Workshop on Cloud-Processing in Heterogeneous Mobile Communication Networks

Industry consensus on the vision for 5G is slowly forming, it will pull together a wide range of applications from very low bit rate M2M to ultra high speed internet access, the key feature will be flexibility. The technology and standards will be developed by 2020. One of the challenges will be creating a technology that can use the wide contiguous bandwidths in the mmWave band. New RAN architectures are being considered by the industry as intelligence and processing power moves from the traditional base station to local nodes, and even to a centralised cloud. This keynote will consider the technology challenges posed by such an architecture, and highlight the gains already being seen in equivalent LTE based systems. Finally it will provide challenges to the research community for areas we need more work in.Bernd Haberland (Alcatel-Lucent): Cloud RAN architecture evolution from 4G to 5G Mobile Systems

The talk starts with a motivation section: why to introduce CRAN for 4G and 5G. This is followed by an architecture description for 4G. After this use cases for 5G are discussed and a generalized CRAN architecture for 4G and 5G is derived. The need of an adaptive processing split between a local and a central CRAN is highlighted and the use cases and orchestration criterions for these splits are indicated. A possible basic SW architecture for a Local and Central CRAN will be shown. Finally open research questions are listed followed by a summary.

The key objective of 5G NORMA is to develop a conceptually novel, adaptive and future-proof 5G mobile network architecture. The architecture is enabling unprecedented levels of network customisability, ensuring stringent performance, security, cost and energy requirements to be met; as well as providing an API-driven architectural openness, fuelling economic growth through over-the-top innovation. With 5G NORMA, leading players in the mobile ecosystem aim to underpin Europe's leadership position in 5G.5G NORMA architecture will provide the necessary adaptability able to efficiently handle the diverse requirements and traffic demand fluctuations resulting from heterogeneous and changing service portfolios. Not following the ‘one system fits all services' paradigm of current architectures, 5G NORMA will allow for adapting the mechanisms executed for a given service to the specific service requirements, resulting in a novel service- and context-dependent adaptation of network functions paradigm.The technical approach is based on the innovative concept of adaptive (de)composition and allocation of mobile network functions, which flexibly decomposes the mobile network functions and places the resulting functions in the most appropriate location. By doing so, access and core functions no longer (necessarily) reside in different locations, which is exploited to jointly optimize their operation when possible. The adaptability of the architecture is further strengthened by the innovative software-defined mobile network control and mobile multi-tenancy concepts, and underpinned by corroborating demonstrations.5G NORMA will ensure economic sustainability of network operation and open opportunities for new players, while leveraging the efficiency of the architecture to do so in a cost- and energy- effective way.

One of the areas of discussion in mobile network architecture is the tension between "edge" and "cloud". Over the last decades in mobile networks the powerful trend has been to push intelligence out to the edge, for example with small cell networks. However, recently the opposing trend towards virtualization and the cloud has gained significant traction. The Small Cell Forum has examined the of cost, performance and fronthaul issues of different network architectures which would enable the benefits of small cells to be combined with benefits of virtualization and cloudification.

The emergence of the C-RAN concept has created a focus for discovery of enabling technologies. The business case for the adoption of these technologies now needs to be explored in the context of various architecture choices to assure market adoption. How may existing architectures evolve to realise the 2020 Network.

This panel will provide the possibility to discuss with the keynote speaker their views on cloud processing in heterogeneous mobile communication networks.