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C-RAN: moving towards cloudification

Yannan Yuan

China Mobile Research Institute Apr. 27, 2017, Beijing, China

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RRU

CAPEX saving: Reduction of wireless room leads to CAPEX saving; Share of accessory equipments(GPS, power supplier,

air-conditioner and etc)

OPEX Saving: Reduction of power consumption and rent fee; Cloudification leads to deeper sharing.

Radio capacity enhancement: Phy-level CoMP to support JR/JT, L2 and above level collaboration to support 5G feature.

Energy-saving and emission-reduction

RRU RRU

RRU

RRU

RRU

RRU

RRU

RRU

CU @ CO CU @ CO CU @ CO

switch

Real-time NFV-based Cloud Center CU part of radio process function

L2 and above level collaboration

Mixture of GPP and SPP

Partial virtualization

E2E Orchestrated, natural MEC platform switch

switch

High reliable next generation front-haul network High capacity, low cost

Low latency, low jitter

Ideal and non-ideal scenarios

Distributed Ranked DUs DU includes extreme real-time functions

Small-scale DUs centralized

Phy-level collaboration

C-RAN concepts : “Centralized, Collaborative, Cloud, Clean” Radio Access Network Architecture

NGFI(xHaul)

DUs

DUs

DUs

Rethinking RAN Architecture: 5G C-RAN Concept

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RAN Virtualization/Cloudification: it is happening now

C-RAN Virtualization field testbed

@ Tsinghua University

C-RAN Virtualization Field Trial in 2015: •1 TD-LTE macro outdoor BS

• 18 TD-LTE indoor BSs

•1 GSM outdoor BS

•Area : 0.8km^2,

•General Server/Switch based BBU pool (with PHY1 accelerators)

Field Trial in 2015

Founding NOC member of ETSI NFV ISG, the one to propose RAN virtualization in NFV WP (2012)

NFV Vision NFV Architecture Framework

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The Relationship between RAN and Open Source Communities

Provider A

Provider B

Provider C

Provider D

RAN Equipment in Commercial Network

…

NFV-based RAN and Related Open Source Communities

…

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Research Progress of C-RAN in Open Air Interface

1st ping call with commercial UE in 2014: Collaborated with our partner Keysight, 1st ping call was successful with commercial

UE under 5M TDD OAI, which was deployed on the host.

C-RAN branch was created in 2015:

− 1st ping call was successful with commercial UE under 20M TDD OAI, which was deployed on the VM

− 1st LTE eNB live migration prototype, the whole LTE protocol （L1/2/3） VM was successfully migrated without call drop

One of the use cases in 5G C-RAN prototype: Performance improvement has been done to meet the requirements of C-RAN

prototype. For example, Mini C-RAN/NGFI prototype, NFV-based C-RAN+MEC prototype, etc

1st ping call with commercial UE in 2014 Cloud BBU pool prototype supporting live migration

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China Mobile 5G C-RAN Prototype Demo (2014-2017) 2014.2, Greener and Softer Network 2015.3, C-RAN live carrier migration

& SmarTile based Invisible BS 2016.2 SDAI&SmarTile 2.0, Mini C-

RAN/NGFI

2016.6 SDAI (Multiple Access), Mini C-RAN/MEC

(MWC2014) (MWC2015) (MWC2016)

(MWCS2016) 2017.3 C-RAN+EC, C-RAN multiple nodes server

(MWC 2017)

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Base on the independence of research points, it can be split into 5 working groups:

Usecase definition: How to use the C-RAN to meet the diversified demand in 5G, orchestration in RAN?

Time schedule 2016.11 white paper published and WG start up

Objective: Aligning with industry partners to unify the understanding of C-RAN, Driving the industry to enhance the maturity of C-

RAN fit for operators’ requirements. standardize the interface of SW/HW, north-interface of MANO for CU. Preparing to Pre-

commercial PoC and Field trial.

Partners: Huawei, ZTE, Ericsson, Nokia, DT, Intel, RedHat, WR, Spirent, BroadCom, Xilinx….

2018.6~ Small-scale Field trial 2017.6 CU basic solution to de -

coupling of SW/HW, Orchestration

MANO

How to generate abstraction

of RAN usecases? And

which interface should be

OPEN?

Virtualization layer

How to enhance virtualization

layer to support RAN?

1

VNF Split and definition

What to be orchestrated? 2

Common HW platform

What kinds of the HW to

be used for C-RAN? 3

5

4

2017.12~2018.6 PoC of Pre-

commercial C-RAN

Rough plan of C-RAN Wireless Cloud Networks Working Group

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Summary

• C-RAN Concept: “Centralized, Collaborative, Cloud, Clean” Radio Access Network Architecture

• CU/DU two level architecture

• Next-generation Fronthaul Interface (NGFI)

• Cloud RAN, Function Virtualization, Resource Orchestration

• C-RAN Research Process in OAI

• 1st ping call with commercial UE in 2014

• 1st 20M TDD LTE eNB in VM

• Performance improvement, such as algorithms in the receiver

• C-RAN Wireless Cloud Networks WG

• Initiated on November 18, 2016

• PoC Dec. 2017

• Field Trials June 2018

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Thank you! yuanyannan@chinamobile.com