King's College London

Splitting functionalities of radio access network
(RAN) and cloudification of such functionalities is considered as
one of the key enablers of the next generation mobile and wireless
networking, i.e. 5G, and is often referred to as software-defined
RAN, virtualized RAN or Cloud RAN. Defining the splitting
point, and maintaining the tight interaction between different
functionalities in the RAN is, however, critical. Success of such
cloudification depends on the availability of high speed fronthaul,
while high speed fronthauling is costly. In this paper we experiment
splitting MAC and PHY layer with fronthauling through
Ethernet that allows using commodity and low-cost industry
standard equipment. We examine the effect of packetization on
latency, and study the pros and cons of splitting MAC and PHY
layer, within a hardware-based testbed.