A Study of Fronthaul Networks in CRANs - Requirements and Recent Advancements

One of the most innovative paradigms for the next-generation of wireless cellular networks is the cloud-radio access networks (C-RANs). In C-RANs, base station functions are distributed between the remote radio heads (RHHs) and base band unit (BBU) pool, and a communication link is defined between them which is referred as the fronthaul. This leveraging link is expected to reduce the CAPEX (capital expenditure) and OPEX (operating expense) of envisioned cellular architectures as well as improves the spectral and energy efficiencies, provides the high scalability, and efficient mobility management capabilities. The fronthaul link carries the baseband signals between the RRHs and BBU pool using the digital radio over fiber (RoF) based common public radio interface (CPRI). CPRI based optical links imposed stringent synchronization, latency and throughput requirements on the fronthaul. As a result, fronthaul becomes a hinder in commercial deployments of C-RANs and is seen as one of a major bottleneck for backbone networks. The optimization of fronthaul is still a challenging issue and requires further exploration at industrial and academic levels. This paper comprehensively summarized the current challenges and requirements of fronthaul networks, and discusses the recently proposed system architectures, virtualization techniques, key transport technologies and compression schemes to carry the time-sensitive traffic in fronthaul networks.