C-RAN Virtualization with OpenAirInterface

TL;DR

This paper presents a virtualized LTE C-RAN testbed using OpenAirInterface and Docker, enabling resource sharing and realistic 4G network simulation for research purposes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel integration of OpenAirInterface with Docker for C-RAN virtualization and evaluates its resource demands through workload analysis.

Findings

Docker-based virtualization effectively creates functional 4G networks.

The testbed provides realistic results for C-RAN research.

Workload study reveals computation resource requirements.

Abstract

C-RAN virtualization is a research topic with great interest since it allows to share baseband processing resources.Therefore, in this work, we report the implementation of a virtualized LTE testbed environment of C-RAN by integrating the OpenAirInterface (OAI) with Docker. Using the test bed,we conducted a workload study to understand the computation resource demand of C-RAN software. Virtualization in containers has proven to be effective in creating a functional 4G network which achieves realistic results to facilitate research.