Traffic Prediction-Enabled Energy-Efficient Dynamic Computing Resource Allocation in CRAN Based on Deep Learning

Due to the greatly increased bandwidth of 5G networks compared with that of 4G networks, the power consumption brought by baseband signal processing of 5G networks is much higher, which inevitably raises the operation expenditures. Cloud Radio Access Network (CRAN) is widely adopted in 5G networks, which splits the traditional base stations into Remote Radio Heads (RRHs) and Baseband Units (BBUs), which are equipped with computing resource for baseband signal processing. The number of required BBUs varies due to the fluctuation of wireless traffic of RRHs. Hence, fixed computing resource allocation might waste power. This paper investigates energy-efficient dynamic computing resource allocation in CRAN by predicting the wireless traffic of RRHs and allocating computing resource based on the prediction results aiming at using fewest BBUs to minimize power consumption. For wireless traffic prediction, a novel method based on two-dimensional CNN LSTM model with temporal aggregation is proposed. By treating the wireless traffic data as images, this model could extract spatial correlation from these data to improve accuracy. Moreover, the problem of dynamic computing resource allocation in CRAN is formulated as an offline four-constraint bin packing problem, considering both uplink and downlink baseband signal processing capacities of BBUs and Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) bandwidths. For solving this problem, a Multi-start Simulated Annealing (MSA) algorithm is proposed. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method for wireless traffic prediction could outperform the state-of-the-art deep learning models. In addition, the proposed MSA algorithm could achieve lower power consumption than the state-of-the-art heuristic algorithms.