Can Fine-Grained Functional Split Benefit to the Converged Optical-Wireless Access Networks in 5G and Beyond?

The centralized radio access network (C-RAN) is an effective architecture to promote CAPEX/OPEX reduction and cell cooperation derived from its centralized baseband processing. However, there is a contradiction between centralization gain and transport resource saving, which hinders the vision of a resource-efficient and cost-effective RAN deployment. Advanced RAN architectures with functional splits are then introduced to cope with this challenge. Distinguished with other studies, we are intended to investigate whether a fine-grained functional split architecture could benefit to the RAN evolution, and how it impacts on the converged optical-wireless access networks. To this end, we establish a quantitative model to analyze the performance of this architecture. With the fine-grained split, baseband unit (BBU) is divided into a set of fine-grained units (FU) to be placed in desired processing pools (PP) as a service chain. To analyze the placement performance, we propose a mixed-integer linear programming model (MILP) considering the PP selection, routing, wavelength and bandwidth assignment, as well as latency control to minimize the number of PPs, bandwidth, latency, and functions deployment cost. We compare its performance with other two coarse-grained split architectures, i.e., SBBU (adopt low-PHY split like BBU in 4G) and recently emerged DU-CU in both small-scale and large-scale network scenarios. Our analyses provide insights into the modeling and design of efficient converged optical-wireless access networks in 5G and beyond.