Hongyu Xiang

The heterogeneous cloud radio access network (H-CRAN) is a promising paradigm which incorporates the cloud computing into heterogeneous networks (HetNets), thereby taking full advantage of cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) and HetNets. Characterizing the cooperative beamforming with fronthaul capacity and queue stability constraints is critical for multimedia applications to improving energy efficiency (EE) in H-CRANs. An energy-efficient optimization objective function with individual fronthaul capacity and inter-tier interference constraints is presented in this paper for queue-aware multimedia H-CRANs. To solve this non-convex objective function, a stochastic optimization problem is reformulated by introducing the general Lyapunov optimization framework. Under the Lyapunov framework, this optimization problem is equivalent to an optimal network-wide cooperative beamformer design algorithm with instantaneous power, average power and inter-tier interference constraints, which can be regarded as the weighted sum EE maximization problem and solved by a generalized weighted minimum mean square error approach. The mathematical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that a tradeoff between EE and queuing delay can be achieved, and this tradeoff strictly depends on the fronthaul constraint.

Presented as an innovative paradigm incorporating the cloud computing into radio access network, Cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) have been shown advantageous in curtailing the capital and operating expenditures as well as providing better services to the customers. However, heavy burden on the non-ideal fronthaul limits performances of CRANs. Here we focus on the alleviation of burden on the fronthaul via the edge devices’ caches and propose a fog computing based RAN (F-RAN) architecture with three candidate transmission modes: device to device, local distributed coordination, and global C-RAN. Followed by the proposed simple mode selection scheme, the average energy efficiency (EE) of systems optimization problem considering congestion control is presented. Under the Lyapunov framework, the problem is reformulated as a joint mode selection and resource allocation problem, which can be solved by block coordinate descent method. The mathematical analysis and simulation results validate the benefits of F-RAN and an EE-delay tradeoff can be achieved by the proposed algorithm