Performance Improvement of Ethernet-Based Fronthaul Bridged Networks in 5G Cloud Radio Access Networks

Cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) are emerging architectural solutions to anticipate the increased capacity and quality demands of future 5G cellular networks at a reduced cost. In C-RANs, a transport segment referred to as fronthaul has been defined, which become a major constraint in practical implementations due to its high cost. A transport protocol referred to as eCPRI (enhanced common public radio interface), which was specifically designed for the fronthaul networks, imposes stringent end-to-end (E2E) latency and capacity requirements, which can be satisfied through the extortionate optical links. The high implementation cost of optical fronthaul networks significantly increased the system cost and made the fronthaul a hurdle to accomplish the cost−benefits of the C-RANs’ architecture. The globally deployed Ethernet networks could be leveraging solutions, but are inadequate to comply with the eCPRI requirements in fronthaul bridged networks and result in intolerable latencies due to ineffectual traditional quality of service aware forwarding schemes. Therefore, to realize the cost−benefits of ubiquitously deployed Ethernet infrastructure, this paper proposes the E2E latency aware path computation and packet forwarding schemes, which ameliorate the performance of Ethernet-based fronthaul bridged networks to transport the eCPRI traffic at tolerable latencies. The simulation results verify the feasibility of low-cost Ethernet to carry the eCPRI traffic streams up to 100 Gbps with the proposed schemes in fronthaul bridged networks.