Mobile Cloud Networking FP7 European

Project: Radio Access Network as a Service

Optical
switch

BBU-pool
RAT 1

BBU-pool
RAT 2

BBU-pool
RAT N

WC-Pool
(in a data centre)

Dominique Pichon (Orange)

4th Workshop on Mobile Cloud Networking

19.06.2014, Lisboa, Portugal

Outline

Motivations and Objectives

MCN Quick Overview
Challenges for an on demand RAN
A PaaS Approach for RANaaS
Conclusion

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 2

Outline

Motivations and Objectives

MCN Quick Overview
Challenges for an on demand RAN
A PaaS Approach for RANaaS
Conclusion

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 3

Motivations for Virtualizing
Networks
Flexible Network Operations
Flexible resource allocation
analytics tools for dimensioning the network

Automated Network operation

auto-scaling
less trouble shooting by use of automatic configurations and
isolation between tenants

Faster Speed of Time to Market

Cost efficiency
sharing hardware => reduced power and space consumption
non proprietary hardware
installation, maintenance and removal costs reduction
flexible and automated network operations
multi-tenancy

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 4

Motivations: Focus on RAN

Todays Radio Access Networks (RANs) have a large number of Base

Stations (BSs), of multiple Radio Access Technologies (RATs), of high
power consumption and
cost (CAPEX/OPEX).
Explosive capacity needs vs. falling revenues per user.
RAN is typically dimensioned for the busy hour;
still, offered load varies drastically, with large periods of low utilisation.

BSs

BSs

BSs
Backhaul Core
Network Network
2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 5
Outline

Motivations and Objectives

MCN Quick Overview
Challenges for an on demand RAN
A PaaS Approach for RANaaS
Conclusion

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 6

The EU FP7 European Mobile Cloud
Networking Project
European collaborative project FP7.
Started in Nov. 2012. End: Oct. 2015
http://www.mobile-cloud-networking.eu/site/
Who?

Objective: to offer on demand a mobile network

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 7

MCN FP7 Objective: RAN as a
Service
To offer a cloud-based RAN as a Service (RANaaS):
Heterogeneous, virtualised and multi-tenant RAN, following cloud
principles (infrastructure sharing, elasticity, on-demand, pay-as-you-go).
Dynamically adapted to geographic and temporal load variations and
traffic type.
Centralised RAN processing architecture, based on virtualised pools of
Base Band Units (BBU-pools) on datacentres.
Flexible relationship between Remote Radio Heads (RRHs) and BBUs,
linked by a high bandwidth and low-latency optical fronthaul network.
RRHs

Central Office

RRHs
BBU-pool
RAT 1

BBU-pool
RAT 2

...
RRHs BBUs

Fronthaul Datacentre
Backhaul Core
Transport Network Network
2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 8 Network
Outline

Motivations and Objectives

MCN Quick Overview
Challenges for an on demand RAN
A PaaS Approach for RANaaS
Conclusion

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 9

Challenges for RANaaS

Fronthaul transport network (between BBUs and RRHs)

High bit-rate CPRI links:
Site with 3 RRHs (LTE, 20MHz) requires 7.4 Gbit/s link.

Low latency:
Maximum round trip delay of 150s (~15 km optical fibre).
Jitter and synchronisation:
Stringent requirements for frequency and phase synchronisation

Real-time performance
base stations requires strict real time performance
e.g., air interface LTE L2 packets to be handled in 3.66 ms

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 10

Challenges for RANaaS

Offer cloud based multi-tenant on demand RANaaS:

Offer SLA-guaranteed connectivity to multiple tenants (MVNOs)
through an elastic on-demand allocation of resources.
on demand => dynamic spectrum management
Detect and predict resources usage to optimize the offered services.
Radio Access Network Core Network
Radio RRHs

resources
Remote RRHs
Optical
switch

Radio
BBU-pool
RAT 1

D-RoF
BBU-pool
RAT 2

Heads RRHs
BBU-pool
RAT N

(RRHs)
WC-Pool
(in a data centre)

MVNO Computational
Fibre optic
Cheap resources
resources
Best effort RRHs
for all users
BBU-pool
RAT 1
MVNO
Gold BBU-pool
RAT 2
RRHs

...
2 Mbps to Virtual radio BBUs
all users resources
Datacentre Backhaul
Fronthaul
Transport Transport
Radio
Network Network
2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 11 Interface
Challenges for virtualized RAN

Elasticity
by means of horizontal scalability and load balancing

LTE air interface protocols are not RESTful

=>so you cannot simply add an

HTTP load balancer and add VM
hosting http servers for handling Worker
Load Worker
LTE workload Worker
Balancer

=>need for redesigning the base

station software to make it
horizontally scale
2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 12
Outline

Motivations and Objectives

MCN Quick Overview
Challenges for an on demand RAN
A PaaS Approach for RANaaS
Conclusion

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 13

A Platform as a Service for Mobile
Network
PaaS allows service providers to host and execute web applications using
third-party managed servers
e.g., Google App Engine, OpenShift

A Mobile Network using PaaS allows mobile network service providers to

host and execute network functions using a third party infrastructure

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 14

 Platform as a Service by Google

A user uses the service via the web

--e.g., a web app to manage post-its
with your wife/husband/child(ren)

the developer
-designs the service using the
Google SDK and pushes the related
code to Google App Engine

Google
- hosts the application software,
runs it, provides means to improve it
and log s on the service delivery

- and charges you

[Octo.com]

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 15

Platform as a Service for RANaaS

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 16

RANaaS: Architecture

Design cloud-based RANaaS architecture,

supported by a set of functional elements:
based on MCN architecture reference model
Service manager (SM): interface to client,
Service Orchestrator (SO): In charge of the RANaaS lifecycle
Cloud Controller (CC): Providing physical resources for RANaaS

using support services

Monitoring, charging, SLA management, analytics

Plus RAN virtualized network functions

LTE Base station protocol stacks broken down to enable
fine mapping between layers processing requirements and physical
resources
elasticity by balancing the load from UEs on different servers

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 17

RANaaS: Architecture

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 18

RANaaS: Service lifecycle

Design

Disposal Deployment
(destroy) (load components for an
SLA chosen by a client)

Runtime Provisioning
management
(customise)
(scale up/down)

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 19

 MCN architecture under development

RANaaS components
designed by RANP to
instantiate RAN on demand

Support services
used by RANP

Managing lifecycle
of base stations
Use to configure the
base stations

VNFs deployed by
RANP for its EEU

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 20

Outline

Motivations and Objectives

MCN Quick Overview
Challenges for an on demand RAN
A PaaS Approach for RANaaS
Conclusion

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 21

Conclusion

Cloud-based RAN is a novel architecture that aims at

bringing cost and efficiency benefits from the cloud
computing model.

MCN aims at offering elastic, scalable, and on-demand

RANaaS, dynamically adapted to geographic and
temporal load variations.

It faces several challenges, regarding:

Fronthaul
Radio resource management
Real-time performance
Scalability
The approach is being developed for further evaluation
2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 22
Thank You
Fronthaul: Scenarios and Solutions

Fibre availability is already a requirement

in Orange France LTE backhaul:
90% of sites in dense areas have fibre.
96% of links are shorter than 10km.
In urban areas, up to 28 cell sites are
connected to one Central Office.

Several solutions can be

considered for the fronthaul:
One fibre per RRH.
One fibre per site, shared by RRHs with
Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM).
Alternatively, microwave links can be used for small radio sites.

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 24

Fronthaul: Challenges

Fronthaul transport network (between BBUs and RRHs):

Digital Radio over Fibre (D-RoF).
Using typically the Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) standard.
Digitation requires high bit-rate CPRI links:
Site with 3 RRHs (LTE, 20MHz) requires 7.4 Gbit/s link.
Site with 15 RRHs (LTE-A (2 bands), 3G (2 bands), 2G (1 band))
requires up to 20Gbit/s link.
Low latency: RRHs
Optical
switch
BBU-pool
RAT 1

BBU-pool
RAT 2

Maximum round trip delay of 150s D-RoF

WC-Pool
(in a data centre)

(~15km optical fibre).

Jitter and synchronisation: RRHs D-RoF BBU-pool
RAT 1
Optical
BBU-pool
Stringent requirements for frequency switch/router
RAT 2

...
BBUs
and phase synchronisation. RRHs
Centra Office
Fronthaul (datacentre)
Transport
Network
2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 25
Fronthaul: Research

Impact of Mobile Cloud Networking on Fronthaul.

Dimensioning and optimisation of the

optical link between the BBU-pools and RRHs:
Based on realistic network configurations.
To optimise the architecture and have an end-to-end picture.

Reduce required bit-rates on CPRI links:

Several propositions for function splitting between
RRH and BBU will be taken into account.

Support interoperability, multi-technology (2/3/4G, WiFi)

and RAN sharing between different operators.
2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 26
Load Balancing: Motivation Scenario

With few users, only 3 RRH-BBU are sufficient to cover

the service area and provide the requested capacity.

BBUpool 1
Control Plane Controller

BBU Plane
BBUpool 1 BBU3 (20% load)
BBU2 (30% load)
RRH2 BBU1 (20% load)
RRH Plane
RRH1 RRH3

End-user Plane

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 27

Load Balancing: Motivation Scenario

When the number of users increases, more RRHs are

activated, and associated BBUs instantiated on a single
BBU-Pool, to provide the requested capacity.

Control BBUPool 1
Controller
Plane BBU7 (10% load)
BBU6 (10% load)
BBU BBU5 (10% load)
Plane BBU4 (10% load)
BBUpool 1
BBU3 (10% load)
RRH4 BBU2 (10% load)
RRH RRH3 RRH5 BBU1 (10% load)
Plane RRH1
RRH2 RRH6
RRH7

End-user
Plane

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 28

Load Balancing: Motivation Scenario

With a highly loaded network, some BBUs must be

instantiated on a different BBU-Pool, as the load exceeds
the BBU-Pool capacity.

BBUPool 2 Control BBUPool 1

Controller
Plane
BBU4 (80% load)
BBU7 (70% load)
BBU3 (70% load) BBU
Plane BBU6 (60% load)
BBU2 (80% load) BBUpool 2 BBUpool 1

BBU1 (60% load) RRH4 BBU5 (80% load)

RRH RRH3 RRH5
Plane RRH1 RRH6
RRH2
RRH7

End-user
Plane

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 29

Load Balancing: Challenges

Virtualisation of a sub-set of BBU functions, which can

be scaled up and down.
Quantification of the relation between load and
processing needs.
Map user load into required processing of virtualised BBU functions.
Balance RAN processing load between BBU-pools:
Dimension the number of cell sites one BBU-pool can manage.
Account for temporal and geographical variations of load.
Take into consideration radio, fronthaul and datacentre capabilities and
constraints, as well as SLAs (and associated QoS requirements).
Efficiently allocate processing resources (locally or remotely).
Balance load between multiple RATs.

2012-2015 MCN. All rights reserved. / Page 30