Robust Baseband Compression Against Congestion in Packet-Based Fronthaul Networks Using Multiple Description Coding

TL;DR

This paper proposes a multiple description coding (MDC) strategy for baseband signal transmission in packet-based fronthaul networks of C-RAN, enhancing robustness against congestion and improving signal quality at the cloud.

Contribution

It introduces a novel MDC approach operating at the baseband level for fronthaul networks, outperforming traditional path diversity schemes in congested conditions.

Findings

MDC improves signal quality during network congestion.

Numerical results validate MDC's advantages over traditional schemes.

MDC enhances robustness of C-RAN fronthaul transmission.

Abstract

In modern implementations of Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN), the fronthaul transport network will often be packet-based and it will have a multi-hop architecture built with general-purpose switches using network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN). This paper studies the joint design of uplink radio and fronthaul transmission strategies for a C-RAN with a packet-based fronthaul network. To make an efficient use of multiple routes that carry fronthaul packets from remote radio heads (RRHs) to cloud, as an alternative to more conventional packet-based multiroute reception or coding, a multiple description coding (MDC) strategy is introduced that operates directly at the level of baseband signals. MDC ensures an improved quality of the signal received at the cloud in conditions of low network congestion, i.e., when more fronthaul packets are received within a tolerated deadline. The advantages of the proposed MDC approach as compared to the traditional path diversity scheme are validated via extensive numerical results.