Massive MIMO Pilot Scheduling over Cloud RAN for Industry 4.0

Cloud-RAN (C-RAN) is a promising paradigm for the next generation radio access network infrastructure, which offers centralized and coordinated base-band signal processing in a BBU pool. This requires extremely low latency fronthaul links to achieve real-time signal processing. In this paper, we investigate massive MIMO pilot scheduling in a C-RAN infrastructure under a factory automation scenario. We use simulations to provide insights on the feasibility of C-RAN deployment for industrial communication, which has stringent criteria to meet Industry 4.0 standards. Our experiment results show that, concerning a pilot scheduling problem, the C-RAN system is capable of meeting the industrial criteria when there is fronthaul latency in the order of milliseconds.