Transport Abstraction Models for an SDN-Controlled Centralized RAN

In a centralized radio access network (C-RAN) scenario the joint coordination of radio (e.g., remote radio units, baseband units) and transport (e.g., optical cross connects) resources can be achieved via software defined networking (SDN) control plane, where a global orchestrator harmonizes the use of resources across all network segments. The more accurate the information about each domain (i.e., the abstraction of wireless and transport resources) is, the better will be the outcome of the orchestration work. This letter presents three transport resources abstraction models along with their corresponding orchestration policies. Their performance are compared showing that there is not a single best abstraction strategy that fits all the cases. If radio resources are scarce compared to transport resources, complex transport abstraction models are not needed. Contrariwise, if enough radio resources are widely available, more detailed abstraction models are required for achieving good network performance, but at the expense of an increased implementation complexity.