SoftRAN: software defined radio access network

By Aditya Gudipati, Daniel Perry, Erran L. Li, Sachin Rajsekhar Katti. HotSDN '13, 2013

528 citations recorded by the source corpus.

An important piece of the cellular network infrastructure is the radio access network (RAN) that provides wide-area wireless connectivity to mobile devices. The fundamental problem the RAN solves is figuring out how best to use and manage limited spectrum to achieve this connectivity. In a dense wireless deployment with mobile nodes and limited spectrum, it becomes a difficult task to allocate radio resources, implement handovers, manage interference, balance load between cells, etc. We argue that LTE's current distributed control plane is suboptimal in achieving the above objective. We propose SoftRAN, a fundamental rethink of the radio access layer. SoftRAN is a software defined centralized control plane for radio access networks that abstracts all base stations in a local geographical area as a virtual big-base station comprised of a central controller and radio elements (individual physical base stations). In defining such an architecture, we create a framework through which a local geographical network can effectively perform load balancing and interference management, as well as maximize throughput, global utility, or any other objective.

Subfields: Computer Networks and Communications, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4af67db7cb510052f9219f23c3d4d309f222ef20

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Computer Networks and Communications

1. F. Yu
2. Tarik Taleb
3. Martin Reisslein
4. Zhu Han
5. Weihua Zhuang
6. Dusist Niyato
7. Ian F. Akyildiz
8. Xuemin Shen

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. Shuai Nie
2. Dusist Niyato
3. Zhu Han
4. F. Yu
5. Weihua Zhuang
6. Xuemin Shen
7. Ian F. Akyildiz
8. Martin Reisslein

Citations in the corpus

• 5G roadmap: 10 key enabling technologies (2016, background): “In the literature, several studies [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] have explored integrating SDN with 5G network from academic and/or industrial perspectives.”
• Cloud RAN for Mobile Networks—A Technology Overview (2015, background): “in [108] proposes a Software Defined centralized control plane for Radio Access Network (SoftRAN).”
• Hybrid SDN Networks: A Survey of Existing Approaches (2018, background): “Similarly, OpenRadio [359], SoftRAN [360], CloudRAN [361] are some additional examples of SDN-based wireless networks.”
• Holistic Network Virtualization and Pervasive Network Intelligence for 6G (2023, methodology): “A SoftRAN framework enables both centralized and distributed RAN control based on the time sensitiveness of control decisions [66].”
• Software Defined Networking Architecture, Security and Energy Efficiency: A Survey (2017, unknown): “and coverage with available spectrum in [83].”
• Wireless Network Virtualization: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges (2015, methodology): “[70] proposes a more general software defined radio access network by considering all the physical base stations (not only RRU) in a geographical area as radio elements and abstracts out them as a virtual base station.”
• Offloading in Software Defined Network at Edge with Information Asymmetry: A Contract Theoretical Approach (2015, background): “The softwaredefined radio access network (RAN) concept [5] abstracts all independent BSs as a virtual centralized BS, which performs control plane decisions for all independent BSs at a single place.”
• OpenAirInterface: A Flexible Platform for 5G Research (2014, unknown): “Other examples include experimentation with software-defined radio access networks [17] and virtualization of RAN from the core network perspective [18].”
• Network Slicing and Softwarization: A Survey on Principles, Enabling Technologies, and Solutions (2018, background): “Unlike SoftRAN, the work in [133] proposed a hierarchical architecture, called Connectivity Management as a Service (CMaaS), which consists of a four-layer hierarchy wherein each layer is responsible for a different operation considering time criticality.”
• A survey of millimeter wave communications (mmWave) for 5G: opportunities and challenges (2015, background): “Second, due to the small coverage areas of BSSs, especially in indoor environments, user mobility will cause significant and rapid load fluctuations in each BSS [93].”