5G Cloud-Ran

Background and challenges

The 5G revolution is one of the most dynamically developed trends. It would change the way of using mobile services, cloud, fog and edge solutions. The IS-Wireless (ISW) use cases showing how the one of the most important elements of that revolution, 5g software defined base station, will benefit using MORPHEMIC. ISW provides fully programmable Software Defined RAN functionality (SD-RAN) for mobile base stations supporting multiple radio access technologies (RATs) in parallel: 4G, 5G and WiFi. SD-RAN can be deployed as a set of network functions (NFs). Physical network functions (PNFs) run on typical base stations appliances or remote radio heads, whereas the virtual network functions (VNFs) can run on any cloud infrastructure and only require RRH for radio frontend.
Virtualization of RAN architecture allows the radio stack components to be flexible as regards its placement along cloud continuum as long as x-haul network requirements are met. The different options of locating base station (eNB) building blocks (i.e. protocols) are depicted in the figure below (CU – central unit, DU – distributed unit, RU – radio unit). The solution can be offered to 4G (LTE, LTE-A) and 5G cell vendors as the 3GPP-compliant future-proof protocol stack. It can be also provided as software as a service (SaaS) for operators or other service providers.