Social C-RAN: Novel Futuristic Paradigm for Next-Generation Cellular Networks

Abstract

ABSTRACTProgressive growth of smartphones and number of users in the network demands for increase in network capacity. Proliferation in network capacity in turn triggers the problems like increase in Capital and Operational Expenditures (CAPEX/OPEX), decrease in Quality of Services (QoS), inflation in power consumption and the like. To cater the aforementioned network challenges, Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) is introduced with the capability of centralization, virtualization and co-ordination. The commercialization of C-RAN further faces problems like dynamic resource allocation environment, co-operative transmission and reception techniques, interconnection and management of base band unit (BBU) instances in a BBU pool, etc. Therefore, the social paradigm when blended with C-RAN, the evolved C-RAN, i.e. Social C-RAN, promises to overcome the challenges of C-RAN. We contribute a fresh novel proposal of Social C-RAN in which network elements will be connected with the help of social relationships and properties they exhibit. Our quantitative results show that the vision of social layer introduced in the C-RAN architecture automates several functions like handover, frequency assignment, dynamic resource allocation and results in reducing communication delays in various applications. We select the potential applications that play a major role in evolving cellular networks and discuss the possibilities to optimize these applications further using our proposed Social C-RAN architecture.