On the Feasibility of MAC and PHY Split in Cloud RAN

Splitting functionalities of radio access network (RAN) and cloudification of such functionalities is considered as one of the key enablers of the next generation mobile and wireless networking, i.e. 5G, and is often referred to as software-defined RAN, virtualized RAN or Cloud RAN. Defining the splitting point, and maintaining the tight interaction between different functionalities in the RAN is, however, critical. Success of such cloudification depends on the availability of high speed fronthaul, while high speed fronthauling is costly. In this paper we experiment splitting MAC and PHY layer with fronthauling through Ethernet that allows using commodity and low-cost industry standard equipment. We examine the effect of packetization on latency, and study the pros and cons of splitting MAC and PHY layer, within a hardware-based testbed.