Implementation and analysis of forward error correction decoding for Cloud-RAN systems

In future 5G mobile networks, radio access network functions will be virtualized and implemented on centralized cloud platforms. In principle, this allows for more advanced algorithms of joint processing and offers the ability to balance the computational load. However, the shift of functionality on a cloud-platform also imposes challenges on the design of the applied algorithms. In this paper, we analyse the implementation of forward error correction decoding algorithms on general purpose hardware, which draws the main computational burden of signal processing in the uplink. Although the protocol stack introduces strict timing requirements we demonstrate by numerical results the feasibility of such implementation.