The 5G Infrastructure Public-Private Partnership

Transcription

1 The 5G Infrastructure Public-Private Partnership Francesco Mauro (TIM) From Research To Standardization (ETSI), Sophia Antipolis (France), 2016 May 11th 1

2 C-RAN and the Virtualization path toward The drivers for the RAN evolution Why it is needed to change the RAN architecture paradigm What is 5G? RAN architecture evolution towards C-RAN / vran Drivers for CRAN/VRAN deployment Virtual RAN: advantages for the operator Virtual RAN: implementation issues Flex5Gware project overview Flex5Gware project General Picture PoC #10 targeted KPIs PoC #10 preliminary testbed scenario PoC #10 - Scenario 2

3 The drivers for the RAN evolution 5G Drivers INCREMENT OF THROUGHPUT Peak (100 Mbps Gbps) and cell edge INCREMENT OF CAPACITY FOR A GIVEN BANDWIDTH More users and more traffic by managing the complexity REDUCTION of END-to-END LATENCY Huge impacts on QoS/QoE for 5G services IMPROVEMENT OF COVERAGE Service continuity in all the sites of interest (both outdoor and indoor) all with an increasing attention to Energy Efficiency and sustainability of evolved mobile networks, driving to new network architectures 3

4 Why it is needed to change the RAN architecture paradigm Coverage based deployment Capacity based deployment (High complexity) Macro Cells Small Cells Installation/Maintenance/Interference Optmization becomes more important -> 4

5 What is 5G? An extremely flexible and highly programmable e2e system, application, customer, time and location aware Serving at best high diversity types of communications (Human & Machine) Natively leveraging NFV technologies: Support on demand composition of network functions and capabilities Enforce required capability/capacity where and when needed Being future-proof and ready to serve even not yet identified use case and radio technologies [FROM] NGMN 5G White Paper 5

6 RAN architecture evolution towards C- RAN / vran Phase 0: distributed BBU Phase 1: BBU hostelling or BBU centralization (Centralized RAN) Phase 2: BBU pooling (Cloud RAN) Phase 3: RAN virtualization 6

7 Drivers for CRAN/VRAN deployment CAPEX/OPEX saving: Easier management and operation is made when the baseband of one or multiple systems is concentrated in less sites. For new sites, since RRU are functionally simpler, they probably require lower effort for site installation and management. 50%-70% OPEX reduction and 15%- 47% CAPEX reduction based on different estimation from [1]. From [2] In case of virtual RAN the SDR will further make easier the management enabling the RAN upgrade by simple SW upgrade. Moreover virtual RAN architecture will potentially allow lower HW/SW cost for the operator due to the increased number of vendors (coming from the IT industry) and further market segmentation and competition. [1] AN ANALYSIS OF RAN COST-STRUCTURE BY NGMN ALLIANCE [2] C-RAN The Road Towards Green RAN, Whitepaper, 7

8 Drivers for CRAN/VRAN deployment Better performance thanks to the tx/rx coordination among the RRUs. Inter-site CoMP: both downlink and uplink algorithms (up to Rel. 12) require BBU centralization (intra enodeb solutions). Macro only solutions show limited gains at cell edge. Higher values for uplink CoMP and in intra-site only (adressed by first implementations) Higher gains in HetNet scenarios (for example Stadium) due to the higher interference levels: 8

9 Virtual RAN: advantages for the operator vran got all the C-RAN advantages and add the followings (due to usage of GPP HW, i.e. General Purpose Hardware): the operator can dynamically allocate processing resources within a centralized baseband pool to different virtualized base stations and different air interface standards HW and SW totally decoupled for both, cost and management simpler inter-vendor interoperability cost reduction to manage, maintain, expand and upgrade the base station 9

10 Virtual RAN: implementation issues In general, in order to satisfy real-time needs given by radio systems, it may be difficult to implement all enbs protocol stack on general purpose HW: in these cases some functionalities (typically PHY layer) are implemented on dedicated HW. In any case, full RAN centralization implies the usage of Fiber (with high capacity but also most expensive). If this cable infrastructure is not available, partial RAN centralization solutions should be evaluated. DIFFERENT SPLIT OPTIONS SHOULD BE EVALUATED!! 10

11 Flex5Gware project overview Industry partners 1. Intel Mobile Comm. (DE) 2. Alcatel Lucent (DE) 3. Ericsson (SE) 4. NEC (UK) 5. Telecom Italia (IT) Project number: Project Coordinator: Intel Technical Management: CTTC Call / topic: H2020-ICT /ICT Objective 1.1 Duration: 24 months Begin: 01 July «Flexible and efficient hardware/software platforms for 5G network elements and devices» Research institutes 7. CEA (FR) 8. CNIT (IT) 9. CTTC (ES) 10. Fraunhofer Institut (DE) 11. iminds (BE) 12. VTT (FI) SMEs 9. Sequans (FR) 10. TST Sistemas (ES) 11. WINGS (ES) Universities 9. KU Leuven (BE) 10. Univ. Carlos III de Madrid (ES) 11. University of Pisa (IT) 11

12 Flex5Gware project General Picture The overall objective of Flex5Gware is to deliver highly reconfigurable HW platforms together with HW-agnostic SW platforms targeting both network elements and devices taking into account increased capacity, reduced energy footprint, as well as scalability and modularity, to enable a smooth transition from 4G mobile wireless systems to 5G. Flex5Gware will show its PoCs during a final demonstration event at the end of the project (Turin, June 2017). Telecom Italia will host the Flex5Gware demonstration activities, thanks to the presence of TILAB facilities in Turin (Italy), as already done in the past for the EARTH project demonstrator. The project s intention is to also co-operate with research projects of complementary direction according to the 5G PPP structure, so as to address a holistic system perspective. Cross-project demonstrations will be hosted as well as Flex5Gware PoCs during the final demonstration event in Turin. 12

13 TIM-UNIPI proof-of-concept in Flex5Gware Name of the PoC (PoC 10): Flexible resource allocation in CRAN/vRAN platform E-UTRAN Goal: design and evaluation of flexible SW solutions in 5G networks for centralized RAN environments, through virtualization of BSs starting from the open source enb/ue protocol stack OpenairInterface and ettus B210 USRP. UE enb RRH RRH Main ideas: vran/cran scenario Virtual BaseBand pool PoC with commercial phones/dongles RRH Features: BBU pool allocation algorithms, constrained RRH activation patterns, energy-efficiency maximization, resource allocation, robustness and reliability, using SotA optimization techniques to strike the best trade-offs between performance and energy, scale vs. resources 13

14 PoC #10 targeted KPIs PoC#10 will evaluate the following KPIs: 1. The cell edge throughput gains obtained by dynamically coordinating the transmission of several base stations in a potentially dense environment, 2. The cost in terms of computation resources of the above coordination algorithms and how this value scales with the number of coordinated base stations, 3. The power saving achievable with the dynamic RRH activation/deactivation and BBU allocation, 4. The latency/reaction times to reconfigure the system. Two kind of algorithms will be tested: Advanced Comp Techniques (coordination at low level) Dynamic RRH activation/deactivation and BBU allocation and association with RRH (coord.at highl evel) 14

15 PoC #10 - Scenario The surrounding noise will be generated with additional LTE node (acting as intercell interference generator). C-RAN/vRAN server used for the BBUs allocation. The BBUs control the RRHs (Micro and Macro). It contain also a Coordinator and the Intelligent Programs as developed in WP5. Macro cells sites are placed considering an hexagonal grid (assuming 3 sector per site); Two Micro cell per Macro sector 15

16 PoC #10 preliminary testbed scenario A preliminary detailed scheme of the PoC is depicted here below. Purchasing process of equipment is ongoing and in line with testing plans (no delays foreseen at the moment). Additional LTE node (acting as intercell interference generator), piloted by the same HW or different PC (network simulator) n.2 vran/cran servers with processor xeon E cpu v3 16

17 Thank you for your attention! 17