Low Split Cloud RAN Opportunities and Challenges

Cloud Radio Access Network (RAN) is one of the new architectures introduced for cellular network base station. This architecture employs the virtualization of base station functions to be run on centralized data center or cloud infrastructure. However, there are still some base station functions need to be run on the remote site, just like traditional base station. Which functions must be run in cloud infrastructure and which functions must be run in remote site are defined based on the functional split definition. There are many functional split definition options defined by 3GPP and other consortiums. This paper discusses one of the functional split definition called Low Split. We explore the opportunities of this functional split definition for practical implementation, along with the challenge faced by it. In the end, we show that Low Split Cloud RAN is a promising architecture with a lot of virtualization benefits. However, it comes with challenging requirements for fronthaul throughput and latency.