SDN-enabled C-RAN: An intelligent radio access network architecture

Abstract

With the development of wireless access technology and mobile internet, the demand of network traffic is growing rapidly. Traditional radio access network can not satisfy the requirement of ever growing capacity. C-RAN (Cloud-Radio Access Network) is a novel radio access network1 architecture which can support growing users' needs. In C-RAN architecture, BBUs (Base Band Units) decouple from RRHs (Remote Radio Heads) and are centralized and shared among RRHs in BBU pool. RRHs can be flexibly and densely arranged to increase network capacity. But the deployment of dense network brings great pressure to network management. The current C-RAN architecture can not effectively deal with the changes of network station caused by users' mobility. The SDN technology can simplify and optimize the network management. Hence we propose a SDN-enabled C-RAN architecture, it can intelligently and dynamically build RAN under the control of SDN controller. And we put forward a use case to briefly describe the working procedure.