Link failure recovery via diversity coding in 5G fronthaul wireless networks

In this paper we study the application of Diversity Coding to enable near-instantaneous recovery from link failures in 5G Centralized Radio Access Network (C-RAN) networks. We focus on networks where remote radio heads in a C-RAN are connected to the baseband unit with wireless fronthaul links. In order to avoid retransmissions and rerouting delays due to link failures, we investigate use Diversity Coding where a feedforward network design uses forward error control across spatially diverse paths to enable reliable networking with minimal delay.