Experimental OAI-based Testbed for Evaluating the Impact of Different Functional Splits on C-RAN Performance

Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) is an innovative concept introduced to enhance the performance of the Fifth Generation (5G) mobile networks. The main idea of CRAN is to split the functionalities of the ordinary Evolved Node B (eNB) into two main components. The first one is the Remote Radio Head (RRH) that contains the Radio Frequency (RF) functionality in which multiple RRHs will be connected to the other shared component that is called the Baseband Processing Unit (BBU) which performs the other functionalities. The link between these two components will be referred to as the fronthaul interface. This interface has many different technologies in which we are interested in this paper in the Next Generation Fronthaul Interface (NGFI). According to NGFI, various functional splits have different associated tasks to both the BBU and the RRH which impacts on the C-RAN performance. In this paper, OpenAirInterface (OAI) platform is used to implement and conFigure C-RAN testbed. Then, the impact of different NGFI splits on C-RAN performance is evaluated and concluded using the implemented C-RAN testbed in terms of various perfomance metrics such as required fronthaul data rate, percentage of CPU usage, and memory usage.