Prof. A. Pattarvina visited our group on Oct. 26th, 2018. During the visit, Prof. A. Pattarvina gave a talk on Impact of RAN centralization on 5G Access/Aggregation Networks at Room 508, SEIEE Building 5, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Impact of RAN centralization on 5G Access/Aggregation Network (By Prof. A. Pattavina, POLOMI)

Abstract：5G mobile networks are expected to meet a set of extremely-challenging performance requirements, in terms of enhanced throughput, increased coverage, reduced latency and power consumption. To meet such requirements, a promising solution for future 5G networks is the recently proposed Centralized-Radio Access Network (C-RAN), supported by optical aggregation based on Wavelength Division Multiplexing. C-RAN is expected to provide significant CapEx/OpEx savings, deriving from the consolidation of processing facilities among different Digital Units (DU). However, the adoption of C-RAN requires transporting large amount of high and constant-bit-rate traffic between DUs and Radio Units (RU), called the fronthaul traffic. Therefore, in view of the massive small cells deployment and traffic increase envisioned for 5G, fronthaul transport is expected to face serious scalability issues. Alternative RAN splits, referred to as xhaul or midhaul solutions, are analysed and compared to find proper trade-off between baseband-resources consolidation and network blocking.