Mugen Peng

Heterogeneous cloud radio access networks: a new perspective for enhancing spectral and energy efficiencies

To mitigate the severe inter-tier interference and enhance the limited cooperative gains resulting from the constrained and non-ideal transmissions between adjacent base stations in HetNets, H-CRANs are proposed as cost-efficient potential solutions through incorporating cloud computing into HetNets. In this article, state-of-the-art research achievements and challenges of H-CRANs are surveyed. In particular, we discuss issues of system architectures, spectral and energy efficiency performance, and promising key techniques. A great emphasis is given toward promising key techniques in HCRANs to improve both spectral and energy efficiencies, including cloud-computing-based coordinated multipoint transmission and reception, large-scale cooperative multiple antenna, cloud-computing-based cooperative radio resource management, and cloud-computing based self-organizing networks in cloud converging scenarios. The major challenges and open issues in terms of theoretical performance with stochastic geometry, fronthaul-constrained resource allocation, and standard development that may block the promotion of H-CRANs are discussed as well.

Cooperative Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access in 5G Systems

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has received considerable recent attention as a promising candidate for 5G systems. A key feature of NOMA is that users with better channel conditions have prior information about the messages of other users. This prior knowledge is fully exploited in this letter, where a cooperative NOMA scheme is proposed. The outage probability and diversity order achieved by this cooperative NOMA scheme are analyzed, and an approach based on user pairing is also proposed to reduce system complexity.

Application of smart antenna technologies in simultaneous wireless information and power transfer

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) is a promising solution to increase the lifetime of wireless nodes and hence alleviate the energy bottleneck of energy constrained wireless networks. As an alternative to conventional energy harvesting techniques, SWIPT relies on the use of radio frequency signals, and is expected to bring some fundamental changes to the design of wireless communication networks. This article focuses on the application of advanced smart antenna technologies to SWIPT, including multiple-input multiple-output and relaying techniques. These smart antenna technologies have the potential to significantly improve the energy efficiency and also the spectral efficiency of SWIPT. Different network topologies with single and multiple users are investigated, along with some promising solutions to achieve a favorable trade-off between system performance and complexity. A detailed discussion of future research challenges for the design of SWIPT systems is also provided.

System architecture and key technologies for 5G heterogeneous cloud radio access networks

Compared with fourth generation cellular systems, fifth generation wireless communication systems are anticipated to provide spectral and energy efficiency growth by a factor of at least 10, and the area throughput growth by a factor of at least 25. To achieve these goals, a H-CRAN is presented in this article as the advanced wireless access network paradigm, where cloud computing is used to fulfill the centralized large-scale cooperative processing for suppressing co-channel interferences. The state-of-the-art research achievements in the areas of system architecture and key technologies for H-CRANs are surveyed. Particularly, Node C as a new communication entity is defined to converge the existing ancestral base stations and act as the base band unit pool to manage all accessed remote radio heads. Also, the software-defined H-CRAN system architecture is presented to be compatible with software-defined networks. The principles, performance gains, and open issues of key technologies, including adaptive large-scale cooperative spatial signal processing, cooperative radio resource management, network function virtualization, and self-organization, are summarized. The major challenges in terms of fronthaul constrained resource allocation optimization and energy harvesting that may affect the promotion of H-CRANs are discussed as well.

Fronthaul-constrained cloud radio access networks: insights and challenges

As a promising paradigm for fifth generation wireless communication systems, cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) have been shown to reduce both capital and operating expenditures, as well as to provide high spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE). The fronthaul in such networks, defined as the transmission link between the baseband unit and the remote radio head, requires a high capacity, but is often constrained. This article comprehensively surveys recent advances in fronthaul-constrained CRANs, including system architectures and key techniques. Particularly, major issues relating to the impact of the constrained fronthaul on SE/EE and quality of service for users, including compression and quantization, large-scale coordinated processing and clustering, and resource allocation optimization, are discussed together with corresponding potential solutions. Open issues in terms of software-defined networking, network function virtualization, and partial centralization are also identified.

Subcarrier pairing for amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward OFDM relay links

We consider a two-hop relay link in which orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is used on both hops. Under a joint sum-power constraint, our aim is to allocate power over subcarriers on the two hops such that the instantaneous rate of the relay link is maximized. Ordered subcarrier pairing (OSP) has been proposed in the literature to further improve the relay link rate; however, the optimality of OSP has been proven only for equal power allocation and the proof of its optimality under optimal power allocation has not been available yet. In this letter, we will provide our proof which verifies that OSP is optimal for both amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) relay links when optimal power allocation is applied.

Fog-computing-based radio access networks: issues and challenges

An F-RAN is presented in this article as a promising paradigm for the fifth generation wireless communication system to provide high spectral and energy efficiency. The core idea is to take full advantage of local radio signal processing, cooperative radio resource management, and distributed storing capabilities in edge devices, which can decrease the heavy burden on fronthaul and avoid large-scale radio signal processing in the centralized baseband unit pool. This article comprehensively presents the system architecture and key techniques of F-RANs. In particular, key techniques and their corresponding solutions, including transmission mode selection and interference suppression, are discussed. Open issues in terms of edge caching, software-defined networking, and network function virtualization are also identified.

Self-configuration and self-optimization in LTE-advanced heterogeneous networks

Self-organizing network, or SON, technology, which is able to minimize human intervention in networking processes, was proposed to reduce the operational costs for service providers in future wireless systems. As a cost-effective means to significantly enhance capacity, heterogeneous deployment has been defined in the 3GPP LTEAdvanced standard, where performance gains can be achieved through increasing node density with low-power nodes, such as pico, femto, and relay nodes. The SON has great potential for application in future LTE-Advanced heterogeneous networks, also called HetNets. In this article, state-of-the-art research on self-configuring and self-optimizing HetNets are surveyed, and their corresponding SON architectures are introduced. In particular, we discuss the issues of automatic physical cell identifier assignment and radio resource configuration in HetNets based on selfconfiguring SONs. As for self-optimizing SONs, we address the issues of optimization strategies and algorithms for mobility management and energy saving in HetNets. At the end of the article, we show a testbed designed for evaluating SON technology, with which the performance gain of SON algorithms is demonstrated.

Power Allocation and Subcarrier Pairing in OFDM-Based Relaying Networks

We consider a two-hop relaying network in which orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is employed for the source-to-destination, the source-to-relay and the relay- to-destination links. Amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and- forward (DF) policies are both discussed with or without two-hop diversity, respectively, for the relaying network with a sum-power constraint. An unified approach is used for optimal power allocation in the four different relaying scenarios. First, equivalent channel gains are developed for any given subcarrier pair in each scenario, and then optimal power allocation can be obtained by applying the classic water-filling method. Moreover, we provide the proof to the optimality of sorted subcarrier pairing for AF and DF relaying without diversity, which, combined with optimal power allocation, can offer further performance gain.

Energy-Efficient Resource Assignment and Power Allocation in Heterogeneous Cloud Radio Access Networks

Taking full advantage of both heterogeneous networks and cloud access radio access networks, heterogeneous cloud radio access networks (H-CRANs) are presented to enhance both spectral and energy efficiencies, where remote radio heads (RRHs) are mainly used to provide high data rates for users with high quality of service (QoS) requirements, whereas the high-power node (HPN) is deployed to guarantee seamless coverage and serve users with low-QoS requirements. To mitigate the intertier interference and improve energy efficiency (EE) performances in H-CRANs, characterizing user association with RRH/HPN is considered in this paper, and the traditional soft fractional frequency reuse (S-FFR) is enhanced. Based on the RRH/HPN association constraint and the enhanced S-FFR, an energy-efficient optimization problem with the resource assignment and power allocation for the orthogonal-frequency-division-multiple-access-based H-CRANs is formulated as a nonconvex objective function. To deal with the nonconvexity, an equivalent convex feasibility problem is reformulated, and closed-form expressions for the energy-efficient resource allocation solution to jointly allocate the resource block and transmit power are derived by the Lagrange dual decomposition method. Simulation results confirm that the H-CRAN architecture and the corresponding resource allocation solution can enhance the EE significantly.