Network Architecture and performance of next-generation collaborative Wireless Access Networks (1)

1. Background and objectives

The traditional UMTS wireless communication network is basically designed around the core of the voice service, from the development of 3G, LTE and 4G technology in the future, we can all see that the data service driver plays an important role in the change of network architecture. In the future, communication networks will not only integrate a variety of heterogeneous wireless networks, but also integrate wireless networks and wired Internet. However, with the rise of a variety of Internet applications and the Internet is still innovating, this puts forward higher capacity requirements for the future wireless access network architecture.

The future network architecture needs to adapt to the needs of future network development and optimize the data service features to meet diversified and personalized communication needs.

In 3GPP, the long-term evolution (LTE) project of 3GPP is committed to further improving and enhancing the performance of the existing 3G technology and providing faster grouping rate, spectrum efficiency, and lower latency [1]. Although the LTE network architecture has already taken a big step towards flattening all IP addresses based on the UMTS network architecture, in the face of future application development trends, we still need an efficient network architecture to provide users with a high-speed broadband access experience. The existing cellular network still uses the wireless resource allocation mode based on the cellular unit. In the access network, resources are difficult to share between sites, and the network cannot adapt to traffic migration rules, this results in high network construction costs (CAPEX) and inadequate device utilization. In addition, in the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system based on LTE or LTE-A, in order to ensure the spectrum efficiency, the inter-Cell uses the same frequency network mode, however, cell-based wireless resource allocation will obviously cause interference between cells and lead to sharp deterioration in the performance of cell edge nodes.

In order to avoid the network performance constraints imposed by the network architecture of a single cell as the organizational model, it is clear that the wireless resource configuration between cells can better optimize the impact of channel interference on network performance through the distributed mode, the distributed antenna system is used to achieve the Wireless Access Network. The distribution of antennas and the rational use of network resources can further improve the capacity of the Wireless Access Network.

At the same time, for wireless networks, the fading characteristics of wireless links are constantly changing over time, and users in the networks are constantly moving in wireless networks; your business will have different choices based on your personal preferences. Due to the dynamic nature of the wireless network, it is not suitable for large-scale centralized information processing. For example, distributed information processing should be performed for combined signal processing in multiple cells. Distributed Information Processing can adapt to network status changes more quickly, reduce a lot of network overhead, make the network more robust, with better scalability, self-organization, and self-configuration, this improves the overall network performance.

2 Distributed Wireless Access Network

In order to support collaboration between base stations and meet the requirements of distributed resource configuration and information processing, the future wireless access network architecture must have the following features:

Spectrum resources can be shared and can be dynamically configured.

The network architecture supports the sharing of hardware resources and supports the coordination between resources.

Multi-Mode base stations can coexist for a long time under the same hardware platform.

With a flat network architecture, IP-oriented system design is more suitable for integrating with the Internet.

Ubiquitous coverage and access methods

Always-Online wireless connection and high-speed data service support