Boosting fronthaul capacity: Global optimization of power sharing for centralized radio access network

Abstract

The limited fronthaul capacity imposes a challenge on the uplink of centralized radio access network (C-RAN). We propose to boost the fronthaul capacity of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) aided C-RAN by globally optimizing the power sharing between channel estimation and data transmission both for the user equipments (UEs) and the remote radio units (RRUs). Intuitively, allocating more power to the channel estimation will result in more accurate channel estimates, which increases the achievable throughput. However, increasing the power allocated to the pilot training will reduce the power assigned to data transmission, which reduces the achievable throughput. In order to optimize the powers allocated to the pilot training and to the data transmission of both the UEs and the RRUs, we assign a specific power sharing factor to each of them and derive an asymptotic closed-form expression of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise for the massive MIMO aided C-RAN consisting of both the UE-to-RRU links and the RRU-to-baseband unit (BBU) links. We then exploit the C-RAN architecture's central computing and control capability for jointly optimizing the UEs' power sharing factors and the RRUs' power sharing factors aiming for maximizing the fronthaul capacity. Our simulation results show that the fronthaul capacity is significantly boosted by the proposed global optimization of the power sharing between channel estimation and data transmission both for the UEs and for their host RRUs.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Jiankang Zhang: orcid.org/0000-0001-5316-1711

ORCID for Lajos Hanzo: orcid.org/0000-0002-2636-5214

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