DAHROUJ_LAYOUT_Author Layout 6/22/15 12:11 PM Page 66
HETEROGENEOUS CLOUD RADIO ACCESS NETWORKS
RESOURCE ALLOCATION IN
HETEROGENEOUS CLOUD RADIO ACCESS
NETWORKS: ADVANCES AND CHALLENGES
HAYSSAM DAHROUJ, AHMED DOUIK, OUSSAMA DHIFALLAH, TAREQ Y. AL-NAFFOURI,
AND MOHAMED-SLIM ALOUINI
ABSTRACT
Base station densification is increasingly used
by network operators to provide better through-
put and coverage performance to mobile sub-
scribers in dense data traffic areas. Such
densification is progressively diffusing the move
from traditional macrocell base stations toward
heterogeneous networks with diverse cell sizes
(e.g., microcell, picocell, femotcell) and diverse
radio access technologies (e.g., GSM, CDMA),
and LTE). The coexistence of the different net-
Hayssam Dahrouj is with work entities brings an additional set of chal-
Effat University. lenges, particularly in terms of the provisioning
of high-speed communications and the manage-
Ahmed Douik, Oussama ment of wireless interference. Resource sharing
Dhifallah, Tareq Y. Al- between different entities, largely incompatible
Naffouri, and Mohamed- in conventional systems due to the lack of inter-
Slim Alouini are with connections, becomes a necessity. By connecting
King Abdullah University all the base stations from different tiers to a cen-
of Science and Technolo- tral processor (referred to as the cloud) through
gy. wire/wireline backhaul links, the heterogeneous
cloud radio access network, H-CRAN, provides
Tareq Y. Al-Naffouri is an open, simple, controllable, and flexible
also with King Fahd Uni- paradigm for resource allocation. This article
versity of Petroleum and discusses challenges and recent developments in
Minerals. H-CRAN design. It proposes promising resource
allocation schemes in H-CRAN: coordinated
The work of T. Y. Al- scheduling, hybrid backhauling, and multicloud
Naffouri was supported association. Simulations results show how the
by KAUST project no. proposed strategies provide appreciable perfor-
EE002355 at the mance improvement compared to methods from
Research Institute, King recent literature.
Fahd University of
Petroleum and Minerals.
The work of M.-S. Aloui- INTRODUCTION
ni was supported by the The fifth generation (5G) mobile radio system is
Qatar National Research expected to satisfy the large demand for mobile
Fund (a member of the data services that is straining wireless networks
Qatar Foundation) [1]. The vision set by 5G to achieve remarkable
under NPRP Grant improvements in data capacity, delay reduction,
NPRP 5-250-2-087. The and energy efficiency pushes the wireless
statements made herein research communities in both academia and
are solely the responsi- industry to increase the density of base station
bility of the authors. (BS) deployments, particularly in urban areas, in
66 1536-1284/15/$25.00 © 2015 IEEE
order to provide better throughput and coverage
performance. This densification is made possible
by overlaying existing macrocell networks with
cells of diverse sizes (i.e., microcell, picocell,
femotcell, etc.) together with numerous radio
access technologies, including Global System for
Mobile Communications (GSM), code-division
multiple access (CDMA), Long Term Evolution
(LTE), and so on. The resulting intertier inter-
ference in the emerging heterogeneous networks
(HetNets) enforces inherent operational con-
straints resulting in a degradation of the network
performance. To better manage wireless inter-
ference, BSs from different tiers are connected
to a computing center (i.e., cloud) via wired/wire-
less backhaul links. This configuration forms the
so-called heterogeneous cloud radio access net-
work (H-CRAN) [2]. The H-CRAN makes effi-
cient resource sharing between the different
entities feasible through the cloud by means of
jointly encoding (decoding) the messages using
downlink (uplink) coordinated resource alloca-
tion techniques (e.g., beamforming, power con-
trol, BS association, scheduling). The H-CRAN
architecture is a practical realization of coordi-
nated multipoint (CoMP) transmission, and
innately inherits its advantages.
CHALLENGES
In conventional HetNet operation, the process
of coordinating the multipoint transmission and
reception requires significant signaling overhead
and message passing between the BSs of differ-
ent tiers, so as to mitigate intertier interference.
Messages and signalling are exchanged between
pairs of BSs via connecting links that are typical-
ly capacity limited, so such signaling may not
always be feasible. Further, densification in con-
ventional HetNets improves the system through-
put, but at the same time consumes high energy
(i.e., low energy efficiency [3]). While HetNets
are already standardized in 4G, their original 4G
architecture is therefore not well designed to
support the challenging 5G technology require-
ments [4].
IEEE Wireless Communications • June 2015
DAHROUJ_LAYOUT_Author Layout 6/22/15 12:11 PM Page 67
Optical backhaul link
Wireless backhaul link
(a)
Figure 1. Heterogenous radio access networks schemes: a) heterogeneous cloud radio access network with diverse cell sizes (macro-
cell, microcell, picocell); BSs from different tiers are connected to the cloud via either optical or wireless backhaul links; b) hetero-
geneous cloud radio access network with multiple clouds; each cloud connects to a set of BSs through hybrid backhauling.
To overcome the limitations of conventional
HetNets, a top-down architectural change is
expected to be at the center of development of
5G systems via connecting the BSs to central
clouds, and also moving the networks toward
user-centric architectures. Unlike conventional
HetNet operation, in H-CRANs, entities are
connected to the central cloud, where most of
the control signaling takes place. This configura-
tion allows users and machines to communicate
via several possible sets of BSs. Such a drastic
shift in the cellular paradigm in the long run
may lead to deploying more BSs than the cell
phones served. This leads to several open-ended
questions about the future of BSs as indepen-
dent heterogeneous entities, capable of manag-
ing resources in ultra-dense networks. Thanks to
virtualization, the H-CRAN moves the majority
of basic network functionalities, particularly
resource management, from the BS side to the
central cloud side. Such a separation between
the control plane (cloud) and the data plane
(BSs that are typically geographically distant)
changes the way network services are provided.
It introduces several new challenges for network
modeling, analysis, and especially for new
resource allocation and optimization schemes.
H-CRAN design combines both BS densifica-
tion and centralized processing. It reduces the
distance between the BS and the users, leading
to both higher achievable data rates and efficient
spectrum exploitation enabled by the higher
reuse of time-frequency resources across multi-
ple BSs. Such design, however, faces significant
challenges, mainly due to the stringent 5G
requirements, which can be summarized as fol-
lows:
Massive Capacity Increase: The amount of
data a 5G H-CRAN serves is expected to be
1000-fold more than the capacity of 4G. Key tech-
nologies to achieve such a data deluge include, in
addition to densification, exploring new frequency
bands through mmWave spectrum allocation and
spectral efficiency enhancement through massive
multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) deploy-
ment.
Significant Energy Savings: In 5G networks,
energy (measured by Joule per bit) is expected
to be 100 times less than its counterpart in 4G
IEEE Wireless Communications • June 2015
(b)
systems. HetNet deployment has a direct effect
on decreasing the propagation distance between
the different transmitter-receiver pairs, thereby
increasing the overall system power efficiency.
However, backhaul deployment increases power
consumption, so additional power adjustments
are needed on the level of backhaul links con-
necting the BSs from the different tiers to the
central cloud. Power adjustment promises to be
an interesting area of future research, as high-
lighted later in this article.
Latency Management: To support real-time
mobile control and applications of device-to-
device (D2D) communications and Internet of
things (IoT) technology, drastic reductions in
access time down to 1 ms round-trip latency
(compared to 15 ms in 4G systems) is expected.
Frame restructuring and cross-layer optimization
between the network and physical layers (PHY)
(e.g., joint network coding and PHY designs) are
needed to provide almost zero distance connec-
tivity between all connected machines. Optimiz-
ing the backhaul links also adds an additional
factor to overall round-trip latency management.
A common denominator among the above
challenges is the question of how to manage the
network resources across the different tiers and
different dimensions (space, time, frequency) by
choosing suitable network functionalities (user
association, beamforming, scheduling, power and
spectrum optimization, etc.) so as to achieve
such promising metrics (rate, power, latency).
RESEARCH ON H-CRANS
By enabling joint processing at the cloud, key
research features become those related to the
joint provisioning of resources between the back-
haul links and the heterogeneous radio access
network. Figure 1a depicts an example of a Het-
Net of multiple tiers (macrocells, microcells, pic-
ocells), all connected to a central cloud via
wireless or optical fiber backhaul links. Physical
properties of wired and wireless backhauls are
innately different, and each fits specific design
requirements. While fiber optical backhauls are
high-capacity links suitable for cells of medium
to large sizes (micro and macrocells) [5], their
cost and scalability remain major issues, espe-
cially in dense HetNets of hundreds or thou-
67
DAHROUJ_LAYOUT_Author Layout 6/22/15 12:11 PM Page 68
To fully exploit the bene- sands of BSs (access points). On the other hand,
wireless backhaul offers a cheap and scalable
fits of the powerful cen- solution for small cell deployment [6]; however,
its design performance is coupled with the natu-
tralized cloud, joint ral latency problem of the wireless channels, and
precoding of user signals severely depends on the conditions of the wire-
less medium. In future H-CRANs, cells of differ-
are typically performed ent sizes coexist, and hence both wire and
at the cloud server, wireless links are needed. Such heterogeneous
backhauling brings in a set of new research
resulting in analog sig- problems, and opens several questions on how to
jointly account for the quantization design of the
nals at the cloud that capacity limited fiber links [7] and the design of
are compressed and for- the transceivers of the wireless backhaul link
through optimally allocating its radio resources
warded to the corre- [6].
sponding BSs over the The H-CRAN scenario in Fig. 1a represents
a fully centralized solution, where all processing
backhaul links, and and control units are located at a single central
cloud. With mass deployments of BSs, larger
eventually transmitted areas with data traffic may be served as well by
by the BS antennas. several non-collocated clouds, where each cloud
serves a set of BSs, as shown in Fig. 1b. In this
situation, every user can be served by a single
cloud only, and the cloud needs to distribute the
user’s data to the BSs connected to that specific
cloud only. This model is an abstraction of the
problem considered in [8], and is subject to sev-
eral future research problems related to multi-
cloud coordination for distributed storage and
resource management.
This article first sheds light on advances in
the resource allocation problem in H-CRANs,
particularly in topics related to user-to-BSs asso-
ciation, quantization design, and joint resource
allocation and flow control. Then it proposes
promising resource allocation schemes: coordi-
nated scheduling, hybrid backhauling, and multi-
cloud association. Simulation results show how
the proposed strategies provide appreciable per-
formance improvement compared to methods
from recent literature. The article further pre-
sents some future research topics.
RESOURCE ALLOCATION IN H-CRANS
The H-CRAN amalgamates both the ability of
joint signal processing of data belonging to dif-
ferent users, and strong processors capable of
computing high-complexity algorithms that con-
ventional BS processors in HetNets are inca-
pable of carrying. Further, due to the separation
between the data and control planes in H-
CRANs, antennas from BSs belonging to BSs
from different tiers essentially form a virtual
MIMO antenna array capable of multiplexing
multiple users across different dimensions
through joint resource allocation. This section
highlights the advances in optimization in BS
association and resource allocation schemes that
are applicable to H-CRANs.
BASE STATION ASSOCIATION
The performance of wireless network critically
depends on the optimal user association, that is,
which user roams to which BS. As conventional
HetNets are designed under the classical cellular
model, BS association and cell selection termi-
nologies are used interchangeably. For such sys-
tems, a cell-centric architecture is assumed
68
under which every user can associate with one
BS only [9, references therein].
With the fundamental architectural changes
in H-CRANs, each user’s data is processed in
the cloud, so every user can communicate with
several heterogeneous nodes, also known as a
user-centric architecture. Each user, device, or
machine is expected to communicate with one or
many BSs at the same time. Determining the
optimal user-to-BS association, in general,
becomes a combinatorial optimization problem
of high complexity. Exhaustive search is infeasi-
ble for any reasonably sized network, even with
very powerful processors at the cloud. To address
the BS association problem, simplified proce-
dures have been used recently to address the
problem in cloud radio access networks (C-
RANs) [5, 10]. In each of these references, the
user-to-BS association problem involves solving
a sparse beamforming problem that returns
which users should be served by which BSs. The
solutions in [5, 10] are inspired by results from
compressive sensing, in which the original l 0 -
norm minimization problem is recast as a
reweighted l1-norm minimization, leading to effi-
cient solutions to the BS association problem.
It would be interesting to see such proce-
dures generalized to the multicloud situation
shown in Fig. 1b. The problem would then
involve joint cloud assignment and BS associa-
tion, as highlighted later.
JOINT PRECODING AND BACKHAUL COMPRESSION
The capacity limitations of the backhaul links
connecting the BSs to the central cloud create a
big challenge in the design of H-CRANs. To
fully exploit the benefits of the powerful central-
ized cloud, joint precoding of user signals are
typically performed at the cloud server, resulting
in analog signals at the cloud that are com-
pressed and forwarded to the corresponding BSs
over the backhaul links, and eventually transmit-
ted by the BS antennas.
The above approach involves both a precod-
ing problem at the cloud and a compression
problem at the backhaul links, which introduce
quantization noises that are a function of the
backhaul capacity constraints. Joint design of the
precoding and correlation matrices of the quan-
tization noises is studied in both single-cloud [7]
and multicloud [8] scenarios. Both [7, 8] propose
an iterative algorithm that converges to local
optima using the majorization minimization
approach (MM). Several compression techniques
are additionally proposed in an uplink single-
cloud framework [11].
JOINT RESOURCE ALLOCATION AND
FLOW CONTROL
Besides backhaul quantization design, traffic
engineering within the backhaul link is a critical
performance factor. For example, constraints
such as total flow rate of each backhaul link and
per-node flow conservation constraints should be
taken into consideration in a C-RAN’s design.
However, they are often neglected under the
assumption that the data can be routed without
any cost to the backhaul network. Due to the
huge traffic demand in next generation H-
IEEE Wireless Communications • June 2015
DAHROUJ_LAYOUT_Author Layout 6/22/15 12:11 PM Page 69
CRANs, a large number of BSs from different
tiers would connect to the central cloud, so the
assumption of zero-cost backhaul data routing
becomes invalid.
It is then essential to consider the traffic
engineering and routing problems across the net-
works, in conjunction with the joint resource
allocation problem. The minimum flow rate
maximization problem was recently considered
in a H-CRAN setup [12, references therein].
The setup in [12] solves a min-rate maximization
problem using an alternating direction method
of multipliers (ADMM). The method in [12]
allows for distributed implementation and also
converges to a stationary point. Incorporating
such a problem setup in a multicloud scenario
would be an interesting investigation for future
research.
PROPOSED
RESOURCE ALLOCATION SCHEMES
The prolific heterogeneity, number of BSs, net-
work size, and backhaul constraints make inter-
ference management for H-CRANs a
challenging task. With its ability to efficiently
allocate resources and coordinate between BSs
across the network, the H-CRAN has great
potential to manage interference through smart
BS coordination and joint signal processing. H-
CRANs are expected to achieve an appreciable
performance improvement over the existing
technologies and to be the core architecture
planned as a future 5G standard. Besides the
topics mentioned in the previous section, this
section provides some of our recent findings in
coordinated scheduling, hybrid backhauling, and
multicloud association in H-CRANs. Unlike
conventional HetNets, the computation burden
in such proposed schemes in H-CRANs is car-
ried out by the centralized processor at the
cloud, and the decisions are then passed to the
BSs.
COORDINATED SCHEDULING
In the resource allocation context, scheduling
denotes the strategy according to which each
user is active at every time/frequency block. In
conventional cellular systems, classical propor-
tional fairness scheduling is adopted with no
inter-BS coordination, and also assumes a pre-
assigned association of users and BSs. In H-
CRANs, however, networks are designed in a
user-centric architectural model, and joint signal
processing is performed, which requires a sub-
stantial amount of backhaul communications.
This section presents a coordinated schedul-
ing scheme, first presented by the authors in
[13], in a cloud-enabled network setup. The
cloud is only responsible for synchronization and
user scheduling across the network, as shown in
Fig. 2. Unlike signal-level coordination, schedul-
ing-level coordination does not require massive
backhaul communication and thus can be imple-
mented efficiently. The scheduling policy is first
decided at the cloud, which has powerful proces-
sors for centralized algorithm computation.
In this setup, each user can be scheduled to a
single BS but possibly to many of its resource
IEEE Wireless Communications • June 2015
Low-rate link
BS
Cloud
User
Cell
Figure 2. H-CRAN with a single cloud. The cloud is connected to the BSs
via low-rate links, and is only responsible for synchronization and user
scheduling across the network.
blocks as well. The problem of interest becomes
maximizing the network-wide utility subject to
user connectivity constraints, where the maxi-
mization is over all possible users to time/fre-
quency resource block assignment. A brute force
approach to solving such a complicated combi-
natorial problem would involve searching over
all possible users to time/frequency resource
block assignments that satisfy the connectivity
constraints. For each combination, calculate the
total utility. The optimal scheduling policy is
then the combination that gives the maximal
total utility. The space for such a search is, how-
ever, exponentially large, which makes such an
exhaustive search strategy clearly infeasible.
Proposed Coordinated Scheduling Scheme: In order to
solve the above complicated coordinated
scheduling problem, the authors propose an effi-
cient graph-theoretical-based approach in [13].
The main idea is to first construct the scheduling
graph, in which each vertex is seen as a 3-tuple
representing an association between user, BS,
and time/frequency resource block. Two distinct
vertices are connected if they do not represent
the same time/frequency resource block, or if the
same user is connected to different BSs, so as to
satisfy the connectivity constraints. The original
scheduling problem can then be reformulated as
a maximum weight clique problem over the
cliques with size equal to the total number of
time/frequency resource blocks in the network,
and where the weight of each vertex in the
scheduling graph is the benefit of the corre-
sponding association represented by the vertex.
Such a maximum weight clique formulation can
be solved using efficient algorithms adopted
from graph theory and its applications.
The graph theory approach presented in [13]
provides a generic framework for the discrete
mapping problem. It can be used in several
69
DAHROUJ_LAYOUT_Author Layout 6/22/15 12:11 PM Page 70

resource allocation problems in H-CRANs (e.g.,
coordinated scheduling and power control, user
association, channel assignment, antenna selec-
tion). Coordinated scheduling and power control
can especially be seen as a natural generalization
of the scheduling approach used in [13]. Such
generalization is reached by using sophisticated
graph theoretical techniques for constructing the
equivalent higher-dimensional graph. To evalu-
ate the gain harvested from coordinated schedul-
ing in a dense H-CRAN, Fig. 3 plots the
sum-rate in bits per second per Hertz vs. the
number of users in a network formed by a single
700
Coordinated scheduling
Round-robin scheduling
650
600
Average sum rate (b/s/Hz)
cloud, 21 BSs, and 5 time/frequency blocks per
BS frame. As the figure shows, coordinated
scheduling brings significant performance
improvement compared to conventional round-
robin scheduling. The figure especially shows
how the performance improvement in bits per
second per Hertz of our proposed scheme
increases as the number of users increases. This
is due to the fact that interference becomes
higher as the number of users increases, so the
role of the cloud in mitigating interference
becomes more important.
HYBRID BACKHAULING
Fiber optic backhauls are relatively expensive
but provide high-capacity links suitable for cells
of medium to large size [5]. Wireless backhaul,
on the other hand, offers a cheap and scalable
solution for smaller cell deployment [6]. The
diversity of cell sizes and radio access technolo-
gies in H-CRANs necessitates heterogeneous

connections between the central cloud and the

550 BSs from different tiers (i.e., coexistence of both
wired and wireless backhaul links). Such addi-
500 tional heterogeneity creates several challenges
and potential research directions, particularly in
topics related to joint backhaul and RAN
450
resource allocation. The following subsection
presents a motivating design example for hybrid
400 backhauling in H-CRANs.

350 Joint Precoding, Compression and Power Optimization :

Consider a downlink H-CRAN with both optical
300 fiber and wireless backhaul links, as shown in
70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 Fig. 4, which illustrates an H-CRAN formed by
Number of users U seven BSs, three wireline backhaul links, and
four wireless backhaul links. Each wireline link l
Figure 3. H-CRAN with a single cloud for a network composed of 21 BSs. has a capacity limit denoted by Cl. The capacity
The number of time/frequency blocks is 5. of each wireless backhaul link m, on the other
hand, is a function of the wireless medium and
can be expressed as a nonconvex function of the
transmit power of each wireless backhaul link
input terminal Pm (non-convexity is due to inter-
ference caused by other wireless backhaul links).
Wireline link
Wireless link Furthermore, the network comprises several sin-
gle-antenna mobile users. The resulting network
Base station
performance becomes a direct function of set-
Mobile user ting the optimal quantization correlation matrix
between the wired backhaul links, the optimal
power allocation of the wireless backhaul links,
the user-to-BS association problem, and the
sparse beamforming solution of each user across
the network. Finding the jointly global optimal
solution to this problem is highly complex. This
section presents an efficient heuristic procedure
to solve the problem.

Heuristic Solution: In order to tackle the aforemen-

tioned challenging but interesting optimization
problem, this subsection adopts a three-step iter-
ative algorithm first presented in [14]. Specifical-
ly, in the first step, fix the transmit power of the
wireless backhaul links. Then solve the problem
of minimizing a weighted group-sparsity induc-
ing norm to determine the active set of BSs and
their corresponding beamforming vectors using
an approach similar to [5]. Using the classical
rate-distortion relationship between the capacity
Figure 4. H-CRAN with both wired/wireless backhaul links. Solid lines rep- constraints of the wired links and the corre-
resent wire backhaul links; dashed lines represent wireless backhaul links. sponding quantization noise correlation entries,

70 IEEE Wireless Communications • June 2015

DAHROUJ_LAYOUT_Author Layout 6/22/15 12:11 PM Page 71

compute the quantization noise levels by fixing

the sparse beamformers obtained in the first 90
step. Finally, solve for the power optimization
problem of the power of the wireless links by fix- 80
ing both the quantization noise levels and the

Average network power consumption (W)

beamforming vectors found in the first two steps.
The power optimization step especially requires 70
invoking the principle of conservation of data
rate between the inflow (data from cloud to BS) 60
and outflow (data from BS to users), so as to set
upper rate constraints for the power optimiza-
50
tion problem. Such an approach transforms the
power optimization problem to a classical power
minimization problem subject to QoS con- 40
straints.
To evaluate the performance of the proposed
30
method, consider a hybrid backhaul H-CRAN
network consisting of L = 12 single-antenna BSs
Proposed algorithm
connected to a cloud through 8 wireline back- 20 Sparsity pattern (SP) algorithm
haul links and 4 wireless backhaul links. Figure 5 Coordinated beamforming (CB) algorithm
shows the average network power consumption Greedy selection (GS) algorithm
10
vs. different signal-to-interference-plus-noise -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
ratio (SINR) targets. Each point is averaged Target SNR (dB)
over 100 randomly and independently generated
network realizations. The figure shows that the Figure 5. Average network power consumption vs. target SINR.
proposed algorithm outperforms both the sparse
pattern and coordinated beamforming classical
solutions. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm
approaches the global optimal solution (denoted
by greedy selection in the figure), especially at
high SINR. Base
station
MULTICLOUD H-CRANS
The majority of the aforementioned works con-
sider that the whole network is connected to the User
same cloud (i.e., all BSs in the network are con-
nected to the same computing center). This
assumption can be unrealistic in practical situa-
tions due to the distance separating BSs in the
network. Moreover, connecting many BSs to the
same cloud increases the computation burden on
the cloud. Given that the majority of scheduling
problems are computationally exhaustive, it is
crucial to distribute the computation across mul-
tiple clouds in the network.
Consider the multicloud network shown in
Fig. 6, where clouds are geographically distant, Cloud
and each cloud is responsible for coordinating
a subset of the available BSs in the network.
Cell
To account for both intercloud and intracloud
interference, an interesting but challenging
problem is to assign users to clouds, and sub-
sequently to one or more BSs within each
cloud. Since the clouds are physically separat- Figure 6. A multicloud system with seven seven clouds and three basesta-
ed, the association problem should be tions per cloud.
addressed under the constraint that each user
can be served by a single cloud at most, but
possibly by multiple BSs connected to that mented in a distributed fashion across differ-
cloud, taking into consideration the budget ent clouds (perhaps with a reasonable amount
constraint of each cloud. For example, the of information exchange between the clouds).
number of users each cloud can serve cannot We recently make an effort toward devising a
exceed the total number of antennas of the distributed cloud association strategy in [15]
BSs connected to that cloud so as to preserve via an auction-based iterative approach. The
high multiplexing gains. proposed algorithm can be implemented in a
Finding the global optimal solution of the distributed fashion through a reasonable
above user-to-cloud association problem may exchange of information between the clouds,
require an infeasible exhaustive search over where each cloud iteratively bids for its own
the entire network. It becomes crucial instead users by solving a knapsack algorithm as a sub-
to look for simplified procedures that help routine. The setup in [15], however, assumes
derive greedy algorithms, which can be imple- infinite capacity backhaul links, and needs fur-

IEEE Wireless Communications • June 2015 71

DAHROUJ_LAYOUT_Author Layout 6/22/15 12:12 PM Page 72
By virtue of
virtualization, H-CRAN
moves the majority of
basic network
functionalities, particularly
resource management,
from base-stations to
the central cloud. Such
a separation between
the control and data
planes changes the way
network services are
historically provided.
72
ther research follow-up on how to solve the
distributed cloud association problem and find
the correlation matrix of the quantization
noise in a joint manner.
FUTURE RESEARCH
Coordinated scheduling, hybrid backhauls, and
multicloud resource allocation trigger a set of
other interesting problems in the field, such as
how to solve the resource allocation problems
while accounting for channel estimation error
and channel feedback issues (e.g., latency, over-
head). Other topics of future research are cross-
layer optimization in H-CRANs, and finding
optimized ways of exploiting next generation
enabling technologies (massive MIMO,
mmWave, D2D, and M2M) by means of offload-
ing and routing data among devices and
machines to account for both spatial and tempo-
ral data fluctuations, as in multihop routing.
Important research features that need to be
addressed here are how to design algorithms
that are partially centralized (resource manage-
ment at the cloud) and distributed (data routing
at the heterogeneous nodes), as a function of
both traffic distribution and the available radio
resources.
CONCLUSION
A top-down architectural change is expected to
be at the center of development of 5G systems.
By connecting base stations from different tiers
to central clouds, and also moving the net-
works toward user-centric architectures, users’
devices and machines are able to communicate
via several possible sets of heterogeneous
nodes to form large-scale H-CRANs. Such a
drastic shift in the cellular paradigm introduces
several open-ended and cross-disciplinary
research problems, and is arguably the biggest
change in the wireless paradigm in the last 20
years. By virtue of virtualization, H-CRANs
move the majority of basic network functionali-
ties, particularly resource management, from
base stations to the central cloud. Such a sepa-
ration between the control and data planes
changes the way network services are histori-
cally provided. It introduces several new chal-
lenges for network modeling, analysis, and
especially for new resource allocation and opti-
mization schemes. This article sheds light on
several H-CRAN challenges and advances, and
also suggests several promising topics for future
work.
REFERENCES
[1] J. G. Andrews et al., “What Will 5G Be?,” IEEE JSAC,
vol. 32, no. 6, 2014, pp. 1065–82.
[2] M. Peng et al., “Heterogeneous Cloud Radio Access
Networks: A New Perspective for Enhancing Spectral
and Energy Efficiencies,” IEEE Wireless Commun., vol.
21, no. 6, Dec. 2014, pp. 126–35.
[3] M. Peng et al., “Energy-Efficient Resource Assignment
and Power Allocation in Heterogeneous Cloud Radio
Access Networks,” IEEE Trans. Vehic. Tech., no. 99, Dec.
2014, pp. 1–13.
[4] F. Boccardi et al., “Five Disruptive Technology Directions
for 5G,” IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 52, no. 2, Feb. 2014,
pp. 74–80.
[5] Y. Shi, J. Zhang, and K. B. Letaief, “Group Sparse Beam-
forming for Green Cloud-RAN,” IEEE Trans. Wireless
Commun., vol. 13, no. 5, May 2014, pp. 2809–23.
[6] H. Dahrouj et al., “Power Spectrum Optimization for
Interference Mitigation via Iterative Function Evalua-
tion,” Proc. 1st Wksp. Distrib. Antenna Sys. for Broad-
band Mobile Commun., IEEE GLOBECOM, Houston, TX,
Dec. 2011.
[7] S. H. Park et al., “Joint Precoding and Multivariate Back-
haul Compression for the Downlink of Cloud Radio
Access Networks,” IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol.
61, no. 22, Nov. 2013, pp. 5645–58.
[8] —, “Inter-Cluster Design of Precoding and Fronthaul Com-
pression for Cloud Radio Access Networks,” IEEE Wireless
Commun. Letters, vol. 3, no. 4, Apr. 2014, pp. 369–72.
[9] K. Shen and W. Yu, “Distributed Pricing-Based User
Association for Downlink Heterogeneous Cellular Net-
works,” IEEE JSAC, vol. 32, no. 6, 2014, pp. 1100–13.
[10] J. Zhao, T. Q. S. Quek, and Z. Lei, “Coordinated Multi-
point Transmission with Limited Backhaul Data Trans-
fer,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 12, no. 6, June
2013, pp. 2762–75.
[11] Y. Zhou and W. Yu, “Optimized Backhaul Compression
for Uplink Cloud Radio Access Network,” IEEE JSAC,
vol. 32, no. 6, June 2014, pp. 1295–1307.
[12] W. C. Liao et al., “Min Flow Rate Maximization for
Software Defined Radio Access Networks,” IEEE JSAC,
vol. 32, no. 6, June 2014, pp. 1282–94.
[13] A. Douik et al., “Coordinated Scheduling for the Downlink
of Cloud Radio-Access Networks,” accepted for IEEE ICC
2015, Arxiv e-prints, vol. abs/1411.4144, 2015.
[14] O. Dhifallah et al., “Joint Hybrid Backhaul and Access
Links Design in Cloud-Radio Access Networks,” accept-
ed for IEEE VTC Fall-2015, Arxiv e-prints, vol.
abs/1502.07586, 2015.
[15] H. Dahrouj, T. Y. Al-Naffouri, and M.-S. Alouini, “Dis-
tributed Cloud Association for Downlink Multicloud
Radio Access Networks,” Conf. Info. Science and Sys.,
Arxiv e-prints, vol. abs/1503.00267, 2015.
BIOGRAPHIES
HAYSSAM DAHROUJ [S’02, M’11, SM’15] (hayssam.dahrouj@
gmail.com) received his B.E. degree (with high distinction)
in computer and communications engineering from the
American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon, in 2005, and
his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering
from the University of Toronto (UofT), Canada, in 2010. In
May 2015, he joined the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at Effat University as an assistant
professor. Between April 2014 and May 2015, he was with
the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and
Engineering group at King Abdullah University of Science
and Technology (KAUST) as a research associate. Prior to
joining KAUST, he was an industrial postdoctoral fellow at
UofT, in collaboration with BLiNQ Networks Inc., Kanata,
Canada, where he worked on developing practical solu-
tions for the design of non-line-of sight wireless backhaul
networks. His contributions to the field led to five patents.
During his doctoral studies at UofT, he pioneered the idea
of coordinated beamforming as a means of minimizing
intercell interference across multiple base stations. The
journal paper on this subject was ranked second in the
2013 IEEE Marconi paper awards in wireless communica-
tions. His main research interests include cloud radio access
networks, cross-layer optimization, cooperative networks,
convex optimization, distributed algorithms, and free-space
optical communications.
AHMED DOUIK [S’13] (ahmed.douik@caltech.edu) received
his B.Eng. degree in electronic and communication engi-
neering (with first class honors) from Ecole Polytechnique
de Tunisie, Rue El-Khawarizmi, Tunisia, in 2013, and his
M.S. degree in electrical engineering from KAUST in 2015.
His research interests include cloud radio access networks,
network coding, single- and multihop transmission, and
cooperation communication.
OUSSAMA DHIF-ALLAH (oussama.dhifallah@kaust.edu.sa) is a
Master’s student in electrical engineering, part of the Com-
puter, Electrical, and Mathematical Science and Engineer-
ing (CEMSE) Division at KAUST. Before joining KAUST in
2014, he received his Diplme d’Ingnieur with honors from
Ecole Polytechnique de Tunisie. His research interests fall
mainly in the field of communication theory.
TAREQ Y. AL-NAFFOURI [M’10] (tareq.alnaffouri@kaust.edu.sa)
received his B.S. degrees in mathematics and electrical
engineering (with first honors) from King Fahd University
of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in
1994, his M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the
IEEE Wireless Communications • June 2015
DAHROUJ_LAYOUT_Author Layout 6/22/15 12:12 PM Page 73
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 1998, and his
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford Uni-
versity, California, in 2004. He was a visiting scholar at the
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, in 2005 and
Fulbright scholar at the University of Southern California in
2008. He is currently an associate professor in the Electrical
Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum
and Minerals, and jointly with the Electrical Engineering
Department, KAUST. His research interests lie in the areas
of sparse, adaptive, and statistical signal processing, and
their applications in wireless communications and multius-
er information theory. Most recently, he has been interest-
ed in compressive sensing and random matrix theory and
their applications. He has over 80 publications in journals
and conference proceedings, nine standards contributions,
four issued patents, four patents issued and four pending.
He received the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE-
IEEE Wireless Communications • June 2015
EURASIP Workshop on Nolinear Signal and Image Process-
ing 2001 for his work on adaptive filtering analysis; the
IEEE Education Society Chapter Achievement award in
2008; and the Al-Marai Award for innovative research in
communications in 2009. He has also been serving as an
Associate Editor of Transactions on Signal Processing since
August 2013.
MOHAMED-SLIM ALOUINI [S’94, M’98, SM’03, F’09] (slim.aloui-
ni@kaust.edu.sa) received his Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from the California Institute of Technology in
1998. He served as a faculty member at the University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis, and then at Texas A&M University
at Qatar, Education City, Doha, before joining KAUST as a
professor of electrical engineering in 2009. His current
research interests include the modeling, design, and per-
formance analysis of wireless communications systems.
73