Study of the centralization level of optical network-supported Cloud RAN

Radio Access Network (RAN) costs savings are expected in future Cloud RAN (C-RAN). Differently from traditional distributed RAN architecture, in C-RAN Remote Radio Heads (RRH) from different sites can share baseband processing resources from virtualized Base Band Unit (BBU) pools placed in few central locations (CO). Due to the stringent requirements of the several interfaces needed in C-RAN, optical networks have been proposed to support it. In this paper, we present the C-RAN Capital Expenditures (CAPEX) minimization problem to decide which COs should be equipped and the equipment to be installed. Several problem instances considering different Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) configurations are solved to study the impact of the centralization level C-RAN in terms of both, CAPEX and Operational Expenditures (OPEX). Compared to the maximum centralization level, results showed remarkable costs savings when a lower level of centralization is considered.