Fronthaul Network Planning for Hierarchical and Radio-Stripes-Enabled CF-mMIMO in O-RAN
Anas S. Mohammed, Krishnendu S. Tharakan, Hussein A. Ammar, Hesham ElSawy, and Hossam S. Hassanein

TL;DR
This paper introduces a cost-effective, hybrid fronthaul planning framework for cell-free massive MIMO in O-RAN, optimizing deployment strategies with diverse technologies and configurations to enhance capacity and reduce costs.
Contribution
It proposes a novel two-tiered optimization framework integrating fiber, mmWave, and FSO technologies for efficient fronthaul planning in UDNs within O-RAN.
Findings
Fiber dominates in decentralized deployments.
mmWave is suitable for moderately centralized scenarios.
FSO bridges deployment gaps and complements other technologies.
Abstract
The deployment of ultra-dense networks (UDNs), particularly cell-free massive MIMO (CF-mMIMO), is mainly hindered by costly and capacity-limited fronthaul links. This work proposes a two-tiered optimization framework for cost-effective hybrid fronthaul planning, comprising a Near-Optimal Fronthaul Association and Configuration (NOFAC) algorithm in the first tier and an Integer Linear Program (ILP) in the second, integrating fiber optics, millimeter-wave (mmWave), and free-space optics (FSO) technologies. The proposed framework accommodates various functional split (FS) options (7.2x and 8), decentralized processing levels, and network configurations. We introduce the hierarchical scheme (HS) as a resilient, cost-effective fronthaul solution for CF-mMIMO and compare its performance with radio-stripes (RS)-enabled CF-mMIMO, validating both across diverse dense topologies within the open…
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