19th International Conference on Telecommunications (ICT 2012)

Base Stations Evolution: Toward 4G Technology

Michel Nahas*, Ahmed Saadani**, Jean-Pierre Charles** and Zouhair El-Bazzal*
*School of Engineering - Department of CCE **Orange Labs
Lebanese International University (LIU) 38-40 rue du General Leclerc
P.O. Box: 146404 Mazraa, Beirut, Lebanon 92794 Issy les Moulineaux Cedex 9, France
Email: michel.nahas, zouhair.bazzal@liu.edu.lb Email: ahmed.saadani, jeanpierre.charles@orange.com

AbstractRecently, a distributed architecture for base stations

was proposed. In this new configuration, the base station is
separated into two parts: the radio frequency part near the
antenna and the baseband processing unit. The interface connec-
tion between them is ensured by an optical fiber. In this paper,
we present the ongoing works on standardization of the optical
interface and the proposed solutions by telecommunications
equipment manufacturers for this new architecture. Moreover,
key technologies of 4G are recalled and the effect of the evolution
of base station models on future cellular systems is evaluated.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Mobile network operators are increasingly challenged to
improve the capacity, the bandwidth, the quality of service
and to enhance their network coverage in order to meet the
customers needs. Simultaneously, they must find ways to
reduce capital (CAPEX) and operational costs (OPEX) of the
networks while delivering both new and existing services and
maintaining the quality of service. With the advent of new
generations of networks standards, operators are faced to some
constraints:
Space limitations: many locations, such as roofs and
tower tops, do not have enough space for traditional base
stations (BS).
High cost related to deployment operations: they need
flexible options for deploying new base stations in order
to reduce the time-to-market.
Support of multi-technologies using the same hardware
with new wireless network standards.
To efficiently manage the evolving complexity of the stan-
dards, continuous research efforts are ongoing leading to the
innovative concept of distributed base station. Distributed BS
provides deployment flexibility, costs reduction, high capacity,
coverage and network performance, meeting the network needs
of operators. This new architecture, compared to traditional
centralized base stations (Figure 1), splits physically the base
station to two components: Baseband Unit (BBU) and Remote
Radio Head (RRH) (Figure 2). The RRH, performing analogue
processing, can be mounted on the tower near the antenna
thanks to its small volume and weight. The baseband digital
processing is performed in the BBU that is connected to the
corresponding RRH by means of optical fiber by using digital
radio-over-fibre (D-RoF) technology. This modular design op-
timizes available space and deployment time and can speed up
Fig. 1. Conventional Base Station architecture.
the deployment of next generation of cellular mobile networks
(4G).
Since year 2002, the principal actors in the telecommuni-
cations market started working on different standards for the
interface between the BBU and RRH:
OBSAI (Open Base Station Architecture Initiative) [1]
provides modularity and interoperability by specifying
internal base station modules and interfaces needed to
communicate among the modules. It takes into account
four protocol layers: physical, data link, transport and
application. However interoperability is not achieved and
vendors are still working well to reach this goal.
CPRI (Common Public Radio Interface) [2] specifies the
key internal interface between the BBU called Radio
Equipment Control (REC) and the RRH called Radio
Equipment (RE) using layer 1 and layer 2.
ORI (Open Radio equipment Interface) [3] provides an
improvement of CPRI by completing low layers specifica-
tion and adding the layer 3 for Control and Management
(C&M) messages between REC and RE.

978-1-4673-0747-5/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE


Fig. 2. Distributed Base Station architecture.
In this paper, we review the progress of the standardiza-
tion work for the distributed interface of new base stations.
Moreover, we survey the actual products for distributed BS
available in the mobile market and the proposed solutions
by the equipment vendors and how they can enhance the
deployment of 4G technologies.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the features
of 4G systems are described. The distributed architecture of BS
is presented in Section III and we describe the three interface
standards (OBSAI, CPRI, ORI). The available products for
distributed BS are reported in Section IV and the effect of
distributed BS on the development of 4G systems is discussed
in Section V. In Section VI, we give conclusions.
II. E NABLING T ECHNOLOGIES FOR 4G S YSTEMS
Third Generation (3G) wireless systems have been deployed
on a broad scale all over the world. An evolution of the radio
access technology has also been taken by the 3rd Genera-
tion Partnership Project (3GPP) through the introduction of
High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and Enhanced
Uplink (HSUPA). Even if these technologies provides 3GPP
with a competitive radio access technology they do not take
benefits from the potential gain of MIMO with high number
of antennas or the inter-cell interference reduction techniques.
On the other hand, users and operators requirements and
expectations are continuously evolving and competing radio
access technologies are emerging. Thus, researches on the
Fourth Generation (4G) systems and beyond start considering
the next steps in the mobile evolution, in order to ensure the
communication requirements in the mid-term future. In 2011
the first version of the LTE-Advanced system, the evolution of
LTE (Long Term Evolution), has been finished in the release
10 and proposes new features that aim to enhance the capacity
and the spectral efficiency of LTE:
A. Carrier aggregation
This feature permits the use of larger bandwidth and spec-
trum usage flexibility. It enables the operators to extend the
operational bandwidth of LTE up to 100 MHz to meet the
recommendations of International Mobile Telecommunications
IMT-Advanced systems. The carrier aggregation could be also
used for load balancing when one carrier is highly loaded. The
standard allows inter-carrier and intra-carrier aggregations.
B. MIMO enhancements
In LTE release 8, the maximum number of antennas at the
base station and the user equipment is 4 and 2 respectively.
In the LTE-Advanced, the number is increased to allow the
use of 8x8 MIMO schemes in the downlink and 4x4 MIMO
schemes in the uplink. Moreover, the LTE-Advanced and its
futures releases will support the Multi-user MIMO schemes
that lead to a capacity increase thanks to the resource reuse in
space. This feature is expected to have a high impact on the
system feedback, user scheduling, power control...
C. Enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (e-ICIC)
With the use of heterogeneous networks (containing macro,
pico and femto cells), the system capacity is expected to be
increased. Indeed, femto and pico cells will focus on serving
the indoor users or the high loaded public zones. However,
users in the cell edge of these cells will highly suffer from
interference from the other type neighboring cells. In release
10, some schemes for coordination based on the use of some
specific resources (ABS subframes) to schedule cell edge users
has been proposed. Moreover, the interference between the
control channels of different cells could be reduced.
D. Coordinated Multipoint Transmission and Reception
(CoMP)
One way to reduce the inter-cell interference is to form a
cluster of neighboring cells that are able to cooperate together
in order to coordinate their transmission or reception. The
CoMP techniques are based on a quick information exchange
over the X2 interface between the different coordinated cells.
Indeed, signal processing based techniques for coordination
need updated knowledge of the transmission channel to be
efficient. In general, there are two strategies for cooperation:
Coordinated scheduling: It is based on scheduling users to
serve in a way that minimizes the inter-cell interference.
This can be also reached by using transmission beams that
avoid collision. In this strategy, only one point transmits
to the terminal.
Joint processing: It is based on joint transmission from
several points to serve one user. It requires a joint
computation of the transmission precoding that minimizes
the inter-cell interference. This strategy requires a high
information exchange load over X2 interface.
 III. D ISTRIBUTED BS: I NTERFACE S TANDARDS
Generations of equipment based upon proprietary platforms
were developed and deployed by different BS manufacturers
that used to work on their products individually.
However, with the new distributed architecture and the
use of optical fibers, it becomes a necessity for BS vendors
to develop open standards for next generation of BS. This
common can offer a lot of benefits by reducing the costs
of research and development and also by enabling faster
productions and greater innovations [5]. Three independent
industrial groups have been therefore created to standardize
the interface between the two components of the distributed
base station:
Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI).
Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI).
Open Radio equipment Interface (ORI).
A. OBSAI
The OBSAI group has been formed in 2002 by base station
vendors and component manufacturers. Its aim is the creation
of an open market for base station equipments able to define
a standard component and to ensure the cost and development
cycle reduction. Main equipment vendors involved in OB-
SAI are Nokia Siemens Networks, NEC, RadioComp, ZTE,
Texas Instruments and Alcatel-Lucent. OBSAI aims to create
a standardized interface between the baseband and Radio
Frequency (RF) modules so that devices of different vendors
can be interconnected. The OBSAI compliant serial data link
connecting the baseband module and the RF module is the
Reference Point 3 (RP3) interface. In systems where Remote
Radio Heads (RRHs) are connected to a baseband module, the
serial data link is the RP3-01 interface [6].
The evolution of the OBSAI-RP3 standard is given in Figure
3. For instance, currently, OBSAI-RP3 supports both WiMAX
(Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) and LTE,
and the highest line rate supported is 6144 Mbps. Several
topologies to connect the baseband module and the RRHs
were considered such as point-to-point, chain, ring and tree-
and-branch. The standard uses four layers: physical, data link,
transport and application.
Fig. 3. OBSAI-RP3 Timeline.
B. CPRI
CPRI is a closed industry group that was formed in 2003 by
Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, Nortel and Siemens. Later, Alcatel-
Lucent has joined the group and Nortel has left it. The
CPRI standard addresses the connection between the Radio
Equipment Control (REC) and the Radio Equipment (RE).
The former is responsible for processing the signal data and
the later aims to the transmission of signals over the antennas.
This standard specifies only the serial interface and operations
at two OSI layers. It enables the base station manufacturers
to share a common protocol and to adapt platforms for
different customers. The CPRI interface is bidirectional with
one transmission line per direction.
Figure 4 gives the evolution of CPRI, the latest version
supports also both WiMAX and LTE, and the highest line rate
supported is 9830.4 Mbps. Connection topologies between the
REC and one or more REs include point-to-point, multiple
point-to-point, chain, star, tree, ring and combinations of them.
Fig. 4. CPRI Timeline.
C. OBSAI vs CPRI
Compared to OBSAI, CPRI is easier and more flexible to
implement and requires less standardization efforts. Indeed,
unlike OBSAI that targeted a complete base station archi-
tecture definition, the CPRI considered only the connection
between the BBU and RRH. Hereafter, a more detailed com-
parison between OBSAI and CPRI is given.
1) Scope of standardization: OBSAI provides architecture
for a fully normalized base station with interoperability be-
tween the modules and scalability. However, until now, the
interoperability between modules of different vendors is not
achieved yet. CPRI targets only one key interface between the
Radio Equipment Control and the Radio Equipment which
allows quicker introduction in the market. Because of that,
CPRI leaves more room for flexibility and it is less complex.
2) Flexible implementation: Both OBSAI and CPRI offer
flexible ways of implementation at different levels. OBSAI
features enable simpler BTS configuration such as the fixed
overhead which allows easy network configuration even if it
is penalizing for the amount of data transmitted over the link.
Also, the user plane data is transported in the form of IQ (In-
phase Quadrature) data. OBSAI uses fixed IQ sample size,
but CPRI uses programmable IQ sample size depending on
the air interface used. This allows CPRI to have higher carrier
capacity. CPRI also provides optimized bandwidth allocation
and high bandwidth efficiency using mapping method based
on IQ samples.
The CPRI specification enables flexible and efficient product
differentiation for radio base stations and independent tech-
nology evolution for Radio Equipment Control and the Radio
Equipment. In addition, CPRI has little overhead compared
to OBSAI, which makes it more advantageous to implement.
Another significant advantage using CPRI is the bit error rate
which is less strict than the OBSAI-RP3 requirement.
Both CPRI and OBSAI standards have a link layer to support
special requirements in terms of latency and timing synchro-
nization. The physical layer of both standards is based on
already existing electrical standards from Ethernet 10 Gigabit
Attachment Unit Interface (XAUI) and Gigabit Ethernet. Also,
both OBSAI and CPRI allow different data rates to implement
the various market requirements in terms of carriers and
sectors.
3) Support of multi-technology: OBSAI supports several
air-interface standards more than CPRI. The frame struc-
ture and layered design of OBSAI is particularly suitable
for simultaneous transmission of baseband data of differ-
ent wireless standards. OBSAI supports the following air-
interface standards (GSM/EDGE, WCDMA/LTE, 802.16 and
CDMA2000). Though, CPRI also provides an easy method to
support simultaneous transmission of different air-interfaces
data (WiMAX and 3GPP LTE, Release 8).
4) Capacity and bandwidth allocation: They are fundamen-
tal points for an operator who wants to satisfy the biggest
number of subscribers by transmitting much more data in
an optimized way. CPRI optimizes bandwidth allocation and
provides the better way to transmit the maximum antenna-
carriers with the programmable envelope size whereas OBSAI
is based on fixed sample size depending on air-interface used.
5) MIMO compliancy: MIMO is an optional feature for
OBSAI. However, if the support of LTE is implemented,
MIMO is required. The IEEE 802.16 Baseband module may
provide spatial signal processing that employs an array of
antennas such as MIMO, space division multiple access
(SDMA), etc. The multiple-antenna coding algorithm shall be
performed in accordance with IEEE 802.16 specification.
CPRI supports MIMO feature. CPRI interface shall enable a
radio base station to meet the requirement time alignment
error in transmitter diversity and MIMO transmission.
D. ORI
However, OBSAI and CPRI groups have only telecommu-
nications equipment vendors among their members and both
have failed to efficiently define together a single standardized
and interoperable interface between equipments of different
vendors. Mobile Operators are currently deploying remote
radio heads in their networks and require standardized and
interoperable equipments in order to have more flexibility in
the network deployment. Therefore, an ISG (Industry Specifi-
cation Group) named ORI (Open Radio equipment Interface)
was created by ETSI in 2010 to develop a new standardization
body based on CPRI standard with the participation of mobile
network operators and equipment manufacturers. ORI aims
to develop specifications for an open interoperable interface
between the base band unit and remote radio head. Moreover,
ORI goal is to improve CPRI standard by completing low
layers specification and adding the layer 3 for Control and
Management (C&M) messages between REC and RE.
Although OBSAI and CPRI/ORI specification was supposed
to create a truly interoperable environment, the reality is
different. Still, rigorous compatibility testing needs to be
performed before two modules from separate vendors can
start to work together. This requirement defeats the goal of
true interoperability and extends the time frame required for
building a 4G system that takes advantage of the new features
offered by the distributed architecture of base stations and the
transmission of radio signals over optical fibers.
By choosing to open up the internal architecture of their sys-
tems and standardizing their modular structure and interfaces,
equipment vendors are about to revolutionize the wireless base
station industry. The different organizations, OBSAI, CPRI
and ORI, are at the forefront of generating and promoting these
new standards. These groups, while competitive in terms of
technology, are actually complementary in terms of goals. The
collaboration between these organizations, their members and
their suppliers on implementing and refining these standards
over the next few years promises to build a new global base
station ecosystem that can both sustain and invigorate the
mobile cellular industry.
IV. D ISTRIBUTED BS: I NDUSTRIAL P ROGRESS
Currently, several equipment vendors are proposing
CPRI/OBSAI products for distributed base stations. These
vendors include: mobile network manufacturers (Nokia
Siemens Networks, Ericson, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, ZTE ...),
and third party vendors (designers of CPRI/OBSAI solutions,
semiconductors and chipset vendors and Optoelectronics ven-
dors).
The complete available solutions proposed by major man-
ufacturers for mobile operators have the following common
characteristics:
CPRI standard is more widely implemented, due to its
simplicity over OBSAI and because the standardization
of ORI is still in its beginning stages.
No interoperability between BBU and RRH from differ-
ent vendors.
Layer 3 (e.g. OAM: Operation Administration and Main-
tenance) is not yet standardized.
 Maximum distance depends on fiber type:
- 200 m for multi-mode fibers (MMF).
- Up to 20 km with single mode fibers (SMF).
There is no synchronization issue if the maximum dis-
tance is respected.
SFP (Small Form-factor Pluggable) optical interfaces are
used.
No protection or recovery solutions are proposed.
Third party vendors are working on different types
of CPRI/OBSAI products including: Remote Radio Heads
(RRHs), Intellectual Property (IP) Cores, interface controller,
RF components, optical transceiver, etc. However, the main
focus is on producing RRHs to sell them to mobile manufac-
turers. The main properties of the Remote Radio Heads, that
are available in the market, are the following:
Available bit rates: 3 Gbps and 6 Gbps.
Supported radio access technologies: WCDMA, LTE and
WiMAX.
Antennas configurations: MIMO 2x2, MIMO 4x4 and
MIMO 8x8.
Frequency Bands: UMTS and LTE bands (1.8 GHz, 2.1
GHz, 2.3 GHz, 2.4 GHz, 2.6 GHz).
Topologies: star and daisy chaining.
V. P OTENTIAL E NHANCEMENTS FOR 4G SYSTEMS
As seen before, in distributed base stations architecture, the
radio transceiver equipment is split from the rest of the base
station, as illustrated in Figure 2, into a Remote Radio Head
(RRH) and it is installed near the antenna. The remaining
base station equipment forms the BaseBand Unit (BBU).
RRH and is connected to BBU via an optical fiber. This
architecture, separating the radio from the baseband, allows
lower power consumption, more commoditized elements and
flexible upgrade options. Several RRHs are connected via
lossless fiber links to one central BBU. Comprising only
the radio transceiver equipment, the RRH requires a reduced
physical space. This can lead to significant cost savings for
the operators and greatly facilitate their cell site deployments.
A. Base Stations Hostelling
The BS hostelling is based on co-locating different base
stations BBUs in the same location. This leads on one hand
for cost reduction for site renting, energy consumption for
cooling, maintenance operations... On the other hand, this
enables some advanced cooperative processing since the X2
interface communication is facilitated.
Currently, the solution for BS hostelling proposed by equip-
ment vendors to mobile operators, is to stack several BBUs in
a rack (Figure 5). The limitation in the number of BBUs in this
case is the available space in the 19-inch rack. However, as a
future evolution, researches on BS hostelling with resource
pooling are ongoing. In this case, BBUs are capable of
handling a bigger number of RRHs located at different antenna
sites. Moreover, they could also share their resources for more
efficient processing by creating a cloud BBU.
Fig. 5. Several BBUs stacked in one rack.
B. Antennas configurations and bandwidth
Depending on the bandwidth of the LTE carrier (20 MHz,
40 MHz...) and the MIMO configuration (2x2, 4x4 ...), we can
calculate the number of carrier capacity for different CPRI line
rates [2]. Assuming a single carrier per antenna, Table I gives
the total number of Remote Radio Heads that can be served
by a CPRI link of rates 3.072 Gbps, 6.144 Gbps, 9.830 Gbps
and 12.288 Gbps respectively. Actually, the first three rates
are supported by the latest version of CPRI (Version 4.2, see
Figure 4) but the 12.288 Gbps rate is not yet used by the
CPRI standard. The considered LTE bandwidth are: 20 MHz,
40 MHz, 80 MHz and 100 MHz and the MIMO configuration
are 2x2, 4x4 and 8x8. In CPRI, the IQ data block bit size can
be optimized depending on the sample resolution from 4 bits
up to 20 bits. Here, we will use 15 bits sample size (instead
of the 16 bits sample size fixed in OBSAI-RP3). In fact, 15
bits sample size is sufficient for UMTS/LTE configuration in
either downlink or uplink paths. This will enable us to have
a slightly higher capacity for transporting additional antenna
carriers.
From Table I, it is possible to conclude that the full IMT-
Advanced bandwidth of 100 MHz per antenna cannot be
met with the current maximum defined line rate of 9.830
Gbps, even in a single 2x2 MIMO antenna configuration.
This is of great relevance in the dimensioning study of the
interconnectivity bandwidth requirements. In order to obtain a
2x2 MIMO 100 MHz remote radio system, the required CPRI
interface line rate has to be increased to 12.288 Gbps.
 TABLE I
N UMBER OF SUPPORTED RRH S BASED ON DIFFERENT ANTENNA
CONFIGURATIONS AND CPRI INTERFACE RATES

20 MHz 40 MHz 80 MHz 100 MHz

MIMO 2x2 1 RRH 0 0 0
3.072 Gbps MIMO 4x4 0 0 0 0
MIMO 8x8 0 0 0 0
MIMO 2x2 2 RRHs 1 RRH 0 0
6.144 Gbps MIMO 4x4 1 RRH 0 0 0
MIMO 8x8 0 0 0 0
MIMO 2x2 4 RRHs 2 RRHs 1 RRH 0
9.830 Gbps MIMO 4x4 2 RRHs 1 RRH 0 0
MIMO 8x8 1 RRH 0 0 0
MIMO 2x2 5 RRHs 2 RRHs 1 RRH 1 RRH
12.288 Gbps MIMO 4x4 2 RRHs 1 RRH 0 0
MIMO 8x8 1 RRH 0 0 0

VI. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we presented the new architecture of BS
using optical fibers to connect its two components: Baseband
Unit and Remote Radio Head. This distributed form of BS
constitutes an evolution of the traditional BS that can lead to
important enhancements in mobile communications, making
easier the implementation of 4G features and technologies.
More specifically, the possibility of collocating several BBUs,
facilitates the coordination between near base stations and
the use of RRHs offers a good opportunity for the presence
of more antennas for higher MIMO configurations. However,
more work in the standardization of the interface between
RRH and BBU should be done and more research on BS
hostelling is necessary before the deployment of 4G systems.

R EFERENCES
[1] Reference Point 3 (RP3) Specification V4.2, OBSAI SIG,
http://www.obsai.org.
[2] CPRI Specification V4.2, CPRI, http://www.cpri.info.
[3] Open radio equipment interface, draft v0.0.8, ORI,
http://portal.etsi.org/ori.
[4] 3GPP TR 36.814, Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-
UTRA); Further advancements for E-UTRA physical layer aspects,
www.3gpp.org.
[5] Gerry Leavey, Standardizing Base Station Design with OBSAI and
CPRI, PMC-SIERRA, www.pmc-sierra.com.
[6] Christian Lanzani, OBSAI RP3-01 6.144 Gbps Interface Implementa-
tion, RadioComp, www.radiocomp.com.