ZTE Communications ›› 2017, Vol. 15 ›› Issue (4): 47-66.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1673-5188.2017.04.007

• Review • Previous Articles    

Virtualization Technology in Cloud Computing Based Radio Access Networks: A Primer

ZHANG Xian, PENG Mugen   

  1. Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China
  • Received:2017-07-14 Online:2017-10-25 Published:2019-12-02
  • About author:ZHANG Xian (zhangxian_email@163.com) received the B.E. degree in telecommunications engineering from Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China in 2016. He is currently pursuing Ph.D. with Key Laboratory of Universal Wireless Communication, Ministry of Education, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China. His research interests include resources allocation and optimization for fog computing based radio access networks (F-RANs) and software-defined radio access networks.|PENG Mugen (pmg@bupt.edu.cn) received the Ph.D. degree in communication and information systems from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China, in 2005. Afterward, he joined BUPT, where he has been a full professor with the School of Information and Communication Engineering since 2012. His main research interests focus on cooperative communications, self-organization networking, heterogeneous networking, cloud communication, and the Internet of Things. He has authored/coauthored over 70 refereed IEEE journal papers and over 200 conference proceeding papers. He was a recipient of the 2014 IEEE ComSoc AP Outstanding Young Researcher Award, and the best paper award in JCN, IEEE WCNC 2015, WASA 2015, GameNets 2014, IEEE CIT 2014, ICCTA 2011, IC-BNMT 2010, and IET CCWMC 2009. He is on the Editorial/Associate Editorial Board of IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Access, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, IET Communications, and China Communications. He is the Fellow of IET.

Abstract:

Since virtualization technology enables the abstraction and sharing of resources in a flexible management way, the overall expenses of network deployment can be significantly reduced. Therefore, the technology has been widely applied in the core network. With the tremendous growth in mobile traffic and services, it is natural to extend virtualization technology to the cloud computing based radio access networks (CC-RANs) for achieving high spectral efficiency with low cost. In this paper, the virtualization technologies in CC-RANs are surveyed, including the system architecture, key enabling techniques, challenges, and open issues. The enabling key technologies for virtualization in CC-RANs mainly including virtual resource allocation, radio access network (RAN) slicing, mobility management, and social-awareness have been comprehensively surveyed to satisfy the isolation, customization and high-efficiency utilization of radio resources. The challenges and open issues mainly focus on virtualization levels for CC-RANs, signaling design for CC-RAN virtualization, performance analysis for CC-RAN virtualization, and network security for virtualized CC-RANs.

Key words: network virtualization, CC-RAN, RAN slicing, fog computing