Cellular Access Multi-Tenancy through Small Cell Virtualization and Common RF Front-End Sharing

Abstract

Mobile traffic demand is projected to increase eight-fold within the next five years, placing significant strain on existing wireless infrastructures. A common strategy to address these demands is network densification. This paper proposes an approach to this challenge by implementing a virtualized small cell base station. This station comprises multiple, isolated LTE PHY stacks that run concurrently on a hypervisor deployed on an affordable, off-the-shelf x86 server and utilize a shared radio head. The research demonstrates the feasibility of operating multiple virtualized base stations while achieving throughput levels close to or at the theoretical maximum. Unlike C-RAN architectures, this virtualized small cell base station features a full stack at the edge, eliminating the need for a low-latency, high-throughput front-haul connection.

Publication
In Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation & CHaracterization (WiNTECH ‘17), pp. 35-42.
Date
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