Transcript Speaker 7.2

Fiber Optic Networks for Distributed, Heterogeneous
Radio Architectures and Service Provisioning:
The case of the FUTON programme
G. Heliotis, I. Chochliouros and G. Agapiou
Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE) S.A.
Dept. Of Network Strategy and Architecture
Outline
 Quick facts about the project
 Introduction & motivation
 Basic architecture
 Objectives
 Benefits
 Summary - conclusions
FUTON in a Nutshell…
 FUTON is a collaborative EU funded project:
 30 months, 16 partners, started: 03/08
+ VIVO (Brazil)
+ NICT (Japan)
VTT
 Leader: Nokia Siemens Networks
AAU
 Aim: Develop a transparent fiber infrastructure that
will act as an enabler of new wireless architectures
UNIK
TUD
 What will this infrastructure offer?
MOT
AT
 Possibility to perform joint processing at a central
location
IT
JAY
NSN
PT
 Enhanced cross-layer algorithms
 Enhanced cross-system algorithms
OTE
VIVO
UniP
SI
 FUTON will cover:
 Concept definition and network design
 Implementation and validation of basic blocks
 Study of business impact and deployment
ACO

FUTON consortium balanced between
academic/ research institutes,
manufacturers and operators
Introduction
 Europe’s future communications networks promise to usher in a new world
of business and lifestyle-enabling capabilities
 Some key aspects that will characterize these networks are:
 Convergence/interoperability of heterogeneous mobile and fixed broadband
network technologies, enabling ubiquitous access to broadband mobile services.
 Optimised traffic routing and processing between core and edge networks, that
will enable ultra high speed end-to-end connectivity
 High scalability, allowing a great increase in the number of connected devices
and enabling the emergence of novel application opportunities
 Flexible, optimised control and management procedures that will enable
seamless service composition and operation across multiple telecommunication
operators and business domains
 Support of a wide diversity of complex service attributes and requirements, with
intelligent distribution services across multiple access technologies
Service Trends and Requirements
 Future services will predominantly be offered on an “on-demand” basis and
will be highly demanding in terms of bandwidth.
 Will, therefore, require high levels of capacity, configurability and resiliency
from the underlying communications infrastructure.
 Wireless or converged fixed/wireless networks should:
 Offer high capacities to all potential user categories and support wide variety of
either nomadic and being “on-the-move” interoperable devices and services, a
variety of content formats and a multiplicity of delivery modes
 Guarantee robustness, resilience, trust and security in service platforms that are
much larger in complexity and scale than currently.
 As such, European telecommunications operators should aim to develop new
network infrastructures that will:
- overcome the long-term limitations of current implementations
- will be driven by the need for generalised mobility, high bandwidth,
scalability, security and support of a multiplicity of multimedia services
Scope of the FUTON programme
● Currently, two major trends in wireless communications are:
- development of a new broadband component
- integration of the variety of heterogeneous wireless technologies
● FUTON takes into account these two trends and aims to address the
growing demand for wireless services
● FUTON aims to develop a system for wireless service provisioning
with:
- True Broadband access
- Increased system capacity
Conventional cellular architecture
Main elements of current architecture:
- GSM Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) or UMTS Node Bs connect users to the
network and perform signal processing tasks
- These are in turn connected to a Base Station Controller (BSC) through microwave
links or cable.
- The BSC provides the “intelligence” behind the BTSs and controls a large number
of them. It handles radio channel allocations, controls handovers etc and acts as a
traffic concentrator towards the core network.
* Space multiplexing by treating radio signal from other cells as
unknown interference
 What would be an obvious solution to increase the system capacity?
 Cellular planning → Reduce cell size
 Do not treat signals from the different cells as unknown interference
Reduced processing
RSS
RAU
BTS
Joint Processing
RAU
BTS
(detection coding, resource
managing)
Service data
RNC
Central Unit
RAU
BTS
Radio signals transported transparently
 Allows soft combination / processing at the Central Unit (CU)  Signals from
different cells not treated as interference
 What about the link capacity?
 Have mobile devices communicating simultaneously with several antennas (similar
to MIMO concepts)
 Conceptually, this allows the antennas to be treated as physically distributed
antennas of one composite base station.
High Co-operation is needed.
 The key to achieve high cooperation is to have the radio signals
transparently transmitted/received to/from a central unit where all the signal
processing is performed
FUTON’s proposed solution
The network capacity (users/Km2) problem and the link capacity problem point to the
same solution:
 Perform a joint processing of spatially separated radio signals
Build an infrastructure that collects / distributes the radio signals from the different
antennas
The technology to build that: optical fiber
 Huge bandwidth
 Low losses
Radio-over-fiber (RoF) again?
 Generalized RoF network for application in cellular networks is a resurgent idea
but up to now not has not taken place
 RoF has always been thought of as a remoting or extension component
 Optical components still expensive to provide a clear balance towards the use of
generalized remote antenna units in 2-3G
 Trends call for a joint processing of distributed radio signals
 what is needed is much more than remoting
● Shift the vision of RoF as a remoting component to one of an enabling infrastructure
for joint processing at a central location or distributed processing of the radio signals
THIS IS THE OBJECTIVE OF FUTON
FUTON Architecture
 FUTON: Hybrid optical/radio infrastructure with distributed RAU units and joint central
processing
FUTON architecture for various
single serving areas connected to
same central unit
 Geographical area to be covered is divided in serving areas (or supercells),
where multifrequency RAUs are deployed and are linked to a central unit through
optical fiber connections that transport the radio signals transparently
 Different systems can coexist and be connected to the same central unit
FUTON: Summary of Objectives
 Technical level
Objective1 : Demonstrate
the feasibility of
broadband systems using
distributed antennas
Objective2 : Develop and
demonstrate efficient
cross-system algorithms
to meet the ABCS concept
Key enabling tool: transparent infrastructure to transport radio signals to allow
processing at central points of distributed sources
Objective3 : Develop a
flexible, reconfigurable
and upgradeable RoF
infrastructure
 Deployment/ business level
 Evaluate the implications on the current wireless architecture models of the FUTON concept,
determine cost models for upgradeability / replacement and provide roadmaps for evolution.
Main Benefits I
on a technical level
 FUTON’s architecture is inherently flexible and easily upgradeable, and provides a
promising framework for the efficient integration for fixed and wireless technologies.
 It can facilitate the design of efficient cross-system algorithms / protocols, and
enhance interoperability between heterogeneous systems
 It has the ability to achieve the very high bit rates sought for the broadband
component of future wireless systems, and an increase in the overall system capacity
 Overall, for network operators, it will provide a scheme with high reusability, easy
upgradeability (in order to accommodate new services and cope with the increasing
bandwidth demands), flexibility to provide ease of reconfiguration, and convergence
Main Benefits II
on a business level
 Provisioning of new broadband wireless services with several use-cases
 Owner of the RoF can be third party
→ infrastructure need not be owned by a single operator that provides every
service, but in fact, an operator can rent its usage to new wireless service
providers
 This will allow the operator to make extra revenues from its infrastructure, and
facilitate easy entrance of new service providers, fostering innovation for the benefit of
end-users
 Overall, the programme is expected to reinforce European leadership in both fixed
and wireless networks, developing stronger synergies between various
telecommunications stakeholders and contributing to the emergence of new business
models
 New European industrial and service opportunities may arise as a consequence,
especially in the rapidly advancing sector of mobile Internet access
Summary
 FUTON is a very recent, ambitious European research programme, that aims to
develop a new hybrid optical/radio infrastructure enabling high bit rates and enhanced
system capacity
 Proposes the development of a fiber-based infrastructure transparently connecting
distributed antenna units to a central unit where joint data processing can be
performed.
 The FUTON approach departs significantly from conventional RoF (Fiber
infrastructure not only for extension or remoting, but enabler for new wireless
architectures and techniques)
 Overall, FUTON aims at providing the long sought objective of broadband to the user
but with mobility added
supplement
FUTON: Consortium
►Leader: Nokia Siemens Networks (Portugal)
►Partners:
- ΟΤΕ (Greece)
- Instituto de Telecomunicações (Portugal)
- Portugal Telecom (Portugal)
- Motorola (France)
- Alcatel-Thales (France)
- University of Kent (UK)
- Πανεπιστήμιο Πάτρας (Greece)
- VIVO (Brazil)
- Sigint (Cyprus)
- Acorde (Spain)
- Nippon Institute of ICT (Japan)
- Jayteck (Poland)
- Tech. University of Dresden (Germany)
- VTT (Finland)
- University of Aalborg (Denmark)
VIVO
VTT
AAU
NICT
UNIK
TUD
MOT
AT
IT
ACO
JAY
NSN
PT
OTE
UniP
SI
MIMO
Transmitter
Precoding
Receiver
Processing
 Separate streams at the antennas  multiplexing gain (R=min[Mt, Mr])
• But achieved only if the channel is rich scattered
• But in mobile application, outdoor channel does not have too many major
scatterers, resulting in strongly correlated channel
 capacity scaling not achieved
• Furthermore when more than one pair of MIMO users exist, interference to
each other still exists, implying the requirement of joint processing of multiple
pair of MIMO links
Solution: Build a MIMO system with far apart antennas
The components of the DWS I
MT: Mobile Terminal
RAU: Remote Antenna Unit
 Unit that interfaces with the mobile terminal on one side and OTI on
the other side
 Gets / sends RF signals and transceives them to / from optical
OTI: Optical Transmission Infrastructure
 Optical network connecting RAU ports to CU
CU: Central Unit
 Physical location where the signals to / from the RAU’s covering a
given area are processed
MT
RAU
OTI
CU
The Components of the DWS II
More Detailed view
RAU
CSC_RAU
RAU_W
MT
U
Optical infrastructure
domain
CU
U1
OTI
V
CSC_CU
W
JPU
U2
Wireless Domain
Interfacing-conversion
• RAU_W (RAU Wireless) performs the transmitting / receiving
functions that are independent from the OTI.
• CSC_RAU (Conversion Separation Combination –RAU). Performs the
signal conversions between the optical and electrical.
• CSC_CU (Conversion Separation Combination –CU).
• JPU (Joint Processing Unit). Unit where the joint processing of the RF
signals for a set of RAU’s is performed.
Scenarios for Distributed Wireless Systems I
Evolutionary path
 The evolution of a legacy system (e.g. LTE),
eventually with larger bandwidth and aiming at
higher peak bit rates
 The base stations are stripped versions of a full
base station (only RF operation; s_BS)
RAU
Cell
Super Cell
• Can be sectorized and/or have multiple antennas
 The areas associated with each RAU are
grouped to form a cell with distributed antennas
 The signals from the RAU’s are transported
transparently to / from the CU
Serving Area
CSC_CU
U2
JPU
…
Uj
JPU
CU
• From an architecture point of view  identical to classical cellular network
but with a distributed base station
- Could allow some overlapping to facilitate handovers
Scenarios for Distributed Wireless Systems II
Evolutionary scenario
UMTS legacy
Evolution to DWS
RNC  Physical location of
CU
CN
CN
Serving
Drift
RNC
RNC
Controller
Controller
Node B
Node B
Node B
Central Unit 1
Node B
Central Unit 2
Serving
Drift
RNC
RNC
Controller
Controller
Node B
Node B
Node B
Node B
Scenarios for Distributed Wireless Systems III
Serving area i+1
Serving area i
Advanced Scenario
• Rationale
• In future wireless networks one should
have and accommodate
- Ability to reconfigure on the fly to meet
dynamic patterns
- Need to provide simple ways to upgrade /
reconfigure the network without need to redo
a new planning
Joint
processing area
• Implications in terms of the FUTON
concept
- RAU’s very simple
- The “planning” should be a dynamic allocation of
resources to be performed real-time at the CU
CSC_CU
U2
JPU
…
Uj
CU i
• Area Covered by a Central Unit: Serving Area
• The serving area can be quite large (e.g. equivalent to the area served by a RNC)
• Joint processing area: set of RAU’s which are jointly processed
• Overlapping may exist to facilitate handovers
Page 24
JPU
The optical transmission infrastructure I
The issue - transport of analog radio waveforms or digitized radio over
the fiber?
Key design aspects for the optical infrastrucuture
 Should be easy to support new wireless systems
 Should e easy to add new RAU’s, without need for a complete
replanning
Key aspects
Flexibility, reconfigurability
Page 25
The optical transmission
infrastructure II
Digital Transport
 Specific design for each radio
system
 Synchronization issues
 Offers noise immunity and
protection against component
impairments
 Very high bandwidth required
Analog Transport
With combination of subcarrier
multiplexing and WDM
high flexibility, transparency
Drawbacks
 Dynamic range of optical links
Furthermore if signal are in digital
format  can be transported like
analog waveforms
 provide easy integration of existing
digital interfaces (CPRI, OBSAI)
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The optical transmission
infrastructure III
•
Resources of the
optical
infrastructure
•
Optical wavelengths
•
Electrical
f3
f2
f1
subcarriers
l1
l2
l3
l4
l5
Optical wavelenghths
Digital optical signal for
the fixed network
Digitized radio
signals
RF signal
Reference RF signal
Page 27
The optical transport infrastructure IV
Optical wavelength address the
RAU’s
Electrical subcarriers, separate
different systems / sectors / antennas
at each RAU
Up and down converters
 transport of signals in the range
less than 10GHz where optical
components with low cost and
good linearity characteristics can
be developed
E/O
O/E
l1
l2
 l1 
 
 l2 
     f1
 
l 
 N
f2 
fK 
E/O
O/E
lN
E/O
O/E
CU
 l1 
 
 l2 
     f1
 
l 
 N
E/O
O/E
f2 
fK 
l1
l2
E/O
O/E
lN
E/O
O/E