ZTE Communications ›› 2018, Vol. 16 ›› Issue (2): 23-31.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1673-5188.2018.02.005

• Special Topic • Previous Articles     Next Articles

General Architecture of Centralized Unit and Distributed Unit for New Radio

GAO Yin, HAN Jiren, LIU Zhuang, LIU Yang, HUANG He   

  1. Algorithm Department, ZTE Corporation, Shanghai 201203, China
  • Received:2018-02-05 Online:2018-06-25 Published:2019-12-12
  • About author:GAO Yin (gao.yin1@zte.com.cn) received the master’s degree in circuit and system from Xidian University, China in 2005. Since 2005 she has been with the research center of ZTE Corporation and been engaged in the study of 3G/4G/5G technology. She has authored or co-authored about hundreds of proposals for 3GPP meetings and journal papers in wireless communications and has filed more than 100 patents. She was the rapporteurs of multiple 3GPP WIs. From August 2017, she has been elected as the vice chairman of 3GPP RAN3.|HAN Jiren (han.jiren@zte.com.cn) received the master’s degree in wireless communication systems from University of Sheffield, UK in 2016. He is an advanced research engineer at the Algorithm Department, ZTE Corporation. His research interests include 5G wireless communications and signal processing.|LIU Zhuang (liu.zhuang2@zte.com.cn) received the master’s degree in computer science from Xidian University, China in 2003. He is currently a senior 5G research engineer at ZTE R&D center, Shanghai. His research interests include 5G wireless communications and signal processing.|LIU Yang (liu.yang31@zte.com.cn) received the Ph.D. degree in communication and information systems from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China in 2016. He was a visiting scholar at Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of North Carolina State University, USA from 2013 to 2015. He is currently a 5G research engineer at ZTE R&D center, Shanghai. His research interests include 5G wireless communications and signal processing.|HUANG He (huang.he4@zte.com.cn) received the bachelor’s degree in computer science and technology from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China in 2004. He is currently the chief engineer of wireless innovation laboratory of ZTE Corporation and leads the research and standardization work on 5G RAN. He has filed more than 60 patents. He was the rapporteurs of multiple CCSA/3GPP SIs/WIs and the editors of the related protocols.

Abstract:

In new radio (NR) access technology, the radio access network (RAN) architecture is split into two kinds of entities, i.e., the centralized unit (CU) and the distributed unit (DU), to enhance the network flexibility. In this split architecture, one CU is able to control several DUs, which enables the function of base-band central control and remote service for users. In this paper, the general aspects of CU-DU split architecture are introduced, including the split method, interface functions (control plane functions and user plane functions), mobility scenarios and other CU-DU related issues. The simulations show the performance of Options 2 and 3 for CU-DU split.

Key words: NR, CU, DU, F1 interface