Abdelrahim Mohamed

Control-Data Separation Architecture for Cellular Radio Access Networks: A Survey and Outlook

Conventional cellular systems are designed to ensure ubiquitous coverage with an always present wireless channel irrespective of the spatial and temporal demand of service. This approach raises several problems due to the tight coupling between network and data access points, as well as the paradigm shift towards data-oriented services, heterogeneous deployments and network densification. A logical separation between control and data planes is seen as a promising solution that could overcome these issues, by providing data services under the umbrella of a coverage layer. This article presents a holistic survey of existing literature on the control-data separation architecture (CDSA) for cellular radio access networks. As a starting point, we discuss the fundamentals, concepts, and general structure of the CDSA. Then, we point out limitations of the conventional architecture in futuristic deployment scenarios. In addition, we present and critically discuss the work that has been done to investigate potential benefits of the CDSA, as well as its technical challenges and enabling technologies. Finally, an overview of standardisation proposals related to this research vision is provided.

Enabling Massive IoT in 5G and Beyond Systems: PHY Radio Frame Design Considerations

The parameters of physical layer radio frame for 5th generation (5G) mobile cellular systems are expected to be flexibly configured to cope with diverse requirements of different scenarios and services. This paper presents a frame structure and design, which is specifically targeting Internet of Things (IoT) provision in 5G wireless communication systems. We design a suitable radio numerology to support the typical characteristics, that is, massive connection density and small and bursty packet transmissions with the constraint of low-cost and low complexity operation of IoT devices. We also elaborate on the design of parameters for random access channel enabling massive connection requests by IoT devices to support the required connection density. The proposed design is validated by link level simulation results to show that the proposed numerology can cope with transceiver imperfections and channel impairments. Furthermore, the results are also presented to show the impact of different values of guard band on system performance using different subcarrier spacing sizes for data and random access channels, which show the effectiveness of the selected waveform and guard bandwidth. Finally, we present system-level simulation results that validate the proposed design under realistic cell deployments and inter-cell interference conditions.

Mobility prediction for handover management in cellular networks with control/data separation

In research community, a new radio access network architecture with a logical separation between control plane (CP) and data plane (DP) has been proposed for future cellular systems. It aims to overcome limitations of the conventional architecture by providing high data rate services under the umbrella of a coverage layer in a dual connection mode. This configuration could provide significant savings in signalling overhead. In particular, mobility robustness with minimal handover (HO) signalling is considered as one of the most promising benefits of this architecture. However, the DP mobility remains an issue that needs to be investigated. We consider predictive DP HO management as a solution that could minimise the out-of-band signalling related to the HO procedure. Thus we propose a mobility prediction scheme based on Markov Chains. The developed model predicts the users trajectory in terms of a HO sequence in order to minimise the interruption time and the associated signalling when the HO is triggered. Depending on the prediction accuracy, numerical results show that the predictive HO management strategy could significantly reduce the signalling cost as compared with the conventional non-predictive mechanism.

Correlation-based adaptive pilot pattern in control/data separation architecture

Most of the wireless systems such as the long term evolution (LTE) adopt a pilot symbol-aided channel estimation approach for data detection purposes. In this technique, some of the transmission resources are allocated to common pilot signals which constitute a significant overhead in current standards. This can be traced to the worst-case design approach adopted in these systems where the pilot spacing is chosen based on extreme condition assumptions. This suggests extending the set of the parameters that can be adaptively adjusted to include the pilot density. In this paper, we propose an adaptive pilot pattern scheme that depends on estimating the channel correlation. A new system architecture with a logical separation between control and data planes is considered and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is chosen as the access technique. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can provide a significant saving of the LTE pilot overhead with a marginal performance penalty.

Predictive and Core-Network Efficient RRC Signalling for Active State Handover in RANs With Control/Data Separation

Frequent handovers (HOs) in dense small cell deployment scenarios could lead to a dramatic increase in signaling overhead. This suggests a paradigm shift toward a signaling conscious cellular architecture with intelligent mobility management. In this direction, a futuristic radio access network with a logical separation between control and data planes has been proposed in research community. It aims to overcome limitations of the conventional architecture by providing high data rate services under the umbrella of a coverage layer in a dual connection mode. This approach enables signaling efficient HO procedures since the control plane remains unchanged when the users move within the footprint of the same umbrella. Considering this configuration, we propose a core-network efficient radio resource control signaling scheme for active state HO and develop an analytical framework to evaluate its signaling load as a function of network density, user mobility, and session characteristics. In addition, we propose an intelligent HO prediction scheme with advance resource preparation in order to minimize the HO signaling latency. Numerical and simulation results show promising gains in terms of reduction in HO latency and signaling load as compared with conventional approaches.