Performance evaluations of cloud radio access networks

Abstract

With the skyrocketing amount of data communications, traditional Radio Access Networks (RANs) infrastructure suffers from high capital and operating expenditures. Many countries and mobile network operators, therefore, propose software-defined radio access networks for centralized management, and further apply cloud computing technologies into cellular networks. Cloud Radio Access Network (Cloud-RAN) is a new paradigm for the next generation mobile network which provides ultra-high density deployments, dynamic reconfiguration of computing resources, as well as achieves high energy efficiency. To quantify the performance of Cloud-RAN infrastructure deployment, we build up real Software RAN testbeds based on an opensource LTE implementation over the latest virtualization technologies. We evaluate the performance of different testbed deployments by several test scenarios, in order to show the overhead introduced by virtualization. In addition, our testbed setup and measurement methodology will stimulate more systems research on the emerging Cloud-RAN infrastructure.