On the Feasibility of MAC and PHY Split in Cloud RAN

摘要

Splitting functionalities of radio access network (RAN) and cloudiamp;#64257;cation of such functionalities is considered as oneofthekeyenablersofthenextgenerationmobileandwireless networking, i.e. 5G, and is often referred to as software-deamp;#64257;ned RAN, virtualized RAN or Cloud RAN. Deamp;#64257;ning the splitting point, and maintaining the tight interaction between different functionalities in the RAN is, however, critical. Success of such cloudiamp;#64257;cation depends on the availability of high speed fronthaul, while high speed fronthauling is costly. In this paper we experiment splitting MAC and PHY layer with fronthauling through Ethernet that allows using commodity and low-cost industry standard equipment. We examine the effect of packetization on latency, and study the pros and cons of splitting MAC and PHY layer, within a hardware-based testbed.