FPGA-based testbed for fronthaul signal compression: implementation and validation

Abstract

In recent years the world has seen an increasing demand for mobile services with high capacity and low cost. Such requirements forced the radio access technologies to be rethought. Among the different architectures proposed in literature, one that has got a lot of attention was the Centralized Radio Access Network (C-RAN). This strategy proposes to share the network resources through the centralization of the base-band processing and, as a result, reduce the network cost. Even though the centralization can bring several benefits, it also increases the distance between the point where the signal is captured and the point where it is processed. The link connecting both points is called fronthaul. In this scenario, the existing fronthaul technologies do not fit in the flexibility and cost requisites expected for the next generation mobile network, mainly due to the usage of dedicated optical links. One solution to these problems is the usage of Ethernet to transport fronthaul data, due to its ubiquitous presence, flexibility and low cost. In this work, a testbed for fronthaul based on Ethernet is presented, along with the implementation details and validation results. Also motivated by the Ethernet’s bandwidth limitation, this work presents the VHDL implementation of a compression technique for LTE signals, evaluated in real transport conditions with the testbed. The obtained results indicate that it is possible to utilize the Ethernet network infrastructure for fronthaul transport. Although, it is necessary to reduce the requirements of Fronthaul stream through, for example, the application of signal compression techniques and synchronization methods.