Differential Traffic QoS Scheduling for 5G/6G Fronthaul Networks

The need to dynamically assign capacity to various network slices in virtualized C-RAN enabled 5G and beyond packet-switched networks require the added fronthaul network to be able to deliver standard bitrates. We therefore design a novel fronthaul network scheduling architecture and scheme based off the Burst Limiting Shaper (BLS) mechanism to provide Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees to service differential traffic which include ultra Reliable and Low Latency communication (URLLC) traffic and non-URLLC traffic In this work we compare our strategy to Weighted Round Robin (WRR) scheduling algorithm under bursty and low traffic conditions. Simulations are used to evaluate our schemes performance ad show how well it compares to WRR.

I. Introduction

To meet the performance requirements for 5G and beyond to 6G fronthaul (FH) networks, the IEEE Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) technology has been the focus of current FH research industry-wide and in academia. The ability for Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) based FH networks to adapt to the bandwidth requirements of the 5th Generation (5G) Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Everything (IoE) type traffic, together with massive multiple-input and multiple-output (mMIMO) applications, is of the essence.