Diversity and Network Coded 5G Fronthaul Wireless Networks for Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communications

This paper is directed towards improving both throughput and reliability of 5G wireless Cloud Radio Access Networks (C-RANs) by the synergistic combination of Diversity Coding and Network Coding (DC-NC). In this paper, we directly apply the concept of DC-NC coding to two network scenarios: first, remote radio heads in a C-RAN connected to the baseband unit in two hierarchical tiers with optical and wireless fronthaul links, second, most remote radio heads are connected directly to the baseband unit via wireless links. Our results show that the combination of Diversity and Network Coding increases the throughput of fronthaul networks for downlink broadcasting or multicasting applications, while enabling reliable networking with near-instant latency in fault recovery by using forward error control across spatially diverse paths. Moreover, the number of redundant links inherent in Diversity Coding can be decreased using the proposed scheme.