Enabling distributed spectral awareness for disaggregated 5G ultra-dense hetnets

Abstract

Future wireless infrastructures will have to deal with significantly higher loads of data, produced by applications demanding higher capacity with lower latency for the exchanged information. 5G networks are expected to resolve these problems, by bringing in advanced flexibility of deployment through the Cloud-RAN concept, and new air interfaces. Dense Heterogeneous Networks will also assist in the smooth transition to a holistic approach for managing the wireless network, especially through their integration at the base station level. Nevertheless, networks operating under a very tight spectral environment, with limited spectrum resources, need to be aware of their expected performance in order to optimally decide their operating frequency. In this work, we consider a disaggregated heterogeneous base station, complying with the Cloud-RAN concept, and integrate spectral aware non-3GPP access (WiFi) to the base station. We use multi-technology links to serve the end users, through two different paths: an LTE and a WiFi. The WiFi units are able to automatically discover their operating frequency ensuring efficient data delivery to the end users. We integrate all our contributions in a framework and deploy it over a real testbed. Our experimental results illustrate enhanced performance for the non-3GPP access of the network, delivering more than 5 times better throughput for high interference scenarios. © 2019 IEEE.