No Arabic abstract
Spectrum pooling allows multiple operators, or tenants, to share the same frequency bands. This work studies the optimization of spectrum pooling for the downlink of a multi-tenant Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) system in the presence of inter-tenant privacy constraints. The spectrum available for downlink transmission is partitioned into private and shared subbands, and the participating operators cooperate to serve the user equipments (UEs) on the shared subband. The network of each operator consists of a cloud processor (CP) that is connected to proprietary radio units (RUs) by means of finite-capacity fronthaul links. In order to enable interoperator cooperation, the CPs of the participating operators are also connected by finite-capacity backhaul links. Inter-operator cooperation may hence result in loss of privacy. Fronthaul and backhaul links are used to transfer quantized baseband signals. Standard quantization is considered first. Then, a novel approach based on the idea of correlating quantization noise signals across RUs of different operators is proposed to control the trade-off between distortion at UEs and inter-operator privacy. The problem of optimizing the bandwidth allocation, precoding, and fronthaul/backhaul compression strategies is tackled under constraints on backhaul and fronthaul capacity, as well as on per-RU transmit power and inter-operator privacy. For both cases, the optimization problems are tackled using the concave convex procedure (CCCP), and extensive numerical results are provided.
The Cloud-Radio Access Network (C-RAN) cellular architecture relies on the transfer of complex baseband signals to and from a central unit (CU) over digital fronthaul links to enable the virtualization of the baseband processing functionalities of distributed radio units (RUs). The standard design of digital fronthauling is based on either scalar quantization or on more sophisticated point to-point compression techniques operating on baseband signals. Motivated by network-information theoretic results, techniques for fronthaul quantization and compression that improve over point-to-point solutions by allowing for joint processing across multiple fronthaul links at the CU have been recently proposed for both the uplink and the downlink. For the downlink, a form of joint compression, known in network information theory as multivariate compression, was shown to be advantageous under a non-constructive asymptotic information-theoretic framework. In this paper, instead, the design of a practical symbol-by-symbol fronthaul quantization algorithm that implements the idea of multivariate compression is investigated for the C-RAN downlink. As compared to current standards, the proposed multivariate quantization (MQ) only requires changes in the CU processing while no modification is needed at the RUs. The algorithm is extended to enable the joint optimization of downlink precoding and quantization, reduced-complexity MQ via successive block quantization, and variable-length compression. Numerical results, which include performance evaluations over standard cellular models, demonstrate the advantages of MQ and the merits of a joint optimization with precoding.
The downlink of symmetric Cloud Radio Access Networks (C-RANs) with multiple relays and a single receiver is studied. Lower and upper bounds are derived on the capacity. The lower bound is achieved by Martons coding which facilitates dependence among the multiple-access channel inputs. The upper bound uses Ozarows technique to augment the system with an auxiliary random variable. The bounds are studied over scalar Gaussian C-RANs and are shown to meet and characterize the capacity for interesting regimes of operation.
In this paper, we consider the network power minimization problem in a downlink cloud radio access network (C-RAN), taking into account the power consumed at the baseband unit (BBU) for computation and the power consumed at the remote radio heads and fronthaul links for transmission. The power minimization problem for transmission is a fast time-scale issue whereas the power minimization problem for computation is a slow time-scale issue. Therefore, the joint network power minimization problem is a mixed time-scale problem. To tackle the time-scale challenge, we introduce large system analysis to turn the original fast time-scale problem into a slow time-scale one that only depends on the statistical channel information. In addition, we propose a bound improving branch-and-bound algorithm and a combinational algorithm to find the optimal and suboptimal solutions to the power minimization problem for computation, respectively, and propose an iterative coordinate descent algorithm to find the solutions to the power minimization problem for transmission. Finally, a distributed algorithm based on hierarchical decomposition is proposed to solve the joint network power minimization problem. In summary, this work provides a framework to investigate how execution efficiency and computing capability at BBU as well as delay constraint of tasks can affect the network power minimization problem in C-RANs.
Towards next generation communications, Energy Efficiency (EE) attracts lots of attentions nowadays. Some innovative techniques have been proposed in prior literatures, especially the sleep mechanism of base station (BS). Yet how to sleep and when to sleep are still vague concepts. Another, most of the studies focus on the cellular section or core networks separately while integral and comprehensive version is neglected in prior literatures. In this paper,the integral optimization structure is studied based on cloud radio network (C-RAN) and information centric network (ICN) that raised latest combined with the sleep mode. The original C-RAN and ICN structures are amended in terms of reality application of sleep techniques. While adopting the sleep techniques both in core and cellular, apart from previous works, a transition smooth method that solve the current surge problems which is ignored before is further proposed. Based on the new method, it will be much more feasible to adopt the sleep techniques by knowing the appropriate occasion for transition between sleep and idle mode. Comprehensive computer based simulation results demonstrate that this integer proposal achieves better EE feature with negligible impact on quality of service (QoS) of user equipments (UEs).
We consider a MIMO fading broadcast channel where the fading channel coefficients are constant over time-frequency blocks that span a coherent time $times$ a coherence bandwidth. In closed-loop systems, channel state information at transmitter (CSIT) is acquired by the downlink training sent by the base station and an explicit feedback from each user terminal. In open-loop systems, CSIT is obtained by exploiting uplink training and channel reciprocity. We use a tight closed-form lower bound on the ergodic achievable rate in the presence of CSIT errors in order to optimize the overall system throughput, by taking explicitly into account the overhead due to channel estimation and channel state feedback. Based on three time-frequency block models inspired by actual systems, we provide some useful guidelines for the overall system optimization. In particular, digital (quantized) feedback is found to offer a substantial advantage over analog (unquantized) feedback.