected to operate and share efficiently overlapping and con-
tiguous spectrum bands. Therefore, devising spectrum-efficient
BSs coordination as well as the decentralised power control
methods across multiple tiers may be the alternative strategies
of resolving such complicated interference evolutions [77].
Another significant challenge for the downlink transmissions
arises due to asymmetric transmit powers of BSs operating
in different tiers [63], [64]. Recently, game theory has been
applied to resolve the downlink power control problem in self-
organised two-tier cellular systems [63], [64]. The idea allows
different BSs across tiers to perform intercell interference coor-
dination (ICIC). However, such behaviours pose problems in
cell associations whereby the uplink cell association might not
correspond to the downlink cell association as in the case of
homogeneous networks. In order to overcome such challenges,
a cell range expansion technique (CRE) for multi-tier networks
has been introduced over the recent past [65], [66].
To model multi-tier/dynamic RAT architecture and the diver-
sified QoS requirements for the 5G RAN systems, graph-
ical theory-based interference management approaches have
been exploited [48]. In order to manage intercell interference
(ICI) problems, authors consider two phases namely, a course-
scale ICI management, followed by a fine-scale channel-aware
resource-allocation scheme [61]. The ICI management infor-
mation is first acquired through inferences from a different
set of UEs belonging to different multi-RAT tiers and it is
presented by an interference graph. Then, ICI coordination
effected by the base-station cooperation (BSC) is mapped to
the MAX k-CUT problem that exploits the use of CSI con-
ditions [165]. The solution is derived based on instantaneous
CSI evaluations and high data rates are achieved for a multicell
OFDMA downlink ICI management [164], [165]. However,
more frequent instantaneous CSI signalling may flood the BSs
network thereby degrading the quality of experience (QoE) of
the possible large UEs for 5G RAN systems. This drawback has
recently posed new research challenges for developing sophis-
ticated resource-efficient graph theory-based RIM technologies
with some researchers seeking alternative RIM methods such
as joint multi-layer or tier and power control [29].
In particular, Authors in [72] and [29] assert that joint
multi-tier and power control will be able to resolve multi-
tier interference problems where different tiers (i.e., macro,
micro, pico, femtocells, D2D etc) have different transmission
powers overlaid on each other. They argue that due to multi-
layer deployment in the cooperative 5G RAN systems, more
advanced interference coordination and radio resource man-
agement schemes are required than in the traditional wireless
network in order to reduce effects of interference. The joint
multi-tier and power control ensure that each tier and/or each
cell may surrender some resources such as high transmission
powers, in a coordinated fashion, to improve the performance,
especially for cell-edge users which are vulnerable from the
highest impact of multi-layer interference. The idea proposed
is such that the high power nodes (HPNs) and the lower power
nodes (LPNs) should be well coordinated such that the UEs
located at the edge of the LPNs cells are protected from the
vulnerability of interference caused by the transmissions from
HPNs [29].
4) MIMO Channels-Based Interference Mitigation Scheme:
In a bid to achieve high data rates, low latency and high relia-
bility requirements for the 5G RAN systems, most techniques
designed for MIMO Broadcast Channel (BC) and MIMO
Interference Channel (IC) have been developed. Such tech-
niques require accurate, current and instantaneous CSI at the
transmitter (CSIT) [67]–[69]. Thus, Lee and Heath [71] prove
that in the underdetermined (overloaded) multi-input single-
output (MISO) BC with Nt transmit antennae and K = Nt + 1
users, Nt (sum) Degrees of Freedom (DoF) are achievable if
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs 1663

the CSI feedback delay is not too big, thus disproving the within a group based on the effective channel which is given
conjecture that any delay in the feedback necessarily causes by the product of the pre-beamforming matrix and the actual
a substantial DoF loss. However, the feedback delay needs to channel matrix between the antenna array and UEs. One key
remain less or equal to NTt +1
c
, where Tc is the coherence time advantage of such two-stage beamforming technique is that
of the channel. Based on this, Lejosne et al. [67], [68] have the network interference is mitigated using pre-beamforming
considered the MIMO BC and have shown that the use of multi- matrices designed not based on the CSI but on the channel
antenna receivers allows them achieve full (sum) DoF with statistics information, i.e., the channel covariance matrix. The
even bigger CSI feedback delay, up to NtTc , where Nr is the channel statistics information varies slowly compared to CSI.
( Nr )+1
Thus, it can be estimated more easily than estimating CSI
number of receive antennae. This results show a wide range of
based on some subspace tracking algorithm without knowing
feedback delays for which the full sum DoF can be preserved
instantaneous CSI. However, the impact of channel statis-
obtaining a more widely applicable scheme that also seems
tics information estimation on the multiple tiers and FDCs
interesting when CSI feedback and training are to be taken into
based 5G RAN systems’s QoS performance will require further
account [70].
investigation.
Adhikary et al. [73] provide massive MIMO and inter-tier
In a related study, authors in [76] consider a K link MIMO
interference coordination scheme. They focus on a scenario
interference channel, where each link consists of two full-
where the macro (tier-1) BS is equipped with a very large num-
duplex (FD) nodes exchanging information simultaneously in
ber of antennas (massive MIMO). This gives rise to highly
a bi-directional communication fashion. The nodes in each pair
directional channel vectors, which can be modelled as Gaussian
suffer from self-interference due to thier FD mode operations,
random vectors with a small number of dominant eigenmodes
and inter-user interference from other links due to simultaneous
(eigenvectors of their covariance matrix). As a result, the tier-
transmission at each link. Based on the relationship between
1 BS can make use of the directional beamforming [74] in
the weighted sum-rate (WSR) and weighted minimum-mean-
order to simultaneously achieve spatial multiplexing to its own
squared-error (WMMSE) problems for FD MIMO interference
tier-1 users as well as mitigate the inter-tier interference to the
channels, a low complexity alternating algorithm which con-
tier-2 cells. Inter tier interference can be mitigated by nulling
verges to a local WSR optimum point has been proposed.
certain spatial directions, i.e., by transmitting in the orthogo-
The method is applicable to the 5G RAN systems in which
nal complement of the dominant eigenmodes of the channel
a BS operating in FDCs serves multiple UL and DL UEs
vectors from the tier-1 BS to a subset of selected tier-2 cells.
operating in half-duplex (HD) mode, simultaneously. However,
The selection of such directions can be allocated in the time-
an interference alignment scheme for partially connected DL
frequency resource such that each tier-2 cell has a fair share of
MIMO HetNets can significantly improve the sum rate perfor-
transmission opportunities free from inter-tier interference.
mance [79].
Based on this selection technique for spatial directions, [73]
Thus, in [79], two partially connected scenarios of HetNets
investigate two schemes: reverse-TDD (R-TDD), where the
consisting of the partial connectivity among smallcells as well
tier-1 downlink (DL) is aligned with the tier-2 uplink (UL) (and
as the partial connectivity between the macrocell and small-
vice-versa), and cochannel-TDD (co-TDD), where tier-1 UL
cells have been considered. In these scenarios, a two-stage
is aligned with the tier-2 UL (and vice-versa). It is worth-
interference alignment scheme is derived and the influence of
while to point out that all the tier-2 nodes can decode the
the number of served macro users on system degrees of free-
tier-1 BS control signal and use it as a common information
dom (DoFs) is then investigated. The investigation involves
for coordination. In particular, it is assumed that the power,
deriving the condition under which serving one macrocell user,
rate and positioning (location) information of the active tier-
achieves more DoFs than serving multiple macrocell users. The
1 users scheduled on the current frame are known to all tier-2
simulation results show that the proposed interference align-
nodes in each frame. By examining the two tier system perfor-
ment schemes can significantly improve the system sum rate
mance in terms of the achievable throughput trade-off region
especially by considering the partial connectivity between the
between the tier-1 throughput (sum rate) and the tier-2 through-
macrocell and smallcells.
put (sum-rate), authors have found that reverse-TDD can yield
Papathanasiou et al. [80] design the dynamic radio resource
significant advantages in some cases with respect to co-channel
and interference management based on the short-term CSI at
TDD. However, one of the major challenges of implementing
the transmitter by averaging the channel covariance matrix over
massive MIMO systems, is the design of a practical precoding
the duration of one half frame or ten slots (to be compliant
architecture for multiuser massive MIMO downlink together
with the Time Division Multiple Access (TDD) and Frequency
with the estimation of channels with high dimensions due to
Division Multiple Access (FDD) operation). Such action is
heavy computational burden and a huge amount of the CSI
taken because the application of multiple antennas at the trans-
feedback [75].
mitter and the receiver making a MIMO system increases the
Lee et al. [75] consider massive MU-MIMO downlink
number of channel state parameters and the feedback require-
interference mitigation method in which a prebeamforming
ments grow with the product of the number of transmitter
technique that separates multiple group of UEs by using a pre-
antennas, receiver antennas, the delay spread and the number
beamforming matrix is designed for each group and applied
of users. The authors assume a rapidly changing channel where
to filter the dominant eigenvectors of each group’s channel
accurate CSI is difficult to obtain and second order statistical
covariance matrix. They then develop an MU-MIMO precod-
information can then be used to form beams at each physical
ing method that separates and simultaneously supports the UEs
1664 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
resource block (PRB) but not to separate users in the spatial
domain. Beamforming seeks to improve the total throughput or
minimise the total transmitted power. It is deemed a robust and
non-risky approach taking into account the coarse estimation of
CSI at the transmitter. Since, statistical information can be used
for scheduling the users in a multiuser Time-Division MIMO-
OFDM system, they optimise the number of PRBs allocated
to the UEs in order to achieve maximum overall throughput or
minimise the emitted power guaranteeing the QoS for all users.
Beamforming is used to maximise the signal energy sent to the
desired users, while it minimises the interference sent toward
interfering users. The proposed intercell interference manage-
ment, through the use of limited feedback mechanisms, reduces
the signalling overhead and does not require any sharing of
feedback information among neighbouring eNBs. Hence, the
cost of coordination is reduced. However, it is not clear how
this approach will perform for 5G multi-tier RAN systems.
In [82], a semi-distributed MIMO based interference mit-
igation protocol consisting of five phases namely, access
point (AP)-discovery, CSI-measuring and MIMO-weight com-
putation, link-set-advertisement and synchronisation, data-
transmission phase, and acknowledgement has been proposed.
The protocol exploits the interference cancellation and spatial
multiplexing capabilities of MIMO links to mitigate interfer-
ence. In particular, the participating nodes first set their MIMO
weights appropriately. Since CSI is different between every
pair of nodes, different link selections produce different MIMO
weights and CSI measurement overheads for computing the
MIMO weights for every link are set and reused, whenever
possible. As a result, the first phase of the AP-discovery is
executed only once. During this phase, APs construct a tree
structure for collecting CSI and distributing MIMO weights,
and agree on an AP round-robin order. After the AP-discovery
phase ends, the APs begin taking turns, in choosing link sets
for all APs, according to the round-robin order. The initiator
AP can be defined as the AP whose turn it is to choose the
link set in a given round. At the beginning of the initiator’s
turn, the initiator has two choices for link sets: it can sug-
gest a link set for which MIMO weights have previously been
computed, or it can suggest the creation of a new link set for
which MIMO weights have not been computed. If the initiator
AP chooses an existing link set, the initiator AP skips to the
link-set-advertisement and synchronization phase. Otherwise,
the initiator AP transitions to the CSI-measuring and MIMO
weight-computation phase. During this next phase, the initiator
AP begins by advertising to other APs that a new link selection
is about to take place. Then, each AP chooses its desired client,
measures CSI from every participating client possible (those
clients that are within the communication range), and forwards
this information to its parent in the tree structure until the CSI
reaches the root node. Then, the root node computes the MIMO
weights and distributes them to its child nodes. The MIMO
weights are propagated down the tree until they reach the cor-
responding APs and clients. Once nodes know their MIMO
weights for the current link set, nodes transition to the link-
set-advertisement and synchronisation phase. At the beginning
of the link-set-advertisement and synchronisation phase, the
initiator AP sends a synchronisation beacon for synchronising
the data transmissions. In the case that the initiator AP chose
an existing link set, the beacon also contains the chosen link
set. Once nodes are synchronised, the data transmission phase
begins. During this phase the transmitting nodes transmit sev-
eral packets within a fixed duration. After this duration, the
receivers simultaneously acknowledge their received packets
through a Block Ack. Once the acknowledgement phase is fin-
ished, the next AP in the round-robin order suggests the link set
to use in the new round [82].
While this method has successfully mitigated MIMO inter-
ference channels, there are several drawbacks based on assump-
tions made by the authors [82] that may not be valid for the 5G
RAN systems. The first one is that the transmitters satisfy half-
duplexing mode and not full-duplexing mode operations at any
given time. In contrast, the transmitters of the 5G RAN systems
are expected to operate FDCs in order to achieve high data rates
and low latency QoS requirements [81]. The second assump-
tion made by the authors [82] is that the only method in which
access points (APs) or BSs can communicate with each other
is through the wireless medium and not through other clients or
UEs. This is not true for the 5G RAN systems whereby the BSs
will be expected to communicate with each other both directly
and indirectly via D2D assisted communications in a multiple
tier network structure. The hybrid radio frequency mmWave,
FSOCs and optical fibre backauling [6] are being proposed in
literature to enable this backhauling communications. The third
assumption is that the only method for measuring the CSI from
a given node is by receiving within a communication range,
a packet containing training symbols from that node. However,
the architecture of the 5G RAN systems does not put a stringent
requirement that interfering nodes must be within the commu-
nication range of other nodes. Instead, interfering nodes may be
across several tiers multiple-hops away (i.e., as in the proposed
Figure 1). Finally, the authors [82] have assumed that channels
or links are symmetric, allowing one way CSI measurements be
used directly to estimate the CSI for the reverse channels. This
assumption may be valid for low fading and static networks.
However, the 5G RAN systems will be able to support rapid
mobility speeds of the UEs as well as different interference
thresholds [9].
C. Concluding Remarks and Some Open RIM Issues
We conclude this section by presenting Table I. The table
depicts the extent to which the discussed ongoing research
studies on RIM schemes are aligned to solving the 5G access
QoS performance challenges and requirements. The tick ()
and cross (×) signs respectively, represent strong and weak
alignments. It can be noted from Table I that the main chal-
lenges contravening QoS performance requirements of the 5G
RAN systems can be met by devising innovative power control
schemes and interference mitigations through massive MIMO
technologies. Such key schemes should be able to resolve
emerging interference management issues.
Although there have been positive strides made in suggest-
ing RIM schemes towards the 5G RAN systems, certain key
research issues specific to the discussed schemes still need
urgent attention.
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
TABLE I
T HE RIM S CHEMES V ERSUS 5G ACCESS Q O S R EQUIREMENTS A LIGNMENT
• It is unclear how the design of AIM scheme will be
extended to the 5G RAN multi-tier/multi-RAT systems
in the downlink for each receiver (i.e., UE) without
compromising the computional complexity of the over-
all converged network. The AIM schemes should be able
to handle interference problems across multiple tiers and
still meet stringent requirements of the diversified use
cases and QoS performance.
• The design of clustering mechanisms of multi-RAT BSs
operating within the multi-tier 5G RAN systems so that
cross-tier interference issues are effectively addressed
remain an open research area. More practical strategies
for the coalition formation of BSs clusters using theory of
games or fields of artificial intelligence need to be pursued
further.
• It is unclear how less complex full-duplexing communica-
tions (FDCs) with attributes of a perfect self-interference
cancellation will be developed in order to achieve high
data rates and low latency QoS performance trade-off.
Even though the FDCs will enable the connectivity of
massive devices of 5G RAN systems transmit and receive
simultaneously on the same frequency thereby doubling
the capacity of wireless systems, a number of enabling
strategies associated to FDCs must first be devised. Such
enabling technologies will have to include advanced inter-
ference cancellation antennae and circuit design, chan-
nel estimation and signal processing, modulation and
coding schemes, self-interference cancellation and joint
access/backhaul design for the 5G RAN system’s MAC
protocols [20].
• The issue of how to derive optimal beamforming tech-
niques capable of maintaining sufficient coverage for
massive MIMO, multi-tier and UDNs based 5G RAN
systems remains an interesting area of research.
IV. S PECTRUM -E FFICIENT M ANAGEMENT
(SEM) S CHEMES
In this section, the main SEM challenges, the conventional
SEM schemes proposed in literature in the past five years and
specific issues aligned to the 5G RAN systems are provided.
A. The Main SEM Challenges
Spectrum scarcity and optimal resource allocations are the
two key research challenges of SEM schemes towards technical
(i.e., massive MIMO, UDNs, FDCs, multi-tier communica-
tions, etc) developments for the 5G RAN systems [83], [84],
[148].
1665
1) Spectrum Scarcity Issues: Today, many wireless cellular
providers can deliver a diversified QoS multimedia applica-
tions to their mobile subscribers but these providers are still
constrained by the limited mobile broadband carrier frequency
spectrum of between 700 MHz and 2.6 GHz [13], [17]. Infact,
the spectrum bandwidth allocation for all mobile broadband
applications does not exceed 780 MHz and each major cellular
provider has approximately 200 MHz across all of the different
mobile broadband bands of the spectrum available to them [83].
The allotted spectrum for mobile operators has been dissected
into disjoint frequency bands, each of which possesses different
RANs with different propagation characteristics and building
penetration losses [13]. Thus, different BSs must service many
different bands with different cell sites, where each cell site
contains multiple BSs (one for each frequency or RAT usage).
This spectrum scarcity has compelled the 3G P P to begin
exploring more specific spectrum in the parts of 470 − 694
MHz, 694 − 790 MHz, parts of the L band, the band around
2 GHz, parts of 3600 − 4200 MHz and 4400 − 4990 MHz to
be openned up for International Mobile and Telecommunication
(IMT) use [84].
In addition, researchers in [13] have been working on har-
nessing new mmWave cellular systems to offer additional
frequencies from 28 to 38 GHz (and beyond) for mmWave
backhauling, UDNs and D2D communications. The emerging
mmWave frequencies are meant to augment the currently sat-
urated 700 MHz to 2.6 GHz radio spectrum bands for various
5G RAN use cases applications [85]–[87]. In order to satisfy
the spectrum demands of future IMT Advanced mobile sys-
tems, spectrum aggregation has been introduced by the 3G P P
in its new LTE-Advanced (LTE Rel. 10) standards. This ini-
tiative will create spectrum aggregation of carrier components
(CCs) dispersed within and across different bands (intra/inter-
band) thereby boosting the user throughput in LTE-Advanced
(LTE-A) as well as the future 5G RAN systems [75]. However,
it is expected that certain SEM research developments will have
to be put in place to take advantage of the carrier aggregation
for QoS performance improvement of the 5G RAN systems [9].
2) Spectrum Resource Allocation Issues: Besides the spec-
tum scarcity, the challenge on how to optimally allocate the
available spectrum to a specific tier (i.e., macrocell, small-
cell, D2D network, etc) for the 5G RAN systems remains an
issue for concern [93]. Recently, distinguishing features of the
5G RAN systems such as the mmWave backhauling, mas-
sive MIMOs, UDNs and FDC techniques have triggered the
developments of innovative radio spectrum resource schedul-
ing technologies as described in [90], [95], [96]. In spectrum
resource scheduling, the available limited spectrum resources
are efficiently assigned to each active user, while satisfying
the QoS requirements such as high data rates, reduced latency,
1666 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
reliability, longer battery lifetime. In LTE systems and hope-
fully the future 5G RANs, the smallest radio resource unit a
schedular can assign to an UE operating within shared spectrum
channels is a Resource Block (RB) [90], [95]. Typically, each
RB consists of twelve (12) adjacent OFDM sub-carriers with
inter-subcarrier spacing of 15 kHz. In taking scheduling deci-
sions, the channel quality information (CQI) from UEs, the QoS
requirements and the buffer status information are usually key
parameters [36]. There are several spectrum scheduling tech-
niques proposed in recent studies that are viewed to be relevant
for the 5G RAN systems [96].
B. The Conventional SEM Solutions
In this subsection, we provide a review of a number of
specific spectrum-efficient (SE) allocation schemes and dis-
cuss how they may be suitable for meeting QoS performance
requirements of the 5G RAN systems [8], [96]–[98], [100],
[112].
1) Traffic Application-Aware Based: In [97], [99], [101],
optimal application-aware RB scheduling algorithms of elastic
and inelastic adaptive real-time traffic in LTE systems are pro-
posed. In particular, [97] applies logarithmic and sigmoidal-like
utility functions to represent the applications of users running
on different UEs. The resource scheduling objective function
tries to allocate the resources for each UE so that the total cel-
lular network objective (i.e. the product of the utilities of all
the UEs) is maximised, while ensuring proportional fairness
between individual utilities. The idea is to ensure a non-zero
resource allocation for all users and guarantee minimum QoS
for all users. The simulated results show that this schedul-
ing scheme gives priority to real-time application users while
allocating RBs optimally. However, it is not yet clear how
the proposed centralised resource scheduling algorithm will
perform for the multi-tier RAN system of different spectrum
requirements.
In [101], a combination of content-aware, time-aware and
location-aware architecture is developed and in [99], a resource
allocation optimisation problem to allocate the eNodeB (base
station) resources optimally among different types of users
running multiple applications is proposed. In all these stud-
ies, centralised scheduling algorithms have been developed that
give priority to inelastic or real-time traffic compared to delay-
tolarant traffic and the algorithms have shown that the QoS is
higher with application-aware scheduling approach compared
to the proportional fairness approaches in a two tier RAN sys-
tem. The QoS performance of application-aware scheduling
method is independent on the complex physical infrastructure
of the 5G RAN systems. This attribute brings an advantage that
the method conceals the complexity of the architectural com-
position of the 5G RAN systems. However, its shortcoming is
that its performance does not distinguish between applications
of different tiers and those of the prioritised QoS requirements
of diverse UEs. Therefore, future studies should look into its
feasibility for the 5G RAN systems.
2) Spectrum Matching Theory-Based Scheme: In [8], [98],
a distributed matching theory which is described by low
complex algorithmic manipulations to provide decentralised
self-organising solutions to the spectrum resource allocation
problems in 5G RANs has been described. In this theory,
the resource allocation method based on stable matching
involves multiple decision-making agents, i.e., the available
radio resources (transmission alignments) and the underlay
transmitters. The desired solutions (i.e., matching between
transmission alignments and transmitters) are produced by
individual actions of the agents [8]. The actions, i.e., match-
ing requests and confirmation or rejection are determined by
the given preference profiles, i.e., the agents hold lists of
preferred matches over the opposite set each. The matching out-
come becomes the mutually beneficial assignments between the
transmitters and available spectrum resources. The solution of
the matching is able to assign the resources with the transmitters
depending on the preferences.
The authors in [8], develop an iterative algorithm as follows.
At the beginning, any transmitter is assumed to be unallo-
cated and that transmitter has an on-empty preference list.
Then, temporary assigned to its first preference over transmis-
sion alignments, e.g., the pair of spectrum resources (resource
blocks (RBs)) is assigned to that transmitter as long as the
RBs allocations do not violate the tolerable interference limit.
Otherwise, the worst preferred transmitter(s) from the pref-
erence list of RB will be removed regardless of its previous
allocations. The spectrum allocation process terminates when
no more transmitters are unallocated. This type of match-
ing based resource allocation method provides an advantage
that the resources are assigned to the transmitters in a decen-
tralised self-organising manner using low-complexity algorith-
mic manipulations. However, the design poses a challenge of
not being able to obtain optimal resource allocating agents in
a cross-tier network on one hand, while ensuring that low-
complexity algorithmic manipulation is maintained at the same
time on the other hand. Recently, efficient new algorithms that
determine how optical frequency resources can be matched
to traffic demands in an optimised way and a more flexi-
ble control and management plane have been designed [102].
However, a number of technical issues remain unresolved for
such elastic optical transport networks, especially when applied
to the 5G RAN systems. These technical issues include effi-
cient architecture, spectrum-efficient transmission technique,
reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM), routing
and spectrum assignment (RSA), spectrum de-fragmentation,
traffic grooming, new protocols and control plane, and
more [103].
3) Spectrum Auctioning Theory Based Scheme: Zhang
et al. [104] have presented a detailed survey on auctioning
approaches for spectrum resource allocation in future wireless
systems. In particular, authors in [8] propose an auction method
that evolves from a bidding process in the 5G RAN systems.
The auctioning method involves unassigned agents (e.g., trans-
mitters) raising the cost for acquiring and bidding for spectrum
resources simultaneously. Once the bids from all the agents are
available to all participating bidders via distributed information
exchanges, the spectrum resources are assigned to the highest
bidder (i.e., the transmitter with the highest costs). In [106], a
pairwise stability condition is presented, in which determinis-
tic components of spectrum bidder valuations are structurally
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
estimated. In this method, two bidders cannot exchange two
licences one from each bidder in a way that increases the sum of
their valuations. Application of spectrum auctioning theory to
the 5G RAN systems shows that the method can enable effec-
tive allocation of available resource blocks (RBs) i.e., common
set of radio resources available to the network tiers, macrocell
base stations (MBSs) to smallcells base stations (SBSs) and
device UEs (DUEs). It can also be used to assign the trans-
mit power levels to the smallcells UEs and UEs in order to
maximise the spectral efficiency without causing significant
interference to the MUEs. The motivation behind the distributed
auctioning methods is that, they are less computationally expen-
sive than the centralised spectrum auctioning solutions [8].
This raises bandwidth efficiency degradation questions when
applied to the 5G RAN systems without appropriate mod-
ifications, making distributed solutions with low signalling
overhead more desirable [8]. However, spectrum synchronisa-
tion and fairness concerns across multiple tiers a rise in such
fully distributed spectrum auctioning methods for the 5G RAN
systems. Thus, compelling the need to develop hybrid cen-
tralised and distributed SE auctioning solutions for the 5G RAN
systems.
4) Prioritised Based Spectrum Access Scheme: In priori-
tised spectrum access, the traffic-based and tier-based priorities
in 5G RANs are discussed [9], [31]. Traffic-based priority
for spectrum access arises from different QoS requirements of
the UEs (i.e., reliability, latency requirements and energy con-
straints), whereas the tier-based priority for spectrum access is
for UEs belonging to different network tiers deemed to have
different spectrum access priorities. An example of tier-based
priority for a two-tier network involves macrocells and micro-
cells systems, in which microcells create dead zones around
them by powering down interfering levels of microcells in the
downlink in order to have a guaranteed interference protection
for macrocell UEs [9]. This makes macrocells UEs carry more
spectrum usage priority than microcell UEs in the downlink and
the reverse case arises in the uplink transmissions. Hossain et al.
[9] point out that a future research should be able to devise effi-
cient joint cell association and power control (JCAPC) methods
that will satisfy objectives such as maximising system through-
put, balance traffic or load subject to a minimum signal to
interference ratio (SIR) for higher priority spectrum UEs within
multi-tier RAN systems.
In order to demonstrate how the traffic-based priority works,
Himayat et al. [105] propose a procedure that adapts frequency
spectrum reuse across different cells efficiently using user dis-
tributions and traffic load information. In each cell belonging to
a specific tier, there is a mix of high and low reuse of the fre-
quency spectrum. While the high reuse types can be assigned to
users that are closer to the centre (i.e., with very strong SINR) of
the cell, the low reuse types are assigned to interference-limited
users at the cell edge. It should be noted that by allowing a
combination of frequency reuse patterns (i.e., high and low)
to overcome the capacity limitation inherent with lower fre-
quency reuse, an improvement in cell throughput and coverage
edge users can be recorded. However, operations of OFDMA
systems involve tight orthogonal frequency synchronisations
across cells with the advantage of being able to avoid intercell
1667
interference. Furthermore, unique techniques for the 5G RAN
systems such as UDNs, massive MIMO, FDCs, multi-tier and
cooperative relay communications have been recently proposed
to resolve cell edge users QoS performance issues and promote
sophisticated frequency access reuse [20].
5) Spectrum Sharing Schemes: Several state-of-the art
(SOTA) researches have shown that one major effective method
of SEM in the next generation mobile networks lies in devel-
oping spectrum sharing techniques [93], [109], [111]–[113],
[115]. In [110], authors propose a spectrum-sharing method that
improves fairness in addition to providing higher throughput
between WiFi users and WiMAX users. An index to indicate
the effectiveness of the spectrum assignment is introduced such
that the smaller value for the index means a better spectrum
assignment. The first step is to acquire the number of users
who connect to each system, next, the index is calculated for
the instant of time of the assignment iteratively until the capac-
ity of each system is optimised. The drawback of this method
is that spectrum assignment index computation incurs signifi-
cant message overheads between distinct networks and a further
investigation is needed to demonstrate a low computational
complexity performance of such a method for the 5G RAN
systems.
In [111], a spectrum sharing protocol which is distributed
in nature (i.e., does not require operator-specific informa-
tion exchange) and incurs minimal communication overhead
between the operators has been proposed. In this design, opera-
tors are free to decide whether they share spectrum or not as the
protocol is based on a book keeping of spectrum usage favours
asked and received by the operators. The co-primary inter-
operator spectrum sharing is based on repeated games [111]. To
arrive at the repeated games, a one-shot game where the players
are two operators, and where no operator-specific information
is revealed to the opponent is first presented. Specifically, the
actions of each player are as follows: (i) to ask for a favour
(ii) not to ask for a favour, but granting a favour if the opponent
asks, or (iii) not to ask for a favour, and not granting a favour
if the opponent asks. The outcomes of the game are such that a
combination of one playing, (i) while the other plays (ii) leads
to a favour exchanged, while all other combinations lead to no
favours exchanged. For each player, the rewards depend only
on its own current network realisation: (i) the reward when a
player takes a favour is the utility gain when the interference
on a secondary component carriers (SCC) is eliminated (ii) the
reward when a player grants a favour is the utility loss when
stopping to use a SCC and (iii) the reward when a player does
not ask nor grant a favour is zero. In this game, the only Nash
equilibrium in the game is one where a player always asks but
never grants a favour. This means that both operators would
utilize all SCCs irrespective of the load and interference condi-
tions. Due to the incomplete information of the other player’s
network, the players would not know how to divide the benefits
once a coalition is formed. Since the operators are expected to
share spectrum for a long time, and in many different network
states, the one-shot game above would be played repeatedly.
In a repeated game, in each stage game, the set of actions
is same as in the one-shot game. This game is played mul-
tiple times. The outcomes of a stage game are realised for a
1668 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
fixed period of time, until the outcome of the next stage game
takes force. In a repeated game, the particular action selected
by a player may also depend on the other players’ previous
actions. The player may choose a strategy where an action is
selected not only based on the instantaneous reward but also on
the sequence of previous rewards. However, due to the incom-
pleteness of the information, and due to the random process
characterising the network states, strategies based on assump-
tion of cooperation, and punishing defections, do not apply.
Cooperation happens in time domain, over multiple stages, by
exchanging favours [111]. At each stage of the game, an oper-
ator may compute its utility gain if it gets a favour and its
utility loss if it grants a favour. In any network configuration
there is a measurable gain due to reduced interference on a
component carrier (CC) due to a getting a favour, and a loss
due to granting a favour and not using one CC. The distri-
bution then reflects the probability of the underlying network
state. However, estimation of these distributions may depend
on the willingness of the opponent to cooperate and the other
shortcoming is that the method exploits the incomplete infor-
mation to iteratively arrive at the system convergence. Lastly,
an optimal solution may never be reached, even in a repeated
game, especially when considering multiple tiers architecture
with extremely high number of BSs and UEs. Hence, further
investigations into the impact of this method on 5G RAN QoS
performance remains an interesting open issue.
In [112], the technical capabilities needed to enable mobile
broadband (MBB) systems to share spectrum are broadly classi-
fied as distributed and centralised systems. Distributed systems
coordinate among each other on equal basis, whereas cen-
tralised systems coordinate separately with a central entity
and the systems do not directly interact with each other.
Distributed solutions have the advantage that coordination can
be more efficient by involving those transmissions that actu-
ally can create interference between systems. Solutions for
distributed coordination can be fully integrated into standards
without the need for commercial agreements between oper-
ators or equipment owners [112]. Examples of distributed
spectrum sharing are found in the MAC behaviours of the spec-
trum sensing and dynamic frequency or the channel selection
(DFS/DCS) in which systems dynamically select their oper-
ating frequency range based on measurement results such as
the energy detection or feature detection [113]. Authors in
[114] propose distributed resource allocations in D2D enhanced
cellular networks. The purpose is to improve the network
throughput by allowing D2D communication to share the cellu-
lar uplink resources, while restricting the access of D2D links
to the uplink spectrum to manage the interference. The adopted
distributed approach has been proven to be computationally
efficient, and requires minimal coordination, communication
and cooperation among the nodes. The key idea is a signaling
mechanism that can be seen as a fictional pricing mechanism
whereby the BSs optimise and transmit to the D2D users, who
then play a best response (i.e., selfishly) to this signal.
On the other hand, centralised solutions are expected to be
useful for sharing on somewhat longer time scales. That is,
the granularity of spectrum sharing would be on a higher level
than the actual radio resource allocation granularity within each
system. The disadvantage is that coordination is done on a com-
parably slow time scale implying that a typical solution is con-
servative and likely to separate users on orthogonal resources
without complete information on whether they would actu-
ally interfere or not. Moreover, resource allocations require the
central controller (e.g., the BS) to acquire the CSI between each
transmitter and receiver. This in turn requires high overhead,
particularly in the scenario where channels vary rapidly (e.g.,
in a high-mobility environment). However, the benefits are in
terms of reliability, predictability and control. An example of
a centralised sharing technique is the geo-location database
(GLDB) approach in which a system queries a database to
acquire information on what resources are available at a specific
location [115]. This is typically the required vertical sharing
solution for access to locally unused TV bands [116]. Another
example is the spectrum broker approach where horizontally
sharing systems negotiate with a central resource management
entity to obtain short term grants to use spectrum resources
on an exclusive basis [117]. These centralised schemes pose
even further research questions, for example, how will the spec-
trum sharing perform considering different tiers and BSs having
diversified time-scales of systems’ operations [6].
In [100], a multi-carrier waveform based inter-operator spec-
trum sharing concept is proposed for the 5G RAN systems. In
this concept, multiple operators (local or national operators)
obtain a certain spectrum band for shared usage in a certain
time period. The spectrum band can be contiguous or non-
contiguous, while the usage rights can be primary, secondary or
even licensed and the technical question that this concept must
answer is how can the operators manage the mutual interfer-
ence, while achieving high spectrum efficiency usage and still
having the flexibilities to adapt their transmissions individually.
The proposed concept considers the new air-interface being
developed for 5G RAN systems [1], which will probably use fil-
ter bank based multicarrier (FBMC) type waveforms and allow
flexible adaptation of the waveform (e.g. prototype filter, sub-
carrier spacing) as well as the frame structure according to the
traffic type and propagation environment, etc. [1]. Generally,
the whole system consists of a spectrum manager and the BSs
of different operators. The spectrum manager has the informa-
tion about the available shared spectrum and is responsible for
calculating the common subcarrier grid, partitioning the shared
spectrum, determining the out-of-fragment radiation masks and
allocating the spectrum fragments to different operators.
Authors [100] note that each operator can have one or more
BSs involved in the spectrum sharing procedure. Each BS can
have three relevant functional units. The first functional unit
is responsible for sending spectrum sharing related informa-
tion, e.g. traffic demand, to the spectrum manager. The second
functional unit can be responsible for adapting the transmis-
sion waveform and signal structure. The third functional unit
may be responsible for scheduling the frequency resources
to the UEs [100]. Preliminary simulation results show that
when no accurate interoperator synchronisation information is
available, the guard band overhead and the spectrum usage
efficiency depend on the side lobe formation of the transmit
signals [100]. Authors show that due to much lower side lobes,
FBMC can achieve much higher spectrum usage efficiency than
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
that of the OFDM and RC-OFDM. Furthermore, with FBMC,
small spectrum fragment size is allowed, which provides more
flexibility for resource allocation, much broader applicability
and much less restrictions on infrastructure conditions such
as RAN-sharing, inter-operator synchronisation and fast inter-
operator signalling. None the less, there are interesting future
studies identified for the 5G RAN systems. They include
developing signalling protocol between BSs and the spectrum
manager; how to design algorithms for spectrum fragmentation
and allocation, which consider matching of traffic load, fair-
ness, synchronisation conditions, frequency diversity, etc; how
to develop a waveform adaptation mechanism to avoid inter-
operator interference and to enhance transmission quality; and
lastly, how to extend the proposed concept to non-orthogonal
spectrum sharing, i.e., different operators can reuse the same
subcarriers under interference constraints.
6) Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) Based Schemes: In
dynamic spectrum access (DSA) techniques, the unused spec-
trum band are accessed mainly by cognitive radio (CR) systems
[94]. The CR systems utilise the available spectrum band by
sensing the electromagnetic environment to adapt their opera-
tion and dynamically vary thier radio operating parameters. In
[93], [107], the main functions of CR i.e., spectrum sensing,
spectrum management, spectrum mobility and spectrum shar-
ing are discussed. In this regard, Ahmed et al. [94], Masonta
et al. [108] and Tsiropoulos et al. [93] have presented excellent
surveys on spectrum decisions, in which CRs select the best
available spectrum band to satisfy secondary users (SUs) QoS
requirements without causing harmful interference to licenced
primary users (PUs). In CR-based spectrum decisions, each CR
performs spectrum sensing to identify the available spectrum
bands and a decision is made to select spectrum from the avail-
able bands for opportuninistic use. Thus, a cross-layer based
resource management frameworks for mobile cognitive radio
networks (MCRNs) have been reported in [109]. The MCRNs
captures network operations such as spectrum management,
bandwidth allocation, channel access, data routing, transmis-
sion power assignment and energy management. Because of the
cross-layering designs, the MCRNs could become prime candi-
dates for solving cross-layer resource management problems in
multiple RAN tiers of converged technologies. The DSA can be
described as either exclusive based or CR/opportunistic based
as follows [3], [111].
Exclusive Basis Spectrum Access/Use Based: Over sev-
eral past years, mobile network operators have been allocated
spectrum bands on an exclusive basis to minimise interference
effects at the expense of low spectrum utilisation efficiency
[111]. Inter-operator spectrum sharing is a potential method to
enhance spectrum utilisation, but a protocol to coordinate the
actions of different operators is needed [119]–[121]. In such
approaches, an operator is assumed to know the true state of
the RAN of other operators to identify an agreement about
fair frequency spectrum resource use. A deviation from an
agreed optimum point can be distinguished. In real life, oper-
ators may not want to share operator-specific information with
competitors due to security and competitive advantage reasons.
In such a scenario, spectrum sharing can be based on mone-
tizing the spectrum usage, and arranging auctions determining
1669
the usage of the spectrum as one strategy to spectrum-efficient
management [111].
Cognitive radio (CR) resource management based: It
should be recalled that the CR network is an innovative soft-
ware defined radio (SDR) technique capable of improving the
utilisation of the congested RF spectrum [122]. The CR net-
work should be aware of the surrounding radio environment
and regulate its transmission accordingly. CR receivers (i.e.,
base station) first monitors and allocate the unused spectrums
via spectrum sensing (or combining with geolocation spec-
trum databases (GLSDB)) and feed this information back to
the CR transmitter (i.e., user equipment). Interference-free or
interference-tolarant CR networks are often discussed [160].
The former network guarantees CR users to borrow spectrum
resources only when licenced users do not use them, while the
latter network makes the CR users to share a certain spectrum
resource with a licenced system, when keeping the interference
below a threshold at the same time [160]. Using both CR net-
works, a resource management (CRRM) has been proposed to
control Layer-1 and Layer-2 radio operations by Lien et al.
[3]. The authors [3] illustrate how layerless design that func-
tions in Layer 1 to Layer 3 are controlled in the central of
resource management using software-defined communication
processors [118] where functions/hardwares in individual lay-
ers are reused, configured, controlled, and optimised by means
of software. The work demonstrates that QoS guarantees can be
achieved solely by optimising the operation/parameters in the
SDN design of 5G RAN systems. The authors [3] argue that,
due to the potential interference to/from other wireless systems
(e.g., WiFi) and intra-network interference from neighbouring
cells of the 3G P P, each resource block (RB) in a subframe
shall not be occuppied by more than one cell (nor more than
one system).
7) Application of MIMO-OFDM Techniques: It is well
known that the more multiple antennae at the transceivers
implies the greater the degree of freedom (in addition to time
and frequency dimensions) in wireless channels to accommo-
date more information data. It has been discussed earlier in
this paper that massive MIMO techniques involve equipping
the transmitter and/or receiver with a large number of anten-
nae elements (typically tens or even hundreds) with the purpose
of achieving high SE and EE gains [5]. In [90], MIMO tech-
niques are described as one of the most attractive spectrum
efficiency (SE) improvement approaches in OFDM systems.
MIMO-OFDM systems have extensively been applied in WiFi
technology, WiMaX and 3G P P LTE cellular systems to sup-
port high traffic volumes. In OFDM systems, the available
system bandwidth is subdivided into a set of orthogonal sub-
carriers. The bandwidth allocated to each subcarrier is narrower
than the coherence bandwidth of the fading channel to avoid
intersymbol interference as well as intercarrier interference
constraining high data rates performance. In multiple user envi-
ronment of the LTE downlink, the base station (eNodeB) sched-
uler manages assignment of the frequency carriers to each
individual user. This approach is commonly referred to as the
OFDM access or OFDMA. The OFDMA is well suited for
wireless cellular environment due to its robustness to multipath
fading, higher spectral efficiency and bandwidth scalability.
1670 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
TABLE II
T HE SEM S CHEMES V ERSUS 5G ACCESS Q O S R EQUIREMENTS A LIGNMENT
In LTE and possibly the 5G RAN systems, transmissions to
multiple UEs are managed through allocation of multiple sub-
channels as subcarriers (i.e., groups of subcarriers) denoted as
physical resource blocks (PRBs). However, combining the ben-
efits of the MIMO-OFDM techniques with those of the traffic
application-aware, spectrum sharing and CR techniques remain
unexplored area in the past literature of SEM developments
towards the 5G RAN systems.
C. Concluding Remarks and Some Open SEM Issues
In concluding this section, we present Table II. The table
shows the extent to which the discussed ongoing research stud-
ies on SEM schemes are aligned to solving the 5G access QoS
performance requirements. The tick () and cross (×) signs
respectively, represent strong and weak alignments. It can be
noted that QoS performance requirements can be met by devis-
ing innovative application-aware, spectrum matching theory,
spectrum sharing, DSA, MIMO-OFDM based SEM strate-
gies. These key promising techniques will be able to resolve
emerging SEM issues in the next generation wireless networks.
Inspite of the positive gains made towards suggesting SEM
schemes for the 5G RAN systems, certain key research
issues specific to the discussed schemes will still need urgent
attention.
• The designs of distributed QoS-aware spectrum resource
scheduling within the BSs with specific features such
as mmWave backhauling, full duplexing communications
(FDCs) and extreme densification remains an aspect of
future research.
• The prioritised based spectrum access schemes should be
extended to solve SEM issues beyond the two-tier com-
munication systems. Moreover, the schemes should not
assume that microcells must always create dead zones
in the downlink communication as a way to protect
macrocells UEs from interference. Such an assumption
of ensuring that there exist certain dormant nodes may
imply a degraded spectral-efficiency QoS performance of
the overall network system. The scheme should be able to
guarantee a fair and low latency based spectrum resource
coordination among different tiers under the full traffic
load activity of both macrocells and microcells.
• In the resource bidding technique, it was not clear how
the highest bidder would always guarantee faireness to
other users as well as BSs of different RATs. This aspect
requires further technical investigation.
• The spectrum sharing schemes have proven to play crit-
ical roles in the SEM design, but how they will perform
in extremely diversified use case environment for the 5G
RANs, remains an interesting future work.
• As the applications of cognitive radio (CR) techniques
for the 5G RAN systems mature, CR operation in the
multi-RAT environment, taking into account network
convergence, remains an important subject for further
research.
• Spectrum carrier aggregation developments for the 5G
RAN systems aimed at meeting challenges such as an
explosive growth in the traffic volumes, an unprecedented
increase in connected wireless devices and a wide range
of QoS requirements/charateristics have not be explored
and more proposals in such directions should be consid-
ered.
V. E NERGY-E FFICIENT M ANAGEMENT (EEM) S CHEMES
In this section, we provide the main EEM challenges, the
conventional EEM solutions proposed in the past half decade
and the specific open research issues aligned to the technical
developments of 5G RAN systems.
A. The Main EEM Challenges
The Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
already represents about 2% of total carbon emission (of which
mobile networks represent about 0.2%) and this is forcasted to
increase annually by almost 60% from 2007 to 2020 owing to
the growing number of devices and network expansion in the
5G RAN systems [123]. The energy-efficiency (EE) in the next
generation wireless networks is a growing concern for oper-
ators not only for profitability maintenance but also for the
overall adverse environmental effects reduction [124], [142].
Standardisation authorities and network operators have begun
to explore future technologies forming the 5G RAN systems
towards bringing the EE improvements in the entire network
infrastructure. Wang et al. [17] recount that the deployment
of advanced wireless technologies comes at the cost of high
energy consumption which in turn causes an increase of C O2
emission indirectly. Moreover, it has been reported by cel-
lular operators that the energy consumption of base stations
(BSs) contributes to over 70 percent of their electricity bill
[152]. In fact, EE communication was not one of the initial
requirements in 4G wireless systems, but it came up as an issue
at a later stage. However, some of the key QoS challenges of
the 5G RANs discussed in Section II of this paper, will no
doubt escalate the energy consumption and the increase the total
carbon emission [103].
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
Today, EE improvements in the network system architec-
ture, deployment, radio transmission and backhauling solutions
have been suggested for in reference to several communication
technologies [125]. For instance, Feng et al. [126] provide an
exellent survey of EE methods in wireless communications.
Authors [126] classify these methods in several categories.
The first one is the EE radio resource management schemes
such as energy saving for low traffic loads and service dif-
ferentiations. The second one is the EE network deployment
strategies such as HetNets, relay and cooperative communica-
tions, MIMO and OFDMA [143]. Feng et al. [126] categorise
the literature reviews in terms of green radio projects, that touch
on energy metrics and models; EE hardaware; EE architectures
and EE resource management.
Besides discussions in [126], the Earth project in [127]
has explored EE analysis, metrics and targets, architectures,
resource management, radio technologies and components. The
OPERA-Net in [127] has also touched on the EE challenges
regarding mobile radio access network, link level, technology
enablers and network test-beds. We also reiterate that the EE
architecture for 5G RAN systems will consist of macrocell ver-
sus smallcell deployment; overlay source (microcell, picocell,
femtocell) and multihop routing; relay and networking cod-
ing and cooperative networking; hetergenous network deploy-
ment; and optimisation of cell size. Feng et al. [126] narrate
further that the EE resource management will include auto-
configuration of software and network resources in response
to changes in infrastructure and demand, policy driven man-
agement that implement business level objectives, cooperative
scheduling, interface coordination and joint power and resource
allocation, multiRAT coordination, SISO versus MIMO with
packet scheduling, applying dynamic spectrum access (DSA) to
minimise energy consumption, solar-powered relaying allocat-
ing resources to match combined traffic and weather patterns.
The authors [126], however, enumerate some of the key open
EE challenges towards EE 5G RAN systems as follows.
• The balance between the EE gains based on the diversified
QoS requirements of the 5G RAN systems and EE gains
based on the QoS requirements themselves has not been
solved.
• The impact of EE cell size design on QoS performance
of HetNets (mix of macrocells, microcells, picocells and
femtocells) and various relay and cooperative communi-
cations has not been adequately addressed.
• Although simple energy consumption models of differ-
ent BSs types (pure macrocellular BSs, and a hybrid of
macrocellular BSs and microcellular BSs) are provided,
there is certainly more interference and more frequent
handoffs with the 5G RAN systems
Despite the relative meagre attention paid to the role of
mmWave backhauling solutions in optimising the overall power
budget of mobile radio networks, recent studies have indicated
the remarkable impact of the mmWave HetNet backhauling
for 5G RAN systems [128]. As a result, the energy consump-
tion of backhaul network has been recognised as a possible
bottleneck for future green wireless access networks [10],
[128]. Building EE radio networks will then prioritise the
energy performance throughout the entire RAN systems [129],
1671
[130]. Three components of energy consumption of the RANs
dominate the overall mobile communication networks [131].
They are namely, the power consumed in the radio base sta-
tions (RBSs), the power consumed in the backhaul network
(BHN) and that of the radio network controller (RNC) [131].
Each one of these three components contains two parts namely,
the fixed power consumption part, which is independent from
the traffic load and the dynamic power consumption part, which
varies according to the traffic load. The EARTH project has
excellently developed power consumption models for studying
EE of green RANs [127].
Hence, in outlining our focus in the current paper, we follow
the EARTH project’s power consumption models. The power
consumption of RBS site can be modeled as a linear function of
the maximum transmitted power (Pt x ) as shown in [127], [128]:
c
PRBS = NRBS × (P FRBS + P × Ptx ), (1)
where N R B S is the number of RBSs, Pt x is the maximum trans-
mitted power by the RBS, P represents a scaling factor based
on measurement, P FR B S represents a fixed power amount con-
sumed independent from the traffic transmission. On the other
hand, the power consumption in the backhaul link (BHL) can
be modeled taking into account the fixed part of the power
consumed independently from the traffic load and the dynamic
part of the consumed power that depends on the traffic load
expressed as follows:
c
PBHL = P FBHL + Ptx BHL × %Load, (2)
where Pt x B H L represents the maximum transmitted power per
backhaul link, P FB H L represents a fixed power amount con-
sumed independently from the traffic load and the percentage
load means the proportional relation between the traffic back-
hauled from a RBS site and the maximum capacity offered by
a BHL. Similarly, the power consumption model of the RNC is
found in [127], [128]. Owing to the extreme relevance of such
models, they have formed fundamental basis on which the con-
ventional EEM solutions towards the 5G RAN systems have
been developed [29].
B. The Conventional Energy-Aware Communication Solutions
It should be noted that the past five years have witnessed
a number of studies proposing energy-aware and energy-
harvesting techniques for the 5G RAN systems. Such tech-
niques are hereby classified and discussed as follows.
1) Energy Harvesting Techniques: Recently, research into
the radio frequency (RF) energy transfer and harvesting tech-
niques as complementary methods to the environmentally gen-
erated renewable energy sources such as wind and solar has
been initiated [20]. For example, Lu et al. [12] present an
extensive literature review on RF energy harvesting networks
(RF-EHNs). The review of the RF-EHNs touches on the sys-
tem architecture, RF energy harvesting techniques, existing
applications, circuit design, circuitry implementations, and the
communication protocols. Regarding, system architecture, a
centralised architecture of RF-EHNs consisting of three major
components, i.e., information gateways, the RF energy sources
1672 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
and the network nodes/devices has been proposed (i.e., see
figure 1). The information gateways are assumed to be gener-
ally BSs, wireless routers and relays. The RF energy sources are
assumed to be either dedicated RF energy transmitters or ambi-
ent RF sources (e.g., TV towers), while the network nodes are
the UEs that communicate with the information gateways. The
idea is that the devices in the energy harvesting zone are able
to harvest RF energy from the information gateway and these
devices in the information transmission zone can successfully
decode information transmitted from the gateway.
The idea behind RF energy harvesting technique is such that
RF energy is harvested vis aviz solar, wind and vibration energy
sources with the RF sources able to provide controllable and
constant energy transfer over distance for RF energy harvesters.
It has also been noted that in a fixed RF-EHN, the harvested
energy is predictable and relatively stable over time due to
fixed distance [12]. Furthermore, the amount of harvested RF
energy depends on the distance from the RF source, the network
nodes in the different locations can have significant difference
in harvested RF energy. The authors in [12], assert that one
of the key concerns for RF information and energy transfer
is the decay in energy transfer efficiency with the increase of
transmission distance due to propagation path loss. However,
advanced multi-antenna and signal processing techniques such
as beamforming can achieve, spatial multiplexing gains, effi-
ciency of RF energy transfer [132], and simultaneous wireless
information and power transfer (SWIPT) [133]. The authors in
[12], also add that multi-hop RF-EHNs via cooperative relay-
ing techniques can help to overcome fading and attenuation by
using intermediate relay nodes, resulting in improved network
performance in terms of efficiency and reliability. Therefore, it
is particularly suitable to be applied in energy constrained net-
works like RF-EHNs. For cooperative relaying in RF-EHNs,
most research efforts attempt to improve performance gain on
the physical layer and MAC layer (e.g., relay operation pol-
icy and power allocation) as well as network layer (i.e., relay
selection).
Authors in [12] have also discussed an RF-powered CR
network whereby the RF energy harvesting capability allows
secondary users to harvest and store energy from nearby trans-
missions of primary users. The secondary users can then
transmit data when they are sufficiently far away from primary
users or when the nearby primary users are idle. Therefore,
the secondary user must not only identify spectrum holes for
opportunistic data transmission, but also search for occupied
spectrum band/channel to harvest RF energy.
Gurakan et al. [134] introduce the concept of energy coopera-
tion, where a user wirelessly transmits a portion of its energy to
another energy harvesting user. This enables shaping and opti-
misation of the energy arrivals at the energy-receiving node,
and improves the overall system performance, despite the loss
incurred in energy transfer. They [134] consider several basic
multiuser network structures with energy harvesting and wire-
less energy transfer capabilities such as the relay channel,
two-way channel and multiple access channels. With regards to
a two-hop relay channel consisting of a source node, a relay
node and a destination node, two queues at the source and
the relay nodes are taken as the data and energy queues. The
energies that arrive at the source and the relay nodes are saved in
the corresponding energy queues. The data queue of the source
is assumed to always be carrying some data packets to be deliv-
ered to the destination. The data packets sent from the source
node cause a depletion of energy from the source energy queue
and an increase in the relay data queue. These data packets are
then served out of the relay data queue with a cost of energy
depletion from the relay energy queue. The relay operates in a
full-duplex mode, i.e., it can receive and send data within a sin-
gle slot; in addition, the relay can receive energy as well in the
same slot. Therefore, the data and energy queues of the relay are
updated simultaneously in every slot. In this setting, the source
node may wish to share a portion of its energy with the relay
node so that the relay can forward more data.
Authors [134] determine energy management policies that
maximise the system throughput within a given duration using a
Lagrangian formulation and the resulting Karush-Kuhn-Tucker
(KKT) optimality conditions. They develop a two-dimensional
directional water-filling algorithm which optimally controls the
flow of harvested energy in two dimensions: in time (from
past to future) and among users (from energy-transferring to
energy-receiving) and show that a generalized version of this
algorithm achieves the boundary of the capacity region of the
two-way channel. In this contribution, the authors have cho-
sen to consider the case with one-way energy transfer from
the source to the relay, in order to capture a certain kind of
trade-off, where the source node cooperates with the relay at
the energy level by transferring some of its energy to the relay
and the relay in return cooperates with the source node at the
signal level by forwarding the source’s data to the destination.
In the case of one-way energy transfer from the relay to the
source node, the relay would cooperate both at the energy level
and the signal level with the source node. This would capture
another type of trade-off, where the relay would need to balance
the energy needs of data forwarding and energy transfer to the
source. Ju and Zhang [135] study an optimal resource alloca-
tion in the wireless-powered communication network (WPCN),
where one hybrid access point (H-AP) operating in full duplex
(FD) broadcasts wireless energy to a set of distributed users
in the downlink (DL) and, at the same time, receives inde-
pendent information from the users via time-division multiple
access in the uplink (UL). The the time allocations to the
H-AP for DL wireless energy transfer (WET) and different
users for UL wireless information transfer (WIT) and the trans-
mit power allocations over time at the H-AP to maximize the
users weighted sum rate of UL information transmission with
harvested energy are then jointly optimised.
There are several advantages of the RF energy-harvesting
techniques for the 5G RAN systems that has been identified in
literature [12]. Due to space constraints, we outline only a few.
Besides sustaining the communication lifetime, the RF energy
harvesting technique may turn harmful interference into use-
ful energy by devising suitable scheduling policies for energy
transfer and interference mitigation. Moreover, the RF energy
market can be established to economically manage the har-
vested energy jointly with radio resource allocation. Lastly,
better diversity gains can be realised by transmitting RF energy
simultaneously with the information in the same direction to an
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
intended energy harvester via beamformed antennas. As many
as the advantages, there exist shortcomings and challenges of
the RF energy-harvesting for the 5G RAN systems that have
been recently mentioned [12], [20]. The first one, is that time
synchronisation among energy sources and coordination of dis-
tributed carriers in phase and frequency is needed to have RF
signals be combined constructively at the receiver. Secondly,
it is a challenge to develop demand side management, which
allows the service providers and the network devices to interact
like in smart grid in order to ensure energy efficiency and relia-
bility [153]. Thirdly, an intense RF exposure can cause heating
of materials with finite conductivity, including biological tis-
sues. This can pose biological health hazards and thus, the RF
emission limitations have been imposed by the regulatory laws.
Fourthly, RF sources and information gateway can be mobile,
making the RF energy harvesting and information transmission
to become time-varying. Finally, RF waves transfer from an RF
source to an energy harvester require line of sight for efficient
energy transfer.
2) Dynamic Power Saving (DPS) Techniques: Several
researchers have presented research trends, exposed some
research issues and challenges and suggested some techniques
for the green cellular networks [124], [143]. They provide a
comprehensive survey techniques to obtain energy savings in
BSs that they consider to be the main consumers of the total
energy used in a cellular system. Using the power consump-
tion models [127], the ideal way to save power is to switch
off the transceivers whenever there is no need to transmit or
receive. The traffic load in RAN systems have significant fluc-
tuations in space and time due to a number of factors such as
user mobility and behaviours. During daytime, the traffic load is
generally higher in office areas than in residential areas, while
it is the other way around during the night. Therefore, there will
always be some cells under low load, while some others may be
under heavy traffic load. The LTE standard utilises this concept
by introducing power saving protocols such as discontinuous
reception (DRX) and discontinuous transmission (DTX) modes
for the mobile handset. The DRX and DTX are methods to
momentarily power down the devices to save power, while
remaining connected to the network with reduced throughput
[124]. The main drawback with momentarily powering down
of BSs for energy saving is that the QoS performance of the
always traffic loaded based 5G RAN systems may be degraded
[141].
Like in [124], Ambrosy et al. [136] propose dynamic band-
width management for energy savings in wireless BSs. The
focus is motivated by the fact that there is a daily traffic vari-
ation over time and space that requires dimensioning of BSs
for high data transmission peaks. For example, an LTE com-
munication system offers a wide spectrum of possible channel
bandwidth usage, specified in steps 1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15 and
20 MHz. A stepwise adaptation of the maximum number of
resource blocks that are used during each LTE subframe and
can be applied to adapt the power consumption to the aver-
age traffic load. The concept of the higher channel bandwidth,
implying that more resource blocks can be utilised and more
traffic load can be supported [136]. In addition to these energy-
saving techniques, multi-standard nodes in which several RATs
1673
are provided by the same equipment also have great poten-
tial to reduce energy consumption. This is because these nodes
share both common functionality as well as some components.
Running a multi-standard node in mixed mode typically uses
much less energy (around 40 percent) than running a sepa-
rate radio BS for each standard [137]. Although this approach
appears suitable for the design of EE resource management, it
should first be modified to bring a significant QoS performance
improvment for heavily loaded 5G RAN systems.
3) Relay and Cooperative Communications Based Scheme:
In [138], [139], EE wireless communication techniques includ-
ing the use of relay transmission have been advocated for in
order to provide QoS performance improvement and poten-
tially save energy. By deploying relay nodes, more connections
between the source node and the destination node are built,
and data from the source node can be delivered through multi-
ple wireless links. Due to independence among different fading
channels/links, diversity gains can be obtained, and spectral-
efficency can be consequently improved. Therefore, the time
to transmit a fixed amount of data is reduced, and so is the
consumed energy. If advanced resource allocation schemes are
applied, energy can be further saved. In a typical relay sys-
tem, a transmission period consists of two phases: broadcasting
and multiple access. During the broadcasting phase, the source
node sends data over the air, which may be received by the
relay nodes, or both the relay and destination nodes. During
the multi-access phase, the relay nodes, or both the source and
relay nodes transmit data to the destination nodes. It should
be noted that the nodes to transmit and receive in these two
phases depend on the specific protocols. Transmission schemes
at the relay nodes can be amplify-and-forward (AF) or detect-
and-forward (DF) transmission methods [139]. The use relay
communication can help the network access the edge users,
however, finding optimal relay placement strategy within the
5G RAN systems that can achieve RIM, SEM and EEM goals
remain unsolved research area.
Li et al. [138] introduce a number of basic concepts of EE
communication and summarise existing EE techniques such as
the information-theoretic analysis, OFDMA networks, MIMO
techniques, relay transmission, and resource allocation for sig-
naling. The authors [138] provide an overview of previously
proposed EE OFDMA communication focussing on uplink sce-
narios or mobile terminal sides rather than on the downlink
or BS sides where the downlink EE OFDMA communication
needs to jointly address subcarrier allocation, power allocation,
and rate adaptation for the WiMAX and LTE systems. They find
that, EE-SE trade-off has not been adequately addressed. The
authors admit that the EE of MIMO systems is still unknown
if all the overhead is considered and EE MIMO-OFDMA sys-
tems can improve EE when spatial and frequency resource are
jointly allocated. However, the complexity of the joint design
may prohibit EE gains. Li et al. [138] agree with [139] that relay
communication build more connections between the source
node and the destination node thereby reducing the time to
transmit a fixed amount of data and so is the consumed energy.
However, authors in [138] highlight some important issues
with the relay communication including how to minimise the
total energy consumption taking the additional overhead into
1674 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
account, how to design EE bidirectional relaying systems and
how to allocate resources in multipoint-to-multipoint transmis-
sions, as in the multicell case. The main shortcomings with
the work of Li et al. [138] is that the EE concepts introduced
are suited to RIRM for the 4G RAN systems and are not
directly applicable to the 5G RAN systems. In the case of
the RIRM schemes for 5G RAN systems, benefits of multi-
tier (i.e., beyond two tiers) communication, UDNs, massive
MIMO, FDCs and mmWave backahuling technologies must be
leveraged.
Similar to the work in [138], is the study by [29], where tech-
nical challenges of the cooperative dynamic resource allocation
in cooperative green HetNets are addressed. Dynamic coopera-
tive transmission not only increases cell average and cell-edge
user SE but also reduces the energy consumption in cell-edge
communications [29]. It can be noted that the cooperation of
nodes is more effective if feasible groups of nodes to coop-
erate are carefully selected in advance and information from
the cooperative set can be timely exchanged with low mes-
sage overheads. Moreover, cooperative transmission naturally
increases the system complexity, especially when we consider
multi-tier and massive connected wireless devices architecture
for 5G RAN systems [29].
4) Energy-Efficient Based Cross-Layer Design Scheme: As
indicated in [140], cross-layer design is another prominent
approach to reduce energy consumption. Authors in [140],
provide a comprehensive design requirements for energy effi-
ciency across the link, medium access control (MAC), network
and application layers. They have shown that, because each
layer of the protocol stack has an inherent interdependence
on other layers, cross-layer strategies can significantly improve
energy-efficiency. This is done through adaptive transmission
and resource allocation schemes corresponding to service, traf-
fic, and environment dynamics [126]. According to [6], the
energy-efficiency consisting of the the energy spent by the
infrastructure may increase, implying high operational costs
for the operator that will indirectly affect also the invoice of
the final users [24], [27], [54], [144]–[146] and some com-
munication strategies require high computational burden at the
terminal side having negative impact on battery lifetime.
In Khan and LLauret [27], an excellent classification of the
EE and management in future wireless networks has been pro-
vided. In particular, authors in [159] propose a cross-layer
approach, in which models of link adaptations (adaptive mod-
ulation and coding (AMC) to various transmission resources)
are extended to the medium access control (MAC) aspects with
hybrid multiple access techniques of EE in a multi-user system.
Authors in [146] develop foraging-inspired radio communi-
cation energy management spanning the physical and MAC
layers of green multi-radio networks. The foraging scheme
mimics ecological behaviours of solitaire foragers when car-
rying out scarce energy resources management in a natural
ecosystem. Yet, authors in [147] propose an interplay between
cooperative D2D communications via short range technolo-
gies such as mmWave communications as well as green LTE
systems of long range technologies. In this case, mobile UEs
are clustered and some BSs are systematically put to sleep
modes and an approach that combines the two methods so
that green communications for the BSs and UEs are ensured,
while taking into account resource allocation and intercell
interference.
Authors in [148], suggest green-inspired hybrid base tran-
sciever station architecture with joint free space optics/radio
frequency (FSO/RF) wireless backhauling and basic access
signalling for the next generation metrozones. The goal is to
deliver high data-rate transmission with lower transmit power
and less susceptibility to interference backhauling solution
under worst case weather conditions and varying data traffic
load. In [153], a comprehensive survey on the smart grid-driven
approaches in energy-efficient communications and data cen-
ters, and the interaction between smart grid and information
and communication infrastructures has been presented. The
authors in [153], distinguish their work from previous surveys
by providing an intersection of smart grid-driven approaches
rather than considering each aspect seperately. In [149], smart
grid energy procurement for green LTE cellular networks is
discussed, and smart grid networking protocols and standards
have been proposed in [150] for the next generation mobile
backhauling solutions. In [10], the wireless backhaul traffic in
two typical architectures adopting smallcell and mmWave com-
munication technologies is analysed. Authors in [10], focus
on achieving throughput and energy efficiency of the 5G
wireless backhaul networks considering ultra dense smallcells
(UDSCs) and mmWave communications. This is done by first
configuring two typical smallcell scenarios for comparison
analysis. Then, the wireless backhaul traffic models based on
two typical smallcell scenarios with different spectrum efficien-
cies are evaluated. Finally, the impact of different frequency
bands of wireless backhaul links on the energy efficiency of
5G backhaul networks is then investigated. Numerical results in
[10] have shown that the distribution solution has higher energy
efficiency than the central solution in 5G wireless backhual
networks.
5) The Use of Indoor Communication Technologies: As the
white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are becoming widespread
in commercial lighting applications, the researches on using
these white LEDs to communication without affecting the light-
ing function is garnering increasing interests [151]. Thus, it
is expected that the design of 5G RAN systems will consider
minimising the energy consumption through such indoor com-
munication technologies as part of greener network initiatives
[5], [152]. Such technologies are promising deployment strate-
gies to get better EE given the already favourable channel
conditions between the transmitters and receivers, less pres-
sure in allocating radio resources and can transmit with low
power, resulting in energy saving. Visible light communica-
tion (VLC) and mmWave technologies can also be considered
as EE wireless communication solutions for the 5G RAN
systems [13], [154]. The VLC uses off-the-shelf white light
emitting diodes (LEDs) used for solid-state lighting (SSL) as
signal transmitters and off-the-shelf p-intrinsic-n (PIN) pho-
todiodes (PDs) or avalanche photo-diodes (APDs) as signal
receivers [154].
The VLC systems consume much less energy in one bulb
than its RF-based equivalents for transmitting the same high-
density data. However, VLC is susceptible to environmental
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
TABLE III
E NERGY-E FFICIENT M ANAGEMENT (EEM) V ERSUS 5G ACCESS Q O S R EQUIREMENTS A LIGNMENT
weather conditions [13]. In VLC, the information is carried by
the intensity (power) of the light. As a result, the information-
carrying signal has to be a real-valued and strictly positive. VLC
is not subject to fast fading effects as the wavelength is sig-
nificantly smaller than the detector area. While the link-level
demonstrations are important steps to prove that the VLC is
a viable complementary technique to the RF communications,
the full-fledged optical wireless (FSO) systems can be devel-
oped by using existing lighting infrastructures. Developing such
VLC based FSO systems for various realistic outdoor propaga-
tion losses remains a new field of future research for the 5G
RAN applications.
Wang et al. [5] argue that since indoor users only need to
communicate with indoor wireless access points with large
antenna arrays installed outside buildings, many technologies
can be utilised that are suitable for short-range communi-
cations with high data rates. Some examples include WiFi,
femtocell, ultra wideband (UWB), mmWave communications
(3-300 GHz) [14], and VLC (400-490 THz) [151]. It is worth
mentioning that mmWave and VLC technologies use higher
frequencies not traditionally used for cellular communications.
These high-frequency waves do not penetrate solid materials
very well and can readily be absorbed or scattered by gases,
rain, and foliage. Therefore, it is hard to use these waves for out-
door and long distance applications. However, with large band-
widths available, mmWave and VLC technologies can greatly
increase the transmission data rate and energy-efficiency for
indoor scenarios [109].
C. Concluding Remarks and Some Open EEM Issues
In summary, we present Table III that shows the extent to
which the discussed ongoing research studies on EEM schemes
are aligned to solving the 5G access QoS performance require-
ments. The tick () and cross (×) signs respectively, represent
strong and weak alignments. It can be noted that QoS per-
formance requirements of the 5G RAN systems can be met
by devising innovative energy-harvesting, dynamic power sav-
ings and cross-layer energy-aware designs for EEM. These key
promising techniques will be able to resolve emerging EEM
issues in the next generation wireless networks.
Even though there exist a pool of solutions attempting to
solve EEM challenges towards 5G RAN systems, a number of
open research issues specific to such existing solutions appear
to be unresolved.
• The optimal way to design dynamic power savings
(DPS) for heavily loaded 5G RAN systems, while main-
taining a wide range of QoS requirements remains an area
for further exploration.
1675
• The recent studies have demonstrated that the relay and
cooperative communications provide many advantages to
energy-aware networking. However, the inherent multi-
hop communications pose challenges of obtaining the
optimal latency and throughput QoS performance. The
challenge may exacerbate considering scenarios of multi-
tiers and UDNs overlaid by macrocells.
• The effects of an integrated RF mmWave, optical wire-
less and fibre interfacing for EE backhauling solutions
on the the seamless connectivity desired within the D2D
communications remains an interesting research work.
• The innovative use of VLC to harvest RF energy from
the smallcell and macrocell BSs in a multi-tier cellular
system requires further research.
VI. H YBRID R ESOURCE M ANAGEMENT (HRM) S CHEMES
In this section, the main challenges, the conventional solu-
tions and the issues of HRM (i.e., a combination of interfer-
ence, spectrum and energy-efficient management) schemes are
provided.
A. The Main HRM Challenges
The combination of RIM, SEM and EEM schemes are
increasingly being witnessed in the literature for achieving
some of the visions of the 5G RAN systems [8], [9], [29], [96].
However, system design complexity due to message overheads
will be one of the major barriers to achieving the diversi-
fied QoS performance [29]. Nonetheless, efficiently designed
HRM strategies will have to leverage benefits derived from
UDNs, massive MIMOs, FDCs, energy harvesting, mmWave
backhauling and multi-tier communication systems [29].
B. The Conventional HRM Solutions
Some of the conventional HRM solutions for the 5G RAN
systems proposed in the past five years can be found in [8], [9],
[31], [38], [90]. We present them in this section as follows.
1) Joint Scheduling and Massive MIMOs Techniques: The
key idea of massive MIMOs is based on the use of a large
number of transmit antennae to serve simultaneously a lim-
ited number of users (the number of antennae at the BSs is
higher than the number of mobile users) [88]. Due to such
antenna multiplicity, the number of users that can be simultane-
ously supported is limited by the number of transmit antennae.
Such feature makes massive MIMO configured systems able to
achieve good QoS trade-off performance between the EEM and
SEM by devising optimal user or antennae selection approaches
1676 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
[88]. Thus, in [88], a joint scheduling and massive MIMOs
strategy, which performs a greedy antennae selection at the
same time schedules the best users in a massive MIMO broad-
cast channel with the objective of maximising the system sum
rate is proposed. The aim of the proposed scheme is to suc-
cessively remove the worst antenna at each iteration, i.e., the
one that may cause a performance degradation. At the same
time it successively selects, at each iteration, the set of users
that experiences a good level of orthogonality. The algorithm
terminates when the number of activated transmitter antennae
is equal exactly to a preset maximum. Authors in [88], find
that the proposed scheme is able to achieve a good QoS per-
formance, inspite of its lower computational complexity when
compared to the conventional methods.
In another contribution [89], authors propose a new user-
scheduling-and-beamforming method for multi-user massive
MIMO broadcast channels in the context of two-stage beam-
forming. The key ideas of the proposed scheduling method are
1) to use a set of orthogonal reference beams and construct
a double cone around each reference beam to select ‘nearly-
optimal semi-orthogonal users based only on channel quality
indicator (CQI) feedback and 2) to apply postuser-selection
beam refinement with zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF) based
on CSI feedback only from the selected users. In particular, this
approach begins by identifying the factors that make random
orthogonal beamforming (RBF) yield poor sum-rate perfor-
mance and the factors that make semiorthogonal user selection
with ZFBF (SUS-ZFBF) better than RBF in sum-rate perfor-
mance. The proposed approach concludes with correcting the
loss factors associated with RBF and implementing the gain
factors associated with SUS-ZFBF without full CSI at the BSs.
RBF selects a set of users with roughly orthogonal channels.
The authors [89] have proved that the proposed scheduling-and-
beamforming method is asymptotically optimal as the number
of users increases. Furthermore, the proposed scheduling-and-
beamforming method almost achieves the performance of the
existing SUS-ZFBF that requires full CSI feedback from all
users, with significantly reduced feedback overhead which is
even less than that required by random beamforming methods.
Recently, joint scheduling and massive MIMOs techniques
have been applied to LTE cellular systems in order to improve
capacity performance. Specifically, authors in [90] evaluate
multiple performance scenarios of single input single output
(SISO) and MIMO in downlink LTE cellular network, while
varying bandwidth sizes and scheduling algorithms. By aid of a
customised system level simulator, authors [90] find that when
massive MIMO techniques are combined with different band-
width sizes and various scheduling algorithms, the capacity
of the system can improve without adding additional infras-
tructure costs. Massive MIMOs also can increase the capacity
by increasing the number of antennae and deliver better QoS
for the end user experiences. However, the complexity of the
decoding process remains a challenge towards its application
to the design of 5G RAN systems [91], [92]. Since MIMO
systems can increase degree of freedom in space, time and fre-
quency of a wireless communication network, massive MIMO
can improve both spectral efficiency and energy efficiency of
the 5G RAN systems [5], [122]. Furthermore, the effects of
noise and fast fading can be vanished using joint massive
MIMO and user scheduling techniques. However, the extent to
which massive MIMO techniques can be realistically designed
for mobile UEs of the 5G RAN systems to achieve optimal
EEM-SEM tradeoffs, remains an open research question.
2) Integrated Spectrum and Energy Harvesting Techniques:
The use of underlay cognitive radio (CR), in which a sec-
ondary user transmits in the spectrum transmission band of a
primary user without serious degradation in the performance of
the primary user has been witnessed in literature [78], [138].
In particular, [77] have proposed a method known as spectrum
harvesting with automatic repeat request (ARQ) retransmission
and probing (SHARP) where the secondary pair listens to the
primary ARQ feedback to glean information about the primary
channel. The secondary transmitter may also probe the chan-
nel by transmitting a packet and listening to the primary ARQ,
thus getting additional information about the relative strength
of the cross channel and primary channel. The basic idea of
SHARP is to harvest transmission opportunities (such as spec-
trum and energy) for the secondary pairs whenever possible,
but also avoid driving the primary user into outage (as a result
of interference). The performance of the proposed system is
analysed and it is shown that the secondary throughput can
be significantly improved via the proposed approach, possibly
with a small loss of the primary throughput during the trans-
mission as well as probing period. In [78], a novel architecture
for spectrum harvesting and sharing approach able to resolve
the problem of joint routing and frequency scheduling in multi-
hop cognitive radio networks (CRNs) under uncertain spectrum
supply has been proposed. Authors [78] introduce a new ser-
vice provider, secondary service provider (SSP), to facilitate
the accessing/harvesting of spectrum for secondary users (SUs).
In thier work, mathematical model of the vacancy of avail-
able bands with a series of random variables and description
of the corresponding frequency scheduling and flow routing
constraints have been developed [78]. In order to facilitate the
accessing of SUs without CR capability, the SSP first estab-
lishes some partial infrastructure with CR mesh routers having
multiple CR radios. The SUs then cooperate with CR routers for
packet delivery and access their nearby CR mesh routers using
basic and harvested bands. In such a CRN, more spectrum reuse
opportunities can be created and the network capacity can be
increased.
Towards a further exploration of the agility and usefulness of
CRs, the researchers in [79] have proposed an integrated spec-
trum and energy harvesting architecture for 5G RAN systems.
In such an architecture, users in different tiers have been consid-
ered to have different priorities for channel access. Specifically,
the proposed architecture consists of having all devices and net-
works within the 5G RAN systems equipped with an energy
harvesting CR module, which gives the devices and networks
the ability of energy harvesting and spectrum sensing simulta-
neously. The energy harvesting CR devices, equipped with an
energy harvester convert ambient energy into electricity at the
same time periodically sense and access the available licensed
channels. The underlaying D2D networks with the sensing abil-
ity not only use spectrum resources supplied by the BSs but also
use the available licensed spectrum harvested via distributed
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
sensing. The advantage of this method is that, in D2D net-
works, energy can be harvested from ambient signals such as
the RF energy with reasonable efficiency over small distances.
However, as soon as devices start to move at high speed further
off-coverage towards the edge of the cell, it is high likely that
the conversion efficiency may degrade. The picocell networks
with the CR module manages the spectrum and energy harvest-
ing within its coverage in a centralised manner. The femtocell
network includes access point (AP) and energy harvesting CR
based end-users that are semi-autonomus, sensing from their
immediate environment to ascertain the best spectrum chan-
nels to use. The femtocell AP harvests energy from renewable
sources, and controls the spectrum and energy usage of all
users. Finally, the macrocell networks consist of a BS with an
energy and spectrum harvesting (E&SH) controller. The E&SH
controller is able to collect the spectrum and energy information
from the devices, low-level networks, and energy sources. The
E&SH controller can jointly manage the harvesting and usage
of both spectrum and energy in the entire macrocell network.
One main shortcoming of the energy conversion from ambi-
ent radio signals is that the coverted energy may not be
sufficient to satisfy the energy requirement of an entire small-
cell and macrocell networks. This energy insufficiency may
require supplementary energy harvesting means to the ambi-
ent RF signals from environmental energy sources (e.g., solar
and wind). While the environmental energy sources may be
a solution, they [79] introduce supply uncertainty due to the
volatility of their generation. In D2D, smallcell and macrocell
networks spectrum and energy harvesting detection mecha-
nisms are required at the cost of wasting the energy at the same
time. In a multicell situation like in the 5G, diverse CR devices
from different networks may be involved in cooperative sens-
ing. When the cooperative sensing procedure is triggered, the
fusion centre sends out a sensing instruction to the coopera-
tive CR devices. The cooperative CR devices will attach the
sensing information with a specific tag indicating the sensing
moments and sensing locations, and send it back to the fusion
centre to make a final decision. However, the BS that man-
ages the “one cell” and serves as a fusion centre will inevitably
require additional energy to execute its functions of sending out
a schedule instruction to the cooperative CR radios. Also, for
the multicell case, heterogeneous sensing exploits both spatial
and temporal diversities, likewise the centralised cooperation
manager consumes more energy. It can be suggested that less
energy consumption may be achieved by devising a decen-
tralised cooperative sensing scheme with reliable and stable
energy supply to the BSs of the 5G RAN systems.
3) Cross-Tier Message Passing Based RIRM Scheme: In
[8], the cross-layer message passing theory approach for
resource allocation has been shown to provide low (e.g.,
polynomial time) complexity solution by distributing the com-
putational load among nodes of different tiers/layers in the
network. In the radio resource allocation problems, decision
making agents (e.g., radio resources and transmitter nodes)
form a virtual graphical structure. Each node computes and
exchanges simple messages with neighbouring nodes of dif-
ferent tiers/layers in order to find the solution of the resource
allocation problem. However, in UDNs deployment, employing
1677
message passing among neighbouring BSs and UEs may incur
huge signaling load on the network. The issue of signalling
burdens may increase when trying to manage frequent mobile
handovers and radio link failures. This may as a result degrade
mobility robustness required in the 5G RAN systems, thus fur-
ther research towards developing sophisticated mobility and
handover management in the next generation systems will
become quite significant.
4) Joint Cell Association and Power Control (JCAPC) Based
RIRM Scheme: Hossain et al. [9], [31] and Wang et al. [32]
present interference management schemes (e.g., channel allo-
cation, power control, cell association or load balancing) in
prioritised 5G multi-tier networks where users in different
tiers have different priorities for channel access. In particular,
[9] provides an excellent analysis of the JCAPC schemes for
addressing radio interference challenges in 5G access and they
find that interference dynamics in multi-tier system strongly
emerge as a result of channel access scheduling algorithms,
QoS requirements and priority at different tiers. Regarding
the resource aware cell association schemes, they need to be
devised to balance the traffic load as well as minimise inter-
ference or maximise SIR levels at the same time. Furthermore,
Wang et al. [32] discuss cell association, and interference man-
agement and scheduling with inter-node coordination, as well
as how they are related to backhaul smallcells. Previously, it
has been suggested that such schemes should be able to achieve
a good balance between these objectives without the need of
static based cell range expansion (CRE) or association based on
almost blank sub-frame (ABS) schemes [65], [66]. Authors [38]
characterise the performance of cellular systems with BS sleep-
ing by developing a systematic framework to derive the spectral
efficiency and outage probability of downlink transmissions to
the sleeping cell users. This scheme takes into account factors
such as the performance of users in sleeping cells depend-
ing on their BS association criteria, their channel conditions
toward the active BSs, and scheduling criteria and traffic loads
at the active BSs. In this context, a user association scheme
is also developed in which sleeping cell users associate to a
BS with maximum mean channel access probability (MMAP).
The MMAP-based user association scheme adapts according to
traffic load and scheduling criteria at the active BSs. Based on
greedy and round-robin schemes at active BSs for scheduling
users in a channel, authors [38] demonstrate the efficacy of the
MMAP-based association scheme in non-uniform traffic load
scenarios.
Researchers in [39] argue that the diverse transmit powers of
the BSs for 5G RAN systems, on one hand, can lead to uneven
distribution of the traffic loads among different BSs when
received signal power (RSP)-based user association is used.
This causes under utilisation of the resources at low-power BSs.
On the other hand, strong interference from high-power BSs
affects the downlink transmissions to the users associated with
low-power BSs. In resolving such user association problems,
authors in [39] propose a channel access-aware (CAA) user
association scheme that can simultaneously enhance the spec-
tral efficiency (SE) of downlink transmission and achieve traffic
load balancing among different BSs. The CAA scheme is a
network-assisted user association scheme that requires traffic
1678 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
load information from different BSs in addition to the chan-
nel quality indicators. To mitigate the strong interference, the
almost blank subframe (ABS)-based interference coordination
is exploited first in macrocell-tier and then in smallcell-tier.
The performance of the proposed CAA scheme is analysed
in presence of these two interference coordination methods
and numerical results comparatively analyse the gains of CAA
scheme over conventional RSP-based association and biased
RSP-based association with and without the interference coor-
dination method. However, the CRE strategy is immune to the
resource allocation criterion employed in the corresponding
cell. That is, if a low-power BS performs greedy scheduling,
it is highly unlikely that an off-loaded user will get a channel
(i.e., low channel access probability) even if the reference sig-
nal received power (RSRP) [155] with bias is the best towards
that BS among all other BSs. As far as the resource-aware cell
association and prioritised power control is concerned, Hossain
et al. [31] advocate that cell-association methods can be com-
bined with the prioritised power control schemes depending on
the desired objectives. An important issue is to select a correct
combination of cell-association and power control method to
achieve a given objective. Simultaneous connections to multi-
ple BSs and different BS association for uplink and downlink
would increase the degrees of freedom which can be exploited
to further improve the network capacity and balance the load
among different BSs in different tiers [96].
5) C-RANs and H-CRANs Based: According to Peng et al.
[156], cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) bring the advan-
tage of low capital and operating expenditures and provide
high transmission bit rates [157] in such a manner that cloud
computing capabilities are exploited to solve HetNets chal-
lenges. The remote radio heads (RRHs) operate as soft relay
by compressing and forwarding the received signals from UEs
to the centralised base band unit (BBU) pool through the
wire/wireless fronthaul links. High power nodes (HPNs) remain
critical in C-RANs to guarantee the backward compatibility
with the existing cellular systems and support the seamless cov-
erage since RRHs are mainly deployed to provide high capacity
in special zones. With the help of HPNs, the multiple HetNets
can be converged, and all system control signallings are deliv-
ered wherein [167]. One of the main drawbacks with C-RANs
is that due to its centralised BBU operation, it may not scale
well with a massively connected mobile UEs.
Attempts to address challenges with the C-RANs can be
found in [156]. In this work, heterogeous CRANs (H-CRANs)
are proposed as cost-efficient potential solutions to mitigate
the severe inter or cross tier interference and enhance limited
cooperative gains resulting from the constrained and non-ideal
transmissions between adjacent BSs in HetNets. The authors
present excellent SOTA research achievements and challenges
on H-CRANs and issues of system architectures, spectral and
energy efficiency performance, and promising key techniques.
H-CRANs can improve both spectral and energy efficiencies in
a number of scenarios including cloud computing based coordi-
nated multi-point transmissions [166] and reception, large-scale
cooperative multiple antennae, cloud computing based cooper-
ative radio resource management, and cloud computing based
self-organizing network (SON) [166].
6) Joint SDR and SDN Based RIRM Scheme: The authors
in [15] consider joint software defined radio (SDR) and soft-
ware defined networks (SDNs) [16] in order to execute both
spectrum utilisation and network level resource optimisations.
As defined by Feng et al. [126], the SDR is constructed at the
physical and MAC layers to allow the UEs (end users) to scan
available spectrum bands and integrate different RATs such as
the WiFi, LTE, WiMAX, etc in a single interface. On the other
hand, the SDN is constructed from the MAC to application lay-
ers to assign a set of monitoring functions to any router or
switch in the network in a fully automated fashion [15]. The
uniqueness of SDN lies in its ability to provide programmable
decoupling of control and data planes in the network architec-
tural design. In SDN, simple programmable network devices
are offered rather than making networking devices more com-
plex as in the case of active networking [16]. The benefit is
that network control can be done separately on the control
plane without affecting data flows. As such, network intelli-
gence can be taken out of switching devices and placed on
controllers. At the same time, switching devices can now be
externally controlled by software without onboard intelligence.
The decoupling of control plane from data plane offers not only
a simpler programmable environment but also a greater free-
dom for external software to define the behavior of a network
[16]. Consequently, recent research has been shown that the
co-existence of SDR and SDN achieves power saving, security
and optimisations problems derived from the interactions of the
controller and two layer policy [15]. For this reason, in [17], a
softnet scheme of the SDN has been proposed to make an effi-
cient and scalable 5G RAN system. However, Xia et al. [16]
argue that inspite of the promises of enhanced configuration,
improved performance, and encouraged innovation, SDN is still
in its infancy, with standardisation and adoption still remain not
fully solved.
7) Bio-Inspired RIRM Based Techniques: Motivated by the
advanced wireless radio interfaces operations, Olwal et al.
[24] propose a novel Bio-inspired Energy And CHannel
(BEACH) management method in order to achieve efficient
energy and channel utilisation in a distributed wireless multi-
radio network [157]. The BEACH method involves the applica-
tion of the optimal behaviours of biological organisms in order
to model a series of encounters with different radio communica-
tion energy and frequency channels by wireless radio interfaces
of the transciever stations in random environment [146]. The
aim of each radio interface is to devise an optimal algorithm that
maximises an energy-aware throughput (EAT) as the networks
profit. The network lifetime is then increased, while deliver-
ing high data rates. In this case, the radios profitability can be
described by a set of feasible bio-behaviours consisting of opti-
mised network resource preferences and allocation times that
should be carefully determined to ensure a significant improve-
ment in the energy and spectrum-efficiency in the overall RAN
system [54], [145]. Specifically, the authors in [24] start by
describing a network foraging phase model consisting of net-
work conditions discovery, network resources (i.e., energy,
spectrum, etc) optimisation and allocation, payload transfer and
performance evaluations. They [24] then apply a graphical opti-
misation of network resources to determine feasible resource
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
TABLE IV
T HE HRM V ERSUS 5G ACCESS Q O S R EQUIREMENTS A LIGNMENT
management region. They note that as the network resource
types obtain consumed, the resource types become depleted
and the rate of returns or profitability evaluated by taking the
gradient function along a curve decreases.
Based on an optimal foraging theory formulation, a bio-
inspired MAC protocol architecture is developed [24] which
(i) executes the link layer connection of pair of nodes
through performing frequency channel negotiation or con-
tention over multiple channels, (ii) allocates optimally the
network resources (i.e. the communication energy and fre-
quency channels) to the foraging and non-foraging radios with a
view of achieving a stable network operation and (iii) transfers
the application payload traffic successfully through the wire-
less links between node pairs using optimal network resources
in order to measure the most profitable gain at the expiry of
this packet transfer. Computer simulations have shown that this
method demonstrates better throughput and energy-efficiency
performances than conventional methods in multi-radio ad hoc
networks. However, it is not clear, how this bio-inspiration
approach to RIRM will perform in the 5G RAN systems, espe-
cially considering multi-tier and massive MIMO architecture.
Brian et al. [158] present an architecture for enabling
collaborative coexistence of heterogeneous cognitive radio
(CR) networks over TV white space (TVWS), called Symbiotic
Heterogeneous coexistence ARchitecturE (SHARE). This has
been motivated by the fact that enabling collaborative coex-
istence via direct coordination between heterogeneous CR
networks is very challenging due to incompatible MAC/PHY
designs of coexisting networks (i.e., IEEE 802.11af and IEEE
802.22 standards). Moreover, the direct coordination would
require competing networks or service providers to exchange
sensitive control information that may raise conflict of interest
issues and customer privacy concerns. Therefore, by mimicking
the symbiotic relationships (i.e., the interspecific competition
process) between heterogeneous organisms in a stable ecosys-
tem, SHARE establishes an indirect coordination mechanism
for resource sharing between heterogeneous CR networks via
a mediator system, which avoids the drawbacks of direct coor-
dination. Analytical and simulation results show that SHARE
allocates spectrum resources among coexisting networks in a
weighted-fair manner without any inter-network direct coordi-
nation.
C. Concluding Remarks and Some Open HRM Issues
We conclude this section by introducing Table IV that shows
the extent to which the discussed ongoing research studies on
HRRM schemes are aligned to solving the 5G access QoS
1679
performance requirements. The tick () and cross (×) signs
respectively, represent strong and weak alignments. It can be
noted that QoS performance requirements of the 5G RAN
systems can be met by devising innovative scheduling with
massive MIMOs, integrated energy and spectrum harvesting,
JCAPC, H-CRANs and SDNs, and bio-inspired resource allo-
cations. These relevant and promising techniques will be able
to resolve emerging hybrid resource management issues in the
next generation wireless networks. Furthermore, as shown in
the summary of Table V, the merits and demerits of various
unique technologies of the 5G RAN systems have been pro-
vided. These technologies are increasingly being adapted to
resolve a number of resource management challenges within
the 5G RAN system architecture.
However, there still exist some open research issues aligned
to the HRM strategies.
• How to develop efficient joint scheduling and massive
MIMOs techniques that will be able to offer FDCs capa-
bility with minimum computational complexity.
• The design of joint resource aware cell association
schemes that will be able to balance effects of heavy
traffic load and demands of diversified QoS requirements.
• Optimal and efficient bio-inspired resource allocation
designs of BSs across multi-tier RAN systems, while
reducing the overall network complexity.
VII. I NSIGHTS ON THE S PECIFICATION OF S IGNALLING
R EQUIREMENTS
In this section, insights about specifications of the signalling
or control overheads (i.e., in terms of run-time, memory usage,
bandwidth occupancy, computational complexity or security
level of the control channel information) required to implement
the described/aforementioned main RIRM schemes for the 5G
RAN systems have been provided. Discussions are pursued in
light of the recently proposed unique technologies of the 5G
RAN systems such as multi-tier communications (macrocells,
smallcells and D2D tiers), RF energy harvesting and transfers,
UDNs of BSs, D2D communications, FDCs, massive MIMO
transceiver structures and mmWave backhauling as depicted
in Figure 1, [6], [20]. Specifically, this section tries to answer
the following questions: what are the intensities of signalling
required and what are the impacts of such signalling on scal-
ability of the overall architecture and QoS performance of 5G
RAN systems?.
Advanced Interference Management (AIM) Scheme: The
basic idea behind the AIM scheme is that the intra-cell/tier
and inter-cell/inter-tier interference management at the D2D
1680 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
TABLE V
S OME T ECHNOLOGIES OF 5G RAN S YSTEM : M ERITS V ERSUS D EMERITS [9]
tier network side should be equally weighted with that of the
upstream macrocell tier and smallcell tier of the 5G RAN sys-
tems. In addition, the signalling channel for AIM, modulation
and coding, and resource allocation mechanisms should be esti-
mated reliably for detecting and decoding interference at each
receiving station. This technically implies that across different
tiers (with different BSs belonging to different technologies and
equipped with massive MIMO technologies), the AIM scheme
can demonstrate a high level of run-time, memory and control
channel signalling overheads. Thus, in order to reduce such sig-
nalling overhead with the AIM scheme in the 5G RAN systems,
semi-blind signal detection approaches with minimal signalling
and accurate interference estimations may be exploited.
Coordinated Multiple Point (CoMP) Transmissions
Based on BSs Clustering Techniques: In this scheme, the
basic idea is that smallcell BSs within the UDNs are clustered
into disjoint groups such that only members of a group share
data with each other. Such a scheme implies that run-time,
memory, and bandwidth signalling overheads can greatly be
reduced. However, multiple transmissions from the coordinated
BSs in large UDNs with possibly massive MIMOs systems
and FDC modes, which are expected to be crucial architec-
tural components of the 5G RAN systems may require more
signalling overheads unless carefully designed.
Power Control for Multi-Tier RAN Systems: The closed
loop power control involves exchanging control channels, for
adjusting transmission power levels, among different BSs both
within a tier and across multiple tiers with respect to their cor-
responding UEs. The feedback messages from such BSs to the
UEs are used to adaptively correct the transmission power lev-
els in order to achieve the required QoS performance within
the 5G RAN systems. Such feedback overhead can generally
exacerbate the performance of the FDCs modes and mas-
sive MIMO systems based 5G RAN systems. Furthermore,
graphical theory based inter channel interference (ICI) man-
agement require that multiple RAT BSs compute channel state
information (CSI) from UEs belonging to multiple tiers in mul-
ticell/tier OFDMA downlink power control paradigms. Besides,
the execution of joint multi-tier and power control schemes
require high signalling overheads for coordinating interference
and radio resources among high power nodes (HPNs) and low
power nodes (LPNs) in a multi-tier multi-RAT BSs system.
It can be suggested that by devising decentralised power con-
trol schemes for multi-tier RAN systems, where each tier level
or a cluster of BSs performs decentralised power control, a
significant reduction of signalling may be realised.
MIMO Channels-Based Interference Mitigation:
Techniques for MIMO broadcast channels and MIMO inter-
ference channels require accurate, current and instantaneous
CSI at the transmitter. Besides, the massive MIMO configura-
tions and inter-tier interference coordination schemes require
that macrocell tiers should exchange coordination signalling
with the BSs of smallcell tiers. Clearly, in massive antennae
architecture of the 5G RAN systems, the CSI signalling over-
heads become high in a centralised fashion of coordination.
Fortunately, MIMO channels-based interference mitigation
scheme has been proposed that is capable of operating within a
semi-distributed MIMO based interference mitigation protocol
in order to reduce CSI signalling. However, the CSI is known
to be different between every pair of nodes. This implies
that different link selections can produce different MIMO
weights and CSI measurement overheads for computing the
MIMO weights for every link. It can be suggested that by
reusing the CSI measurement rather than re-evaluating new
ones, signalling intensity within the MIMO channels-based
interference mitigation scheme may be reduced significantly
and the overall scalability of the architecture of the 5G RAN
systems can be improved.
Spectrum Auctioning Theory: In this scheme, an intensive
control channel signalling is required by the unassigned agents
(BSs and UEs) in order to raise the cost for acquiring and bid-
ding for spectrum resources simultaneously. The requirement is
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
that such bidding signalling should be available to all participat-
ing bidders across the entire macrocell and smallcell tiers BSs
as well as in D2D networks of the 5G RAN systems. Clearly,
the scheme is susceptible to high signalling overhead. It can be
suggested that decentralised spectrum auctioning methods can
be devised in order to improve the scalability performance of
the next generation network architecture.
Prioritised Based Spectrum Access Scheme: In prioritised
based spectrum access scheme, substantial signalling informa-
tion for managing traffic and/or tier based spectrum access and
achieving best QoS performance is required in order to achieve
tight orthogonal frequency synchronisations across cells/tiers.
The advantage is that inter-cell or inter-tier interference effects
can be avoided. However, intensive signalling is experienced in
the overall network.
Spectrum Sharing Schemes: In this scheme, distributed
spectrum sharing protocols have been proposed, which do not
require operator specific information exchange. The implica-
tion is that minimal communication overheads among spectrum
operators can be incurred. Nonetheless, it can be noted that sig-
nalling bandwidth is still consumed when asking for a spectrum
favour and when the other party grants the asked favour in a
repeated game until a Nash Equilibrium (NE) is reached. In the
centralised fashion of spectrum sharing, the macrocell tier BSs
can acquire the CSI between each transmitter and receiver of
the smallcell tier BSs as well as the corresponding UEs. Such
behaviour can cause a high signalling overhead considering
the multi-tier communications, massive MIMO configurations
and ultra-dense based architecture of the 5G RAN systems.
Besides, the filter bank based multicarrier (FBMC) scheme
allows small spectrum segment size for signalling on RAN
sharing, inter operator synchronisation and fast interoperator
signalling. Intuitively, the signalling burden within the same
tier and the sharing of spectrum information among neighbour-
ing BSs can result in minimal bandwidth usage when compared
to the unbounded signalling overhead in multi-tier based BSs
spectrum sharing.
Energy Harvesting Techniques: In this technique, the
devices in the energy harvesting zone are able to harvest RF
energy from the information gateway and these devices in the
information transmission zone can successfully decode infor-
mation transmitted from the gateway. Such energy harvesting
and transfer requires time synchronisation signalling among
energy sources and coordination of distributed carriers in phase
and frequency is needed to have RF signals be combined
constructively at the receiver. Furthermore, when mobile RF
sources and information gateways and/or receivers are consid-
ered, RF energy harvesting and information transmission can
be modelled as time-varying. Such a process implies more
signalling overheads when the multiple tier structure (i.e., of
UDNs and D2D networks) of the 5G RAN systems are taken
into account. As a result, innovative signalling efficient energy
harvesting methods should be devised for the next generation
communication systems.
Relay and Cooperative Communications: Transmission
period of relay systems consists of two phases namely, broad-
casting and multiple access. Relay communication build more
connections between the source node and the destination node
1681
in order to reduce the time to transmit a fixed amount of data
and the consumed energy. While, low signalling burden is expe-
rienced with short hop information exchanges, more relays
and BSs cooperation can cumulatively demonstrate increased
end-to-end routing signalling costs for the 5G RAN systems.
Energy-Efficient Based Cross-Layer Design: In this design
context, active exploitation of the dependence among adjacent
protocol layers in order to achieve the QoS performance gains
such as energy-efficiency is allowed. In such a paradigm, a
high signalling intensity may occur, especially where the direct
communication among protocols across layers involve sharing
of variables in a centralised or a semi-centralised architec-
ture. For instance, considering a single bio-agent system, the
foraging-inspired radio communication energy management
spans the physical, MAC and routing layers of green multi-
radio networks and the measure of signalling in this scheme
may be prohibitive compared to distributed multi-agent based
bio-inspired energy efficient systems.
Joint Scheduling and Massive MIMOs Techniques:
Massive MIMO implementation in itself increase computa-
tional complexity of the decoding at every receiving stations
and by combining the MIMO techniques with scheduling tech-
niques results in obvious signalling intensity overheads pre-
sented by the multi-tier structure of the 5G RAN systems.
Moreover, more time or frequency resources are spent on the
signalling overhead for MIMO transmission. For example, in
most of MIMO schemes, CSI is required at the receiver and/or
at the transciever pair in order to achieve good QoS perfor-
mance. In addition, estimating the CSI and feeding it back to
the transmitter require some training symbols to be sent before
the data transmission. The implication is that more signalling
intensity that negatively impacts on the network scalability may
occur with joint scheduling and massive MIMOs techniques.
Newer methods with low signalling overheads are supposed to
be developed for 5G networks.
Integrated Spectrum and Energy Harvesting Techniques:
In this technique, the key idea is to have all devices and
the multi-tier networks to have an energy harvesting cogni-
tive radio (CR) module in order to harvest energy and sense
the spectrum simultaneously. The CR module working in this
way, involves substantial signalling information exchanges, for
the transfer of both RF energy and spectrum, across multi-
tier system of networks such as D2D, smallcell and macrocell
networks. Furthermore, in large networks of the 5G RAN sys-
tems, cooperative sensing of RF ambient energy and spectrum
are executed by centralised fusion centres. Unfortunately, such
centralised based sensing of information can cause network
flooding problems, especially where fusion centres must deal
with the CSI from large networks.
Cross-Tier or Layer Message Passing: The basic idea is
that, each node computes and exchanges simple messages with
neighbouring nodes in order to find the solution of the resource
allocation problem. This implies low signalling overheads,
especially for clustered tier structure. However, cross-tier mes-
sage passing method may not guarantee QoS performance
scalability in hierarchical tier structure of the 5G RAN systems.
It can be suggested that scalable cross-tier message passing
RIRM schemes should be developed in the future works.
1682 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 18, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER 2016
Joint Cell Association and Power Control: In this scheme,
a user association scheme is developed in which sleeping cell
users associate to a BS with maximum mean channel access
probability. Unfortunately, the heavily loaded traffic at the
active BSs may result in more signalling burden incurred within
the network. However, by combining cell association and pri-
oritised power control, it is expected that signalling costs may
reduce for simultaneous connections to multiple BSs of the next
generation mobile systems.
C-RANs and H-CRANs: UEs access information from cen-
tralised cloud radio access network (CRAN). This may mean
that when accessing UEs remotely located, scalability of the
CRANs is degraded. Fortunately, the introduction of the het-
erogeneous CRANs (H-CRANs) in SDNs can bring forth the
advantage of ensuring self-organised networks (SONs) with
significantly reduced signalling overheads within the control
channels.
Bio-Inspired RIRM Based Schemes: The basic idea is that
the proposed BEACH and SHARE methods require the use of
control messages to be exchanged among adjacent layers of the
protocol stack before optimally allocating the energy, spectrum
and interference resources. However, for non adjacent infor-
mation exchanges, control channels may be overwhelmed. It is
thus crucial that some form of scalable unified layering module
is introduced in the protocol stack in order to conceal the upper
layers from the complexity of multiple configurations designed
at the lower layers.
In summary, this section has been dedicated for discussing
insights/implications of the signalling required to implement
major RIRM schemes described in Sections III-VI. Intuitively,
the specifications have implied that the higher the signalling
packets required to implement the RIRM schemes, the greater
the overwhelming the control channels become and the poorer
the scalability of the architecture of the 5G RAN systems. The
cross-cutting proposal is to ensure that newer RIRM schemes
should be developed based on decentralised paradigms. The
basic idea is to improve system scalability performance with-
out necessarily compromising the QoS performance of the
hierarchical nature of the 5G RAN systems.
VIII. C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE D IRECTIONS
This paper has discussed a number of RIRM schemes
towards the evolution of 5G RAN systems. While previous
surveys have had a narrow focus on particular issues related
to 5G communications, e.g., green communication or interfer-
ence management etc, this current survey has provided a much
broader but a fairly indepth perspective. We have pointed out
some pressing issues and challenges of radio resource man-
agement under macro headings of interference management,
spectrum efficiency, energy efficiency and hybrid resource man-
agement. As the 5G RAN systems promise increasing traffic
demands with diversified QoS performance requirements, there
has been a real need for researchers to devise optimal RIRM
strategies. As a result, the current review paper has presented
some challenges, solutions and open research issues of the
RIRM strategies proposed towards achieving the identified
visions of the 5G RAN systems todate.
However, future research directions require addressing the
QoS challenges such as the explosive growth of traffic volumes,
massive connected devices and diversified use cases in a holistic
manner. In these contexts, a number of solution attempts have
been made, nonetheless, with some specific constraining issues
outlined as follows.
• It has been established that the 5G RAN systems will
conglomerate multiple tiers and RATs of different sizes,
spectrum operation requirements, transmit powers and
capacity. This system will need novel optimal designs
of joint cell association and load balancing/traffic admis-
sion control to perform an interference free, spectrum
and energy-efficient load balancing. The optimal designs
should be able to consider the distributions of UEs within
the network, the locations of multi-tier and RAT BSs, the
traffic patterns and chanel state information (CSI) avail-
able for the UEs and in decision-making.
• Several recent studies claim that 5G RAN systems will
support high network scalability with low signalling over-
heads. Thus, future directions must pay more attention to
co-existence designs of SDR and SDNs for both spec-
trum and energy-efficiency, while satisfying diversified
QoS requirements of the multi-tier and -RAT systems.
• The study of how different base stations of different
multiple tiers, technologies and cells will coordinate
and cooperate under stringent radio resource conditions
remains an interesting ongoing issue.
• The problem of developing joint adaptive admission con-
trol and power control for the expected 5G RAN sys-
tems in both spectrum and energy-efficient manner, with
advantage of able to accomodate diversified QoS perfor-
mance requirement trade-offs, has not been satisfactorily
addressed.
• In order to achieve seamless and ubiquitous mobility
management for maximum system capacity, future stud-
ies should investigate the impact of fast mobility (i.e., of
order several hundreds km/h) and handover management
between users of different multiple tiers, technologies
and cells on QoS performance. This is because various
5G UEs and related network applications will naturally
exhibit different mobility behaviours and characteristics.
• The 5G RAN systems will typically advocate for huge
number of relays, D2D and MTCs communications. This
will compel the need to quantify through further research,
the additional time and power resources consumed for
minimal latency and energy consumption during relay
and cooperative transmissions.
• Though bidirectional relaying techniques have been sug-
gested to effectively save energy, the research question
remains on how to optimise the design of energy-efficient
bidirectional relaying systems with low latency, low mes-
sage overhead and extremely high data rates trade-offs.
• As 5G RAN systems are anticipated to accomodate
unprecedented connected wireless devices, explosive traf-
fic volumes and diverse application uses, more studies
investigating how to ensure network security and privacy
for both different users and operators should become a
crucial focus in the next half decade and beyond.
OLWAL et al.: SURVEY OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TOWARD 5G RANs
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Thomas O. Olwal (M’10) received the Ph.D.
degree in computer science from the University
of Paris-EST, Champs-sur-Marne, France, in 2010,
and the D.Tech. degree in electrical engineering
from Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) (in
a cotutelle programme), Pretoria, South Africa,
in 2011. He is currently lecturing at the TUT
as an Associate Professor and previously worked
as a Senior Researcher with Wireless Computing
and Networking R&D, Council for Scientific and
Industrial Research (CSIR). His research interests
include analysis and design of the spectrum, energy-efficient radio resource
management, Internet of Things, autonomous robotics, and automation and
their emerging applications. He serves as a reviewer in a number of ACM/IEEE
conferences and journals.
Karim Djouani (M’04) is a Full Professor, a
Scientist, and a Technical Group Supervisor of pat-
tern recognition, soft computing, networking sys-
tems, and robotics. Since January 2014, he has
been the DST/NRF SARChI Chair in Enabled
Environment for Assistive Living. In January 2011,
he was appointed as a Full Professor at French South
African Institute of Technology (F’SATI), Tshwane
University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa.
From July 2008 to December 2010, he was seconded
by the French Ministry of Higher Education to the
French South African Institute of Technology (F’SATI), Tshwane University of
Technology (TUT). He is leading the SIRIUS Team of the LISSI Laboratory,
University Paris-Est, Champs-sur-Marne, France. Until July 2008, he was
also Manager of national and European projects at the LISSI Laboratory. His
research interests include development of novel and highly efficient algorithms
for reasoning systems with uncertainty as well as optimization, for distributed
systems, networked control systems, wireless ad-hoc network, wireless and
mobile communication, and wireless sensors networks as well as robotics.
Anish M. Kurien (M’04) received the D.Tech.
degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree
in computing (through co-tutelle) from Tshwane
University of Technology (TUT), Pretoria, South
Africa, and the University Paris-Est, Champs-sur-
Marne, France, in 2012. He is currently the Node
Director for the French South African Institute
of Technology, TUT and is responsible for post-
graduate programs in the Department of Electrical
Engineering, TUT. He is currently involved in
research projects in wireless communications, radio
resource management, and mobile network optimization and is involved in
a number of industrial projects related to wireless networks and technol-
ogy development. His research interests include feature extraction and pattern
recognition algorithms applied to mobile network subscriber classification.