WO2017078770A1

WO2017078770A1 - Ran re-architecture for network slicing

Info

Publication number: WO2017078770A1
Application number: PCT/US2016/020029
Authority: WO
Inventors: Huaning Niu; Mo-Han Fong; Apostolos Papathanassiou; Geng Wu
Original assignee: Intel IP Corporation
Priority date: 2015-11-03
Filing date: 2016-02-29
Publication date: 2017-05-11
Also published as: TW201717686A; TWI815789B

Abstract

Embodiments provide a radio access network (RAN) control entity apparatus operable in a wireless communication network, the apparatus comprising radio frequency (RF) circuitry to receive at least one communication originating from a wireless network device or transmit at least one communication to a wireless network device, wherein the RAN control entity is coupled to a baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH), and circuitry to partition a physical RAN infrastructure or C-RAN into one or more network slices, and partition the BBU and/or RRH according to a deployment scenario of the one or more network slices.

Description

RAN RE-ARCHITECTURE FOR NETWORK SLICING

RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/250,447, filed November 03, 2015, the entire specification of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes.

TECHNICAL FIELD

Embodiments described herein generally relate to the field of wireless

communications systems, and in particular to the management of the Radio Access Network of a wireless communications system.

BACKGROUND

Implementations of the claimed invention generally may relate to the field of wireless communications.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Aspects, features and advantages of embodiments of the present disclosure will become apparent from the following description of embodiments in reference to the appended drawings in which like numerals denote like elements and in which:

Figure 1 shows a first view of the broad concept of vertical and horizontal network slicing;

Figure 2 shows a second view of a portion of the wireless network of Figure 1;

Figure 3 shows how a Radio Access Network (RAN) can be sliced into horizontal and vertical slices according to an embodiment that is alternative (or additional) to that shown in Figure 1 ;

Figure 4 shows a more detailed example of horizontal slicing in a sliceable wireless network architecture according to examples;

Figure 5 shows a first example cloud-RAN (C-RAN) architecture according to an embodiment;

Figure 6 shows a second example C-RAN architecture in according to an embodiment;

Figure 7 shows a first example procedure for flexible RAN re-architecture according to an embodiment;

Figure 8 shows a second example procedure for flexible RAN re-architecture according to an embodiment; Figure 9 shows an example implementation of an electronic device (e.g. UE or base station) according to an embodiment;

Figure 10 shows a first example method of RAN re-architecture according to an embodiment;

Figure 11 shows a second example method of RAN re-architecture according to an embodiment;

Figure 12 shows a diagrammatic representation of hardware resources according to an embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The following detailed description refers to the accompanying drawings. The same reference numbers may be used in different drawings to identify the same or similar elements. In the following description, for purposes of explanation and not limitation, specific details are set forth such as particular structures, architectures, interfaces, techniques, etc. in order to provide a thorough understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. However, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art having the benefit of the present disclosure that the various aspects of the claims may be practiced in other examples that depart from these specific details. In certain instances, descriptions of well-known devices, circuits, and methods are omitted so as not to obscure the description of the present disclosure with unnecessary detail.

In fourth generation Long Term Evolution (4G-LTE) and LTE- Advanced/Pro wireless communications networks, there has been a trend for heterogeneity in the network architecture and applications. Examples of these trends are the development of small cells and relay networks, device-to-device (D2D) communication networks (also known as proximity services), and machine type communications (MTC). Small cells may be considered any form of cell that is smaller than the traditional macro e B/base station, e.g. micro/pico/femto cells. Moving into fifth generation (5G) wireless communications networks, the trend of heterogeneity may be more prominent, and suitably improved methods and apparatus for control of the wireless resources is desirable. For example, because the 5G wireless communication networks may be expected to serve diverse range of applications (with various traffic types and requirements), network and user equipment (with various communication and computation capabilities), and commercial markets (i.e. use-cases) other than the more traditional voice services (e.g. Voice over LTE, VoLTE) and mobile broadband (MBB), there is a desire to provide control over each of these use- cases, so that an optimized, or at least improved, use of the wireless resources is possible.

Embodiments of the present disclosure generally relate to the slicing of a radio access network (RAN) architecture of a wireless communications network. The RAN may be the portion of the wireless communications network that implements one or more radio access technologies (RATs), and may be considered to reside at a position located between a user device (UE) such as a mobile phone, smartphone, connected laptop, or any remotely controlled (or simply accessible) machine and provides connection with the core network (CN) servicing the wireless communications network. The RAN may be implemented using silicon chip(s) residing in the UEs and/or base stations, such as enhanced Node B (eNBs), base stations, or the like that form the cellular based wireless communications network/system. Examples of RANs include, but are not limited to: GRAN (a GSM radio access network); GERAN (essentially an EDGE enabled GRAN); UTRAN (a UMTS radio access network); and E-UTRAN (an LTE, or LTE-Advance/Pro, high speed and low latency radio access network).

The herein described embodiments discuss the general architecture of network slicing in a radio access network of a wireless communication network, such as but not limited to a 5G wireless communication network. In particular, embodiments may include the concept of horizontal and vertical network slicing. Vertical slicing may comprise slicing the radio access network according to vertical markets, where a vertical market may comprise a single/particular type of communication (i.e. that may be defined as a single or particular use-case for the communications involved), out of the many existing and new types of communication that may be carried out over future wireless communication networks, particularly including the radio access network. A commercial market that may be provisioned over a wireless communications network may also be called a vertical market. The existing types include Mobile Broad Band (MBB) and Voice (VoLTE), while the new types of communication may include new types of connectivity services and use-cases, such machine type communications (MTC), personal area networks, dedicated health networks, machine to machine (M2M), enhanced MBB (eMBB), time critical communications, vehicle communications (V2X) (including vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I)), and the like. The definition of a vertical market is not limited, and will cover any existing or future logical separation (i.e. segregation, partition or the like) of a physical radio access network for exclusive use by wireless communications for particular use, or type of communication. In some examples, there may be multiple physical radio access networks in use, each separated into logically separated radio access networks.

The proposed network slices may be programmable and highly scalable and flexible, taking into consideration the availability, latency and power requirements and impact on battery life, reliability, capacity, security and speed of the wireless communications network required by each particular use-case.

Network slicing is considered as one of the key technologies to fulfill the diverse requirements and the diverse services and applications expected to be supported in 5G communication networks. This is because, in wireless communication technologies, further improving the spectral efficiency at the radio link level is becoming increasingly challenging, so new ways have been found to build future wireless networks and devices served by those wireless networks to meet the ever increasing capacity demand. To achieve these goals, 5G and future generations of wireless networks, and in particular the wireless devices serving those, or served by those wireless networks, are evolving, to be about the combination of computing and communications, and the provision of end-to-end solutions. This is a paradigm shift from previous generations where technology

development focused primarily on single level communications alone.

To provide the increased capacity in wireless networks, they may be sliced. This may involve slicing (i.e. logically partitioning/separating) the traditional large, single, mobile broadband network into multiple virtual networks to serve vertical industries and applications in a more cost and resource efficient manner. Each network slice may have a different network architecture, and different application, control, packet and signal processing capabilities and capacity, in order to achieve optimum return on investment. New vertical slices (i.e. industry or type of service) can be added to an existing sliceable wireless network at any time, instead of deploying a new dedicated wireless network for that vertical market. Thus, vertical network slicing provides a practical means to segregate the traffic from a vertical application standpoint from the rest of general mobile broadband services, thereby practically avoiding or dramatically simplifying the traditional QoS engineering problem. Wireless network slicing may include slicing in both the core network and the radio access networks (i.e. is an end-to-end solution).

In 5G wireless networks and beyond, the capacity scaling of a network may no longer be as uniform as it has been in previous generations. For example, the scaling factor may be higher when the wireless network is closer to a user, and lower as we move deeper into the infrastructure of the wireless network. This non-uniform scaling may be a result of an augmented user experience enabled by the significantly increased sensing capabilities (and/or processing resources) available at the wireless devices making use of wireless networks. Unlike previous generations of wireless networks where a network serves primarily as a data pipe, scaling uniformly (but singularly) from end-to-end as the air interface improves, 5G and future generations of wireless networks may at least partly rely on information networks comprising diverse (heterogeneous and/or homogeneous) computing, networking and storage capabilities of the wireless networks and the wireless devices they serve/are served by.

For example, the overall wireless network may continue to scale up rapidly, but the computing and networking at the network edge may grow even faster, therefore enabling user data traffic to be processed at the edge of the wireless network (so-called edge cloud applications). User devices may no longer be simply "terminals" that terminate a communication link. Instead, they may become a new generation of moving or fixed networking nodes for a new generation of consumer devices, machines, and things. For example, a laptop, a tablet, a smart phone, a home gateway or any other wireless network device (or component device forming the , or part of the, wireless network device as sold to the consumer), can become a computing and networking center of a network cluster with many devices or things deployed around it. For example, it may form a Personal Area Network (PAN). Many such mobile or fixed wireless network clusters may form what may be called an underlay network, a new type of network in 5G and beyond, with devices capable of communicating with each other or directly with the fixed networks, and with computing able to be offloaded to larger form-factor platforms or edge cloud base stations (i.e. entities in the wireless network with greater processing resources, either outright, or simply available at the that time). This may be done to achieve optimum mobile computing and communication over a virtualized platform across many devices, including the edge cloud.

This new kind of wireless network scaling may be driven by a number of factors.

For example, as device sensing is typically local, the processing of sensed data may be local, and the decisions and actions upon sensed data become local. This trend may be further amplified by the proliferation of wearable devices and the internet of things. For example, as machines start playing a greater role in communication than human users, the whole communication link speed may be increased.

The definition of end-to-end is to be revisited, as an increasing number of communication links are in the proximity of users and user devices. It is therefore proposed to provide a cloud architecture framework that may incorporate data centers as well as edge clouds providing local intelligence and services closer to the end users or devices. This may be because, for example, as wireless networks and systems get deployed in enterprise, home, office, factory and automobile, edge cloud servers become more important for both performance and information privacy and security. These latter factors may be driven by user's (and governments) growing concern on privacy and security. Moreover, data centers deep into the fixed networks may continue to grow rapidly since many existing services may be better served with centralized architecture, with the new generation of portable and wearable devices, drones, industrial machines, self-driving cars, and the like fueling even more rapid growth in communication and computing capabilities at the edge of the network and locally around users.

The newly introduced concept of network slicing, particularly of the sort that provides a wireless network system architecture that has End-to-End (E2E) vertical and horizontal network slicing may introduce changes to the air interface, the radio access network (RAN) and the core network (CN) to enable a wireless network system with E2E network slicing.

In simple terms horizontal slicing enhances device capability by allowing computing resources to be shared across devices serving or being served (i.e. in or on) the wireless network, according to the processing needs of those devices over time and space/location. Horizontal network slicing is designed to accommodate the new trend of traffic scaling and enable edge cloud computing and computing offloading: The computing resources in the base station and the portable device may be horizontally sliced, and these slices, together with the wearable devices may be integrated to form a virtual computing platform though a new wireless air interface design as described herein, in order to significantly augment the computing capability of future portable and wearable devices. Horizontal slicing augments device capability and enhances user experience.

Network slicing, in the most general of terms, may be thought of as a way to use virtualization technology to architect, partition and organize computing and

communication resources of a physical wireless network infrastructure, into one or more logically separated radio access networks, to enable flexible support of diverse use-case realizations. For example, with network slicing in operation, one physical wireless network may be sliced into multiple logical radio access networks, each architected and optimized for a specific requirement and/or specific application/service (i.e. use-case). Thus, a network slice may be defined as a self-contained, in terms of operation and traffic flow, and may have its own network architecture, engineering mechanisms and network provision. Network slicing as proposed herein is able to simplify the creation and operation of network slices and allows function reuse and resource sharing of the physical wireless network infrastructure (i.e. provides efficiencies), whilst still providing sufficient wireless network resources (communications and processing resources) for the wireless devices served by the wireless network.

Vertical slicing is targeted at supporting diverse services and applications (i.e. use- case/types of communication). Examples include but are not limited to: Wireless/Mobile Broadband (MBB) communications; Extreme Mobile Broadband (E-MBB) communications; Real-time use-case such as Industrial Control communications, Machine-to-Machine communications (MTC/MTC1); non-real-time use-case, such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors communications, or massive-scale Machine-to-Machine communications (M-MTC/MTC2); Ultra Reliable Machine-to-Machine communications (U-MTC); Mobile Edge Cloud, e.g. caching, communications; Vehicle-to- Vehicle (V2V) communications; Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications; Vehicle-to-anything communications (V2X). This is to say, the present disclosure relates to providing network slicing according to any readily definable/distinguishable type of communication that can be carried out over a wireless network. Vertical network slicing enables resource sharing among services and applications, and may avoid or simplify a traditional QoS engineering problem. Horizontal network slicing, meanwhile, is targeted at extending the capabilities of devices in the wireless network, particularly mobile devices that may have limitations on the local resources available to them, and enhancing user experiences. Horizontal network slicing goes across and beyond the hardware platforms' physical boundaries. Horizontal network slicing enables resource sharing among network nodes and devices, i.e., highly capable network nodes/devices may then share their resources (e.g., computation, communication, storage) to enhance the capabilities of less capable network nodes/devices. A simple example may be to use a network base station and/or a smartphone mobile device, to supplement the processing and communication capabilities of a wearable device. An end result of horizontal network slicing may be to provide a new generation of mobile (e.g. moving) underlay network clusters, where mobile terminals become moving networking nodes. Horizontal slicing may provide over-the-air resource sharing across wireless network nodes. The wireless network air interface in use may be an integrated part and an enabler of horizontal slicing.

Vertical network slicing and horizontal network slicing may form independent slices. The end-to-end traffic flow in a vertical slice may transit between the core network and the terminal devices. The end-to-end traffic flow in a horizontal slice may be local and transit between the client and host of a mobile edge computation service.

In vertical slicing, each of the network nodes may implement similar functions among the separate slices. A dynamic aspect of vertical slicing may lie predominantly in the resource partitioning. In horizontal slicing, however, new functions could be created at a network node when supporting a slice. For example, a portable device may use different functions to support different types of wearable devices. The dynamic aspect of horizontal slicing may therefore lie in the network functions as well as the resource partitioning.

Figure 1 shows a first view of the broad concept of vertical and horizontal network slicing. There is shown a complete wireless network 100, including multiple vertical slices 110 - 140, each serving a different (or at least separate) vertical market, i.e. use-case. In the example shown vertical slice #1 110 serves mobile broadband communications, vertical slice #2 120 serves vehicle-to- vehicle communications, vertical slice #3 130 serves security communications, and vertical slice #4 140 serves industrial control communications. These are only exemplary use-cases, and the use-cases that may be served by sliceable wireless network according to the present disclosure is practically unlimited. The wireless network 100 includes a core network layer portion 150 (e.g. having multiple server s/control entitle s/control portions of eNode-Bs, etc.), a radio access network layer portion 160 (e.g. including multiple base stations, e-Node Bs, etc.), a device layer portion 170 (including e.g. portable devices such as UEs, vehicles, surveillance devices, industrial devices, etc.), and a personal/wearable layer portion 180 (including, e.g. wearable devices such as smart watches, health monitors, Google™ glasses/Microsoft™ Hololens type devices, and the like). The wearable portion may only be involved in some use-cases, as shown by its inclusion in only vertical slices #1 and #2 in the example of Figure 1.

In the vertical domain, the physical computation/storage/radio processing resources in the network infrastructure (as denoted by the servers and base stations 150/160) and the physical radio resources (in terms of time, frequency, and space) are sliced, by use-case (i.e. type of communication) to form end-to-end vertical slices. In the horizontal domain, the physical resources (in terms of computation, storage, radio) in adjacent layers of the network hierarchy are sliced to form horizontal slices. In the example shown, there is a first horizontal network slice 190 operating between the RAN 160 and Device 170 layers, and a second horizontal network slice 195 operating between the Device 170 and wearable 180 layers. Any given device served or to be served by the wireless network 100 as a whole, and the RAN 160 (and below layers) in particular, could operate on multiple network slices, of either (or both) types. For instance, a smart phone can operation in a vertical slice on mobile broad band (MBB) service, a vertical slice on health care service and a horizontal slice supporting wearable devices.

When enabling network slicing in the RAN (including the air interfaces employed in the RAN), besides meeting the 5G requirements (e.g., data rate, latency, number of connections, etc.), further desirable features of the RAN/air interfaces used to enable network slicing and in general 5G may include Flexibility (i.e. support flexible radio resource allocation among slices); Scalability (i.e. easily scale up with the addition of new slices; and Efficiency (e.g. efficiently use the radio and energy resources).

Horizontal slicing may comprise slicing the network hierarchy, e.g. the layers of network connectivity and compute (i.e. processing resource) capability. This may be done across any number of the vertical slices served by the network 100, for example anything from all the vertical markets down to within a one or more vertical slice(s). This is shown as the different widths of the two exemplary horizontal slices in Figure 1 - horizontal slice #1 190 is limited to a single vertical slice, whereas horizontal slice #2 is covers two vertical slices. Examples of network hierarchy/layers may include, but is not limited to, a macro network layer, a micro/small cell network layer, a device to device communications layer, and the like. Other network layers may also be involved.

Figure 2 shows a second view 200 of a portion of the wireless network 100 of

Figure 1. In particular, Figure 2 shows an example of a slice-specific RAN architecture, where slices may be across multiple levels of the traditional wireless network architecture. For example, depending on factors such as traffic type, traffic load, QoS requirement, the RAN architecture of each of the slices may be dynamically configured. In a first example, slice #1 210 may only operate on the macro cell level. Whereas slice #2 220 only operates on the small cells level. Finally, slice #3 230 may operate on both macro and small cells levels. In another example, a slice (e.g. slice #1 210) may open up operation on small cells while another slice (e.g. slice #3 230) may close operation on some of the small cells. Opening up operation/activating a slice may be referenced as a network slice turn-on, and closing operation/deactivating a slice may be referenced as a network slice turn-off. The slice-specific RAN architecture may require slice-specific control-plane/user-plane operation, slice on/off operation and slice-based treatment on access control and load balancing, as will be discussed in more detail below.

Horizontal slicing comprising slicing the network/device computation and communication resources may achieve computation offloading. Examples include the base station using a slice of its computation resource to help a user device's computation, or a user device (e.g. smartphone) using a slice of its computation resource to help computation of an associated wearable device(s).

Embodiments of the present disclosure are not limited to any particular form of slicing in the vertical (markets) or horizontal (network hierarchy /layers) directions.

Embodiments of the present disclosure may provide a management entity operable across the Control-plane (C -plane) and/or User-plane (U-plane), that may provide a management- plane entity that may be used to coordinate the operation of the different slices, either horizontal or vertical (or multiple/combined, or partial, ones thereof). The management entity may use a flat management architecture or a hierarchal management architecture.

Slicing of the radio access network may be considered as compartmentalization of the radio access network according to predetermined vertical markets, or horizontal network layers (or multiple/partial layers) of the network. This may be considered a form of logical separation between the wireless resources provided by, or in use by, the radio access network. Logical separation of the wireless resources may allow that they may be separately defined, managed, and/or (generally or specifically) resourced. This separation may provide the ability for the different slices to not be able to, or allowed to, affect one another. Equally, in some embodiments, one or more slices may be specifically provided with the ability to manage another one or more slices, for operational reasons.

In some embodiments network functions may be fully offloaded to a network slice, and the slice may operate in a standalone mode, for example a standalone millimeter-wave (mmWave) small cell network, and an out-of-coverage D2D network. A mmWave small cell is one that uses milli-meter size radio waves (i.e. high frequency - e.g. 60GHz).

In some embodiments network function(s) may be partially offloaded to a slice, and the slice may operate in a non-standalone mode, for example in an anchor-booster architecture, where an anchor-booster architecture may comprise an anchor cell, providing a control-plane and a mobility anchor for maintaining connectivity. In an embodiment, the anchor cell may be a cell with wide coverage, for example a macro cell. The anchor- booster architecture may further comprise a booster cell, providing user-plane data offloading. In an embodiment, the booster cell may be a small cell, and may be deployed under the coverage of an anchor cell. From a device perspective, the control-plane and user-plane may be decoupled, i.e., the control-plane may be maintained at the anchor cell while the data-plane may be maintained at the booster cell.

In some example embodiments, the horizontal slices and vertical slices may be viewed as intertwined (i.e. where the radio access network functions/resources are shared among some of the vertical and horizontal slices), as illustrated in the graph 300 of Figure 3. Thus, Figure 3 shows how a Radio Access Network (RAN) can be sliced into horizontal and vertical slices according to an embodiment that is alternative (or additional) to that shown in Figure 1, where the slices are totally independent in terms of traffic flow and operation. The graph 300 of Figure 1 has Network Hierarchy 302 (i.e. the network layers involved/in use) along the y-axis, and Radio Resource 304 (i.e. indicative of using separate radio resources, such as frequencies, time slots, etc.) along the x-axis. In the example of Figure 1, vertical slicing is shown as comprising four vertical slices 306. However, any number of different markets/use-cases may be involved. The four vertical markets/use-cases shown chosen for the vertical slices are mobile broadband (MBB) 110, a vehicle type communication (V2X) 120, a first machine type communication (MTC-1) 130, a second machine type communication (MTC-2) 140, being slices Slice#l-Slice#4, respectively. These are only exemplary choices of the use-cases that could be served.

Also shown in Figure 3 is horizontal slicing, in this example again comprising four horizontal slices 308. The four horizontal slices shown are macro network layer 210, micro network layer 220, device to device network layer 230, and Personal Area Network (PAN) (e.g. wearable) network layer 240. According to an example, each horizontal slice contains a portion of multiple vertical slices. Equally, each vertical slice contains a portion of each horizontal slice. The separate portions, as separated in both the horizontal and vertical directions may be referred to as a slice portion. Thus, in the example of Figure 1, the MBB vertical slice 110 comprises four slice portions: Macro Network layer portion 112; Micro Network layer portion 114; D2D Network layer portion 116; and PAN Network layer portion 118. Similarly, V2X vertical slice 120 comprises four slice portions: Macro Network layer portion 122; Micro Network layer portion 124; D2D Network layer portion 126; and PAN Network layer portion 128. Meanwhile, the MTC-1 vertical slice 130 comprises four slice portions: Macro Network layer portion 132; Micro Network layer portion 134; D2D Network layer portion 136; and PAN Network layer portion 138, and MTC-2 vertical slice 140 comprises four slice portions: Macro Network layer portion 142; Micro Network layer portion 144; D2D Network layer portion 146; and PAN Network layer portion 148.

An example of such an architecture is, in a personal area network, a wearable health sensor may belong to a dedicated health network. The personal area network layer may then represent a horizontal network slice. The health sensor running under the coverage of the personal area network may belong to a vertical network slice. In the same token, each horizontal network slice could comprise multiple vertical network slices. Each vertical network slice may have multiple horizontal network slices. Another example is a macro cell (i.e. macro eNB) that serves a number of different use-case communications. Likewise, each vertical slice may contain portions of multiple horizontal slices, for example, in a V2X network, there may be V2I and V2V layers. In another example, the mobile broad band (MBB) vertical slice includes portions in each of the macro, micro and device to device layers, as shown. Thus, embodiments provide a way to logically carve up the wireless resources provided by, and/or in use by, the radio access network, according to both use-case (vertically) and network layer (horizontally). Communication and computation have been helping each other in pushing the boundaries of information and computing technologies. At the network side, computation has been used to help communication by moving computation and storage to the edge. With edge cloud and edge computation, the communication link between the source and the destination is getting shorter, thereby improving the communication efficiency and reducing the amount of information propagation in the network. The optimal deployment of edge cloud and computation scheme varies. As a general rule, the less capable the end device is and/or the higher the device density, the closer the cloud and computation to the network edge.

Moving forward at the device side, with the devices further shrinking in size from portable devices to wearable devices and the user expectation on computation keeping increasing, we expect future communications will help to deliver the user experience, e.g., the network nodes slice out part of their computation resources to help computation at the portable device, while the portable devices slice out part of their computation resources to help the computation at the wearable devices. In this way, the network is horizontally sliced. The sliced out computation resources and the air interface connecting the two ends form an integrated part that delivers the required service.

Figure 4 shows a more detailed example of horizontal slicing in a sliceable wireless network architecture according to embodiments. The left hand side shows the traditional 3G/4G architecture (but only from the RAN down). This comprises a base station portion 410, comprising an up-stream/core network side communication function 412, a base station compute function 414 (i.e. the processing resources available in the base station, or closely coupled entity thereof), and a down-stream/wireless/device side communication function 416 (to communicate with the devices being served by that base station, or other, peer base station, e.g. in the case of fronthaul, etc.). There is also shown a portable portion 420 (e.g. a User Equipment, or a like device) comprising a similar combination of up-stream and down-stream communication resources and local processing resources. In this case, the up-stream communication link is the typical cellular wireless communication link 422 (e.g. OFDM/CDMA/LTE type link) and a down-stream communication link 426 such as a 5G radio access technology (RAT) (e.g. OFDM/CDMA/LTE type link), a next generation communication link(s) such as a 5G PAN RAT (yet to be created), or a current or next generation other PAN wireless communication technology, e.g. Bluetooth, zigbee or the like. In between is the local compute function 424, i.e. processing resources local to the portable device. Lastly, in the example, there is the wearable portion 430, which typically has only a single up-stream communications link 432 and limited local processing resources function 434.

The right hand side of figure 4 shows the one of the new proposed horizontal network slicing concepts, in particular, how the processing resources of higher and lower entities in the network can be "combined", i.e. shared between themselves, using the communications and processing resource abilities of the entities taking part. The basic functions are similar, therefore are denoted as items 410' to 434' respectively, and act in similar ways. However, there is now the concept of horizontal slices, in this case, showing the horizontal slices #1 190 and #2 195 of Figure 1 in more detail. In this basic example, the wearable device 430' is able to make use of the processing resources 424' of portable device 420', by using the communications functions to share processing data (e.g. data to process and the resultant processed data). Similarly, the portable device 420' is able to use the base station 410' processing resources 414' .

There will now follow more detailed description of a portion of the network slicing concept, according to the present disclosure. In some example, these functions may be provided as new network function (NFs), which may be virtualized in some cases, e.g. by using network function virtualization (NFV). These NFs and NFVs may be slice specific, or operate over multiple/all slices. The proposed wireless network, both as a whole (e.g. including the core network), but particularly the RAN will now be slice aware, by making use of a newly implemented slice identification.

In traditional RAN infrastructures, a centralized-processing cloud-based RAN (Cloud (C)-RAN) infrastructure has been proposed. In C-RAN, unlike traditional cellular systems, a central pool of base-band processing units (BBUs) performs most base-band processing, while remote radio heads (RRHs) perform transmission and reception of radio signals. The C-RAN architecture can improve energy efficiency by consolidating energy- consuming hardware equipment at a BBU/BBU pool. The C-RAN architecture can also reduce both the CAPEX and OPEX of a network by making centralized network management and network upgrades easier to accomplish. In addition, the C-RAN architecture can be used to implement advanced coordinated multi-point (CoMP) communication and interference-management schemes such as Enhanced Inter-cell Interference Coordination (elCIC). Figure 5 illustrates a typical C-RAN architecture 500. RRHs 502, 504, and 506 can send and receive wireless signals from devices with wireless capabilities, such as user equipments (UEs). The RRHs 502, 504, and 506 can be in communication with a BBU/BBU pool 514 via front-haul links 516, 518, and 520, respectively. Front-haul is the connection between a new network architecture of centralized baseband controllers and remote standalone radio heads at cell sites. A common public radio interface (CPRI) may be the type of interface used for connecting the RRHs 502, 504, and 506 to the BBU/BBU pool 514 via the front-haul links 516, 518, and 520. The BBU/BBU pool 514 can be in communication with a core network 522. In one example, a communication from the core network 522 to a wireless device 524 that is in a coverage area device of the RRH 502 (or the RRH 504 or the RRH 506) can be sent from the core network 522 to the BBU/BBU pool 514. The BBU/BBU pool 514 can then send the communication to the RRH 502 (or the RRH 504 or the RRH 506) via the front-haul link 516 (or the front-haul link 518 or the front-haul link 520, respectively). The communication can then be sent via a radio signal from the RRH 502 (or the RRH 504 or the RRH 506) to the wireless device 524. This is typically referred to as a downlink communication.

In another example, a communication from the wireless device 524 to the core network, referred to as an uplink communication, can be transmitted from the wireless device 524 and received at the RRH 502 (or the RRH 504 or the RRH 506) via a radio signal. The RRH 502 (or the RRH 504 or the RRH 506) can send the communication to the BBU/BBU pool 514 via the front-haul link 516 (or the front-haul link 518 or the front- haul link 520, respectively). The BBU/BBU pool 514 can then send the communication to the core network 522 where the communication can be directed to its intended destination.

Figure 6 illustrates an example of a CPRI-based C-RAN architecture 600 in which a BBU/BBU pool 602 is connected to an RRH 604 by a front-haul link 606. The RRH 604 can comprise an Analog Front End (AFE) 608, a Digital -to- Analog Converter (DAC) 610, and an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) 612. The AFE 608 may be operably connected to a plurality of antennas 628. In addition, as shown in selection 614, the RRH 604 can comprise at least two modules for CPRI processing: a compression-and-framing module 616 and a decompression-and-framing module 618. The BBU/BBU pool 602 can comprise a Layer-processing module 620 that handles processing for a Packet-Data- Convergence-Protocol (PDCP) Layer, a Radio-Link-Control (RLC) Layer, a Media Access Control (MAC) Layer, and a Physical (PHY) Layer. As shown in selection 622, the BBU/BBU pool 602 can also comprise at least two modules for CPRI processing: a compression-and-framing module 624 and a decompression-and-framing module 626.

In one example, in a downlink communication, a signal can be sent from the layer- processing module 620 of the BBU/BBU pool 602 to the compression-and-framing module 624 of the BBU/BBU pool 602. The compression-and-framing module 624 can perform time-domain compression and framing operations on the signal and send the signal to the decompression-and-framing module 618 of the RRH 604 via the front-haul link 606 using CPRI protocol. The decompression-and-framing module 618 can perform decompression and framing operations on the signal and send the signal to the DAC 610. The DAC can convert the signal to an analog signal and send the analog signal to the AFE 608. The AFE can communicate the analog signal to the plurality of antennas 628. The plurality of antennas 628 can wirelessly send the analog signal to a destination device (e.g., a UE).

In another example, in an uplink communication, the plurality of antennas 628 can receive a radio signal and communicate the signal to the AFE 608. The AFE 608 can communicate the signal to the ADC 612. The ADC 612 can digitize the signal using phase (I) and quadrature (Q) sampling and send the digitized signal to the compression-and- framing module 616. The compression-and-framing module 616 can perform time- domain compression and framing operations on the signal and transfer the signal to the decompression-and-framing module 626 of the BBU/BBU pool 602 via the front-haul link 606 using CPRI protocol. The decompression-and-framing module 626 can perform decompression and framing operations on the signal and send the signal to the layer- processing module 620. The layer-processing module 620 can perform higher-layer baseband processing on the signal.

While the C-RAN paradigm alleviates many of the problems associated with the traditional RAN paradigm, the existing C-RAN architecture also introduces some new challenges. In particular, since existing C-RAN paradigms call for a CPRI interface to be used for connecting an RRH to a BBU/BBU pool, transfer-rate requirements for front-haul links used in a C-RAN architecture can be problematic because the expected transfer rate over the front-haul interface (i.e., the front-haul rate) can be significantly higher than the rate of data transfer over the radio interface.

For example, consider a long-term evolution (LTE) uplink (UL) system with a 10- megahertz (MHz) bandwidth, two receiving antennas at an RRH, and a sampling frequency of 15.36MHz. If a 15-bit representation of I/Q phase digital samples is used, the I/Q data rate is 921.6 megabits per second (Mbps). If the CPRI basic frame overhead of one header byte for every 15 bytes of data and the line coding rate of 10/8 are considered, the physical line rate becomes 1.2288 gigabits per second (Gbps). In addition, the overall CPRI physical line rate increases linearly with the number of antennas and system bandwidth can quickly exceed 10 Gbps when carrier aggregation is used. These factors can therefore lead to front-haul rate requirements that are prohibitively high for practical deployments.

Other problems also affect existing C-RAN architectures. For instance, the sampling rate of CPRI is the same as the sampling rate of LTE and is independent of the user load or user activity within a cell; as a result, there is no statistical averaging gain. In addition, most of the CPRI data-rate requirement is driven by I/Q user-plane data samples. An LTE signal is inherently redundant due to the use of guard bands. In a 10MHz LTE system, for example, only 600 of 1024 available sub-carriers are used for data; the other sub-carriers are zeroed out to serve as guard bands. However, although the time-domain I/Q samples have a redundant signal structure, a complex non-linear scheme is required to exploit this redundancy in order to achieve a higher compression factor. In addition, front- haul compression schemes that operate on the time-domain I/Q samples cannot exploit signal-to-quantization-noise ratios (SQ Rs) for different modulation and coding schemes or user-scheduling side information (e.g., user activity, sub-carrier occupancy) because this information is generally lost once a signal is split in the time domain. For at least these reasons, compression performance is relatively poor in the existing C-RAN architecture.

Systems and methods in accordance with the present disclosure present an alternative flexible C-RAN architecture framework that can operate in a radio access network where network slicing is implemented.

Radio access network (RAN) re-architecture has been under discussion for cloud- RAN (CRAN) and third generation partnership project (3 GPP) fourth generation (4G) long term evolution (LTE). The main motivation for RAN re-architecture is to reduce the front-haul rate requirements while maintaining the benefits according to the CRAN technology premise. Various RAN re-architecture options have been proposed, including a simple split physical Layer (PHY) option (only the fast fourier transform (FFT) function is moved to the front end), an advanced split PHY option where multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) processing is moved to front end (appropriate for massive MIMO applications where the number of antenna elements is much larger than a number of data streams), and a remote PHY option (wherein the whole PHY functionality is moved to the front end). Other proposals include compression techniques based on the PHY split option to further reduce the front-haul rate.

The aforementioned proposals are symmetric options, wherein a same functional split is applied to both downlink (DL) and uplink (UL). An asymmetric option, based on coordinated multipoint (CoMP) observations that joint reception in the UL brings more benefit than joint transmission in the DL. The asymmetric re-architecture enables joint reception in the UL, but only techniques such as coordinated scheduling/coordinated beamforming (CS/CB) in the DL provides suitable joint reception in the DL.

In the fifth generation (5G) LTE era, new requirements are imposed on the RAN re-architecture work. New network slicing techniques applied to the basic new 5G radio access technology (RAT), or a number of different RATs, may be used to support diverse applications and very different requirements. These may be the above mentioned vertical markets that drive the (vertical) network slicing concept. For example, enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) may provide high bandwidth and a high date rate, which may benefit from advanced MIMO transmission such as beam aggregation and cell-less operation. On the other hand, mission critical Internet of Things (IoT) applications may benefit from extremely low delay, which may be provided by a low latency frame structure. An example of a low latency frame structure is a self-contained subframe structure, which may enable near immediate acknowledgement/negative acknowledgement (ACK/NACK) feedback, fast hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) retransmission, and natural extension to unlicensed or shared band transmission. However, the abovementioned different applications and different technologies pose conflicting requirements of (and options for) the RAN re-architecture using C-RANs.

Mission critical services are being developed for use on LTE and future wireless networks, for example the third generation partnership project (3 GPP) has a standards group (SA6 - Mission-critical applications) set up to develop these types of services. An example of a mission-critical service may include a mission critical push to talk (MCPTT) service, meanwhile an example of a mission-critical IoT service may be vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications, or vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communications that may, for example allow, or enable self-driving cars, automated emergency response services, and the like. By their very nature, mission-critical services are ones that may benefit from preferential handling compared to normal telecommunication services e.g. in support of police or fire brigade including the handling of prioritized messages and/or calls (e.g. MCPTT calls) for emergency and imminent threats, delivery of real-time telemetry or control messages that may enable automated control, especially of fast moving vehicles and the like. The example MCPTT service may be used for public safety applications and also for general commercial applications e.g. utility companies and railways. Other mission critical services may include emergency services, non-interruptible enterprise services, etc. Services that are mission-critical may also be massive (i.e. a very large number of users of that type are being served, or to be served by the wireless network) - e.g. V2V or V2I. A 'very large number' may range from hundreds, to millions or more, and may also be defined by the number per base station or the like. Alternatively, or additionally, a very large number may comprise a high percentage of the available (processing/computational, or wireless) resources at or available to a serving or controlling entity in the wireless network. Non-mission-critical services may also be massive (e.g. smart meters - a form of machine type communications). The terms "mission-critical" and "massive" may be typically user, system designer, and/or standards (e.g. 3GPP) defined, and their definition may change over time. The present disclosure is intended to cover all current and future definitions of these terms as found in the relevant current or new, standards, e.g. 3 GPP standards.

Example embodiments provide a flexible RAN re-architecture framework for network slicing/services. Example embodiments may be based on the concept of a software defined RAN (soft-RAN), where each RAN function can be virtualized. For example, in a Soft-RAN architecture, every network service in use or useable by the wireless network may be specified as a software application running on a more generic hardware platform (e.g. as shown in Figure 9 or 12, described below). The generic hardware platform may be provided using commodity hardware, such as data servers, network switches, generic radio frequency (RF) circuitry and the like. Therefore, in a soft- RAN, wireless network operators/owners are able to simply specify a suitable data plane and control plane processing regime for any (new) service that they desire to deploy one the wireless network. This may even be done using high level languages. This approach reduces time to market and deployment costs, for example by reducing hardware replacement and/or set up costs. This reduction in time and cost in turn increases the ability of the soft RAN based wireless network disclosed herein to implement the evolutional and revolution new technologies being and to be developed. This so called agile development processes may be used to maximize return on investment to the network operators.

A Soft-RAN operating system (OS) may be deployed to manage all of the complexity behind implementing and deploying the network service(s) across the generic/commodity hardware. The generic/commodity hardware may be located in the central office and/or at remote cell sites, depending on a deployment profile in use on any given wireless network implementing the disclosed soft-RAN provided network slice aware C-RAN.

In scenarios where some of the RAN functions cannot be virtualized, dedicated hardware accelerator(s) may be used as well or instead.

Example embodiments provide a flexible RAN re-architecture framework for network slicing/services. The framework of the example embodiments may use base station (for example an evolved nodeB (eNB)) scheduling information and may perform RAN re-architecture dynamically based on different network slices/services that are to be supported by the (re-architected/re-architectable) RAN.

The above discussed previous RAN re-architecture using C-RANs was ignorant of network slicing, and was work mainly just considering the front-haul data rate and delay tradeoff. Whereas, the flexible RAN re-architecture of the example embodiments supports different 5G services (i.e. use-cases/vertical markets, e.g. vertical network slices) and technologies or architectures (e.g. computational slicing, e.g. horizontal network slices), on top of the front-haul bandwidth (BW) and delay, the network profile of any particular service/slice in use, quality of service (QoS), computational considerations and/or capabilities at each node, and the like.

Example embodiments provide a 5G air interface that supports flexible multiplexing of different network services by enabling flexible choice of waveform (e.g. orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)/code division multiple access (CDMA)/etc.) and numerology. For example, massive internet of things (IoT) may use a narrower subcarrier spacing, or even code division multiple access (CDMA) waveform over a certain time/frequency grid, while mobile broadband services may use an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform with larger subcarrier spacing. This is to say, the provision of wireless communications services to a first set (e.g. massive number, with particular latency requirements) of devices with one type of communications parameters can have very different needs to a second set (e.g. not so massive, but more data hungry) of devices with a second type of communication parameters, and this can be difficult to reconcile in a single homogenous network. Accordingly, the present disclosure provides for network slicing, e.g. in the C-RAN, thereby providing means to provide the different sets of devise with different communications parameters/performances. For example, according to embodiments, when performing scheduling, the base station (e.g. eNB) may be aware of the different resources used for each different network services or slices (e.g. served by each logically separated radio access network) in use on the same single physical radio access network.

Different services may also require different 5G technologies, such as Radio

Access Technologies (RATs). For example, mobile broadband services may require high throughput and, thus, massive MEVIO/beam aggregation technologies are expected to be very useful to meet the high throughput requirements. However, for mission critical services, the peak throughput may not be necessarily high, but the delay requirement may be very stringent. Also, in some implementations, the (or one of the) 5G RAT(s) in use may be designed for wide area network (WAN) communications, whereas in others, the (or one of the) 5G RAT(s) in use may be designed for personal area network (PAN) communications. These latter RATs may be replacements (or alternatives) to Bluetooth, Zigbee or the like communications standards.

Therefore, the flexible RAN re-architecture of the example embodiments may support different 5G services and technologies. Also, the front-haul bandwidth (BW), which is considered the primary decision point for the 4G RAN re-architecture work, may be used to drive key decisions on the preferred RAN architecture options that include the concept of network slicing.

Figure 7 shows the overall procedure 700 for flexible RAN re-architecture according to a first example. The procedure may operate on a per transmission time interval (TTI) time period based frequency of operation (also regarded as granularity of operation), e.g. every 1 ms. However the disclosure is not limited to any specific frequency/rate of operation. Within each time period, the frequency resources for the different operational (or about to be operated - e.g. when a slice is about to be turned-on) network slices are determined 710. The frequency resources may be time slots or

Frequencies (see Figure 3), or numerologies in use or the like. The disclosed procedure can then determine which form or type of operation may be used in the RAN/C-RAN, i.e. the type of RAN architecture used. As used herein, a RAN architecture may be thought of as any form of specific techniques, technology(ies), implementation detail, improvement in or type of operation of the same, of a wireless network, particularly in the RAN.

Architectures are typically introduced, maintained and updated in the standards documents for the respective wireless network technologies in use.

A first example option may be to service wireless device(s) being served by the network slices/RAN using joint transmission (JT) CoMP and/or joint reception (JR) CoMP, potentially with beam aggregation 720. This may be used, for example, when a high throughput mobile broadband (MBB) service is provided in dense environment. Meanwhile, Beam aggregation and JT/JR may be particularly useful in mmWave band for high throughput and robust link. In some examples, the packet front-haul may provide front-haul packetization that uses a split physical Layer (PHY) arrangement 750, where, for example, the split-PHY processing (SPP) architecture is an arrangement of a C-RAN that splits the base stations (BS) functions between wireless channel coding/decoding and wireless modulation/demodulation, and where CoMP joint transmission and reception schemes are able to be provided.

A second example option may be to service wireless device(s) being served by the network slices/RAN using massive (i.e. a lot of) number of connections, for example as may be used in IoT deployments. This may be used, for example, when the devices are used on a large scale for data gathering/report - e.g. smart power girds/power meters, and other (massive scale) machine to machine type communications.

In this case, different front-haul architectures may be provided 760 dependent on, for example, the front-haul data rate suitable for (or required by) the respective particular form of massive/IoT deployment in use. Other determining factors may influence the choice of front-haul architectures, such as latency, or the like. Examples of the different front-haul architectures that may be deployed may include any of: common public radio interface (CPRI), or CPRI-like/advanced type architectures (e.g. CPRI compression and CPRI over Ethernet), Remote PHY, or Layer 2 (L2)/Layer 3 (L3) split type architectures, and/or, for example, a split physical Layer (PHY)/media access control Layer (MAC) in the remote radio head (RRH).

A third example option may be to service wireless device(s) being served by the network slices/RAN using mission critical type service standards 740 (which may also include a massive number of connections, e.g. for V2X), for example where the devices are used in time critical (e.g. V2X), or delivery critical (e.g. emergency services) use- cases, or the like.

In this case, other, different front-haul architectures may be provided 770 dependent on, for example, on the specific needs of the mission critical type service type. For example, a Layer 2 (L2)/Layer 3 (L3) split type architecture 770 may be used (e.g., as above to include PHY/MAC split in RRH).

Interface and packet formats between baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH) can be either proprietary, or standardized in 3GPP.

Figure 8 shows a second, more detailed/specific, example overall procedure 800 for flexible RAN re-architecture, in particular an example packetization arrangement. This example is also shown based on determining frequency resources for the network slices based on a per-TTI time period granularity, and has an example three options, as per Figure 7.

A first example option 820 is to take corresponding resource blocks (RBs) for beam aggregation, and/or JT/JR CoMP, in which case, the procedure either uses CPRI- Advanced techniques 850 for any cases of (or needing) high bandwidth, low latency, or the availability of dark fiber front-haul (e.g., if there is some spare capacity of fiber (i.e. currently dark, not lit) to the RRHs. This may be relevant where additional bandwidth is useful, but JT/JR is not supported, at least before this point in time), or the procedure uses quantization of the I/Q sample, for example dependent on compression scheme in use on the RAT, for example, to provide any of: a certain amount of bandwidth (e.g. low, medium, high), low latency front-haul, or the like. Other methods such as fixed uniform quantization, non-linear quantization etc. are also possible. A particular standard in use would typically specify such quantization scheme, for example, to allow multi-vendor implementations.

A second example option 830 may be the servicing of massive (i.e. a lot of) devices, using a massive number of connections, for example as may be used in IoT deployments. In this case, like above, different front-haul architectures may be provided 870, but this time dependent on, for example, front-haul bandwidth and delay parameters. Other determining factors may influence the choice of front-haul architectures, such as latency, or the like. Examples of the different front-haul architectures that may be deployed may include any of: common public radio interface (CPRI), or CPRI- like/advanced type architectures (e.g. CPRI compression and CPRI over Ethernet), Remote PHY, or Layer 2 (L2)/Layer 3 (L3) split type architectures (e.g., as above to include PHY/MAC split in RRH). Each possible type of RAN split may have a corresponding data packetization format.

A third example option 840 may be for extremely delay sensitive data based devices, in which case a self-contained sub-frame format may be used. In such an example scenario, a media access control (MAC) Protocol Data Unit (PDU), MAC PDU, based front-haul architecture may be used 880. In some examples, the procedure may include cell-less operation.

As used herein, the term "circuitry" may refer to, be part of, or include an

Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), an electronic circuit, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group), and/or memory (shared, dedicated, or group) that execute one or more software or firmware programs, a combinational logic circuit, and/or other suitable hardware components that provide the described functionality. In some embodiments, the circuitry may be implemented in, or functions associated with the circuitry may be implemented by, one or more software or firmware modules. In some embodiments, circuitry may include logic, at least partially operable in hardware. As used herein, the terms device (being served by a RAN or network slice) and UE may be interchangeable.

Embodiments described herein may be implemented into a system using any suitably configured hardware and/or software. Figure 9 shows, for one embodiment, example components of an electronic device 900. In embodiments, the electronic device 900 may be, implement, be incorporated into, or otherwise be a part of a user equipment (UE), an evolved NodeB (eNB), or another network component (e.g. a network component corresponding to a network virtualization device and/or a software defined network device). In some embodiments, the electronic device 900 may include application circuitry 910, baseband circuitry 920, Radio Frequency (RF) circuitry 930, front-end module (FEM) circuitry 940 and one or more antennas 950, coupled together at least as shown.

The application circuitry 910 may include one or more application processors. For example, the application circuitry 910 may include circuitry such as, but not limited to, one or more single-core or multi-core processors. The processor(s) may include any combination of general-purpose processors and dedicated processors (e.g., graphics processors, application processors, etc.). The processors may be coupled with and/or may include memory/storage and may be configured to execute instructions stored in the memory/storage to enable various applications and/or operating systems to run on the system.

The baseband circuitry 920 may include circuitry such as, but not limited to, one or more single-core or multi-core processors. The baseband circuitry 920 may include one or more baseband processors and/or control logic to process baseband signals received from a receive signal path of the RF circuitry 930 and to generate baseband signals for a transmit signal path of the RF circuitry 930. Baseband processing circuitry 920 may interface with the application circuitry 910 for generation and processing of the baseband signals and for controlling operations of the RF circuitry 930. For example, in some embodiments, the baseband circuitry 920 may include a second generation (2G) baseband processor 921, third generation (3G) baseband processor 922, fourth generation (4G) baseband processor 923, and/or other baseband processor(s) 924 for other existing generations, generations in development or to be developed in the future (e.g., fifth generation (5G), 6G, etc.). The baseband circuitry 920 (e.g., one or more of baseband processors 921-924) may handle various radio control functions that enable

communication with one or more radio networks via the RF circuitry 930. The radio control functions may include, but are not limited to, signal modulation/demodulation, encoding/decoding, radio frequency shifting, etc. In some embodiments,

modulation/demodulation circuitry of the baseband circuitry 920 may include Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT), precoding, and/or constellation mapping/demapping functionality. In some embodiments, encoding/decoding circuitry of the baseband circuitry 920 may include convolution, tail-biting convolution, turbo, Viterbi, and/or Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) encoder/decoder functionality. Embodiments of modulation/demodulation and encoder/decoder functionality are not limited to these examples and may include other suitable functionality in other embodiments.

In some embodiments, the baseband circuitry 920 may include elements of a protocol stack such as, for example, elements of an evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (EUTRAN) protocol including, for example, physical (PHY), media access control (MAC), radio link control (RLC), packet data convergence protocol (PDCP), and/or radio resource control (RRC) elements. A central processing unit (CPU) 925 of the baseband circuitry 920 may be configured to run elements of the protocol stack for signaling of the PHY, MAC, RLC, PDCP and/or RRC Layers. In some embodiments, the baseband circuitry may include one or more audio digital signal processor(s) (DSP) 926. The audio DSP(s) 926 may be include elements for compression/decompression and echo maycellation and may include other suitable processing elements in other embodiments.

The baseband circuitry 920 may further include memory/storage 927. The memory/storage 927 may be used to load and store data and/or instructions for operations performed by the processors of the baseband circuitry 920. Memory/storage for one embodiment may include any combination of suitable volatile memory and/or non-volatile memory. The memory/storage 927 may include any combination of various levels of memory/storage including, but not limited to, read-only memory (ROM) having embedded software instructions (e.g., firmware), random access memory (e.g., dynamic random access memory (DRAM)), cache, buffers, etc. The memory/storage 927 may be shared among the various processors or dedicated to particular processors.

Components of the baseband circuitry may be suitably combined in a single chip, a single chipset, or disposed on a same circuit board in some embodiments. In some embodiments, some or all of the constituent components of the baseband circuitry 920 and the application circuitry 910 may be implemented together such as, for example, on a system on a chip (SOC).

In some embodiments, the baseband circuitry 920 may provide for communication compatible with one or more radio technologies. For example, in some embodiments, the baseband circuitry 920 may support communication with an evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (EUTRAN) and/or other wireless metropolitan area networks (WMAN), a wireless local area network (WLAN), a wireless personal area network (WPAN). Embodiments in which the baseband circuitry 920 is configured to support radio communications of more than one wireless protocol may be referred to as multi-mode baseband circuitry.

RF circuitry 930 may enable communication with wireless networks using modulated electromagnetic radiation through a non-solid medium. In various

embodiments, the RF circuitry 930 may include switches, filters, amplifiers, etc. to facilitate the communication with the wireless network. RF circuitry 930 may include a receive signal path which may include circuitry to down-convert RF signals received from the FEM circuitry 940 and provide baseband signals to the baseband circuitry 920. RF circuitry 930 may also include a transmit signal path which may include circuitry to up- convert baseband signals provided by the baseband circuitry 920 and provide RF output signals to the FEM circuitry 940 for transmission.

In some embodiments, the RF circuitry 930 may include a receive signal path and a transmit signal path. The receive signal path of the RF circuitry 930 may include mixer circuitry 931, amplifier circuitry 932 and filter circuitry 933. The transmit signal path of the RF circuitry 930 may include filter circuitry 933 and mixer circuitry 931. RF circuitry

930 may also include synthesizer circuitry 934 for synthesizing a frequency for use by the mixer circuitry 931 of the receive signal path and the transmit signal path. In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry 931 of the receive signal path may be configured to down-convert RF signals received from the FEM circuitry 940 based on the synthesized frequency provided by synthesizer circuitry 934. The amplifier circuitry 932 may be configured to amplify the down-converted signals and the filter circuitry 933 may be a low-pass filter (LPF) or band-pass filter (BPF) configured to remove unwanted signals from the down-converted signals to generate output baseband signals. Output baseband signals may be provided to the baseband circuitry 920 for further processing. In some embodiments, the output baseband signals may be zero-frequency baseband signals, although this is not a requirement. In some embodiments, mixer circuitry 931 of the receive signal path may comprise passive mixers, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect.

In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry 931 of the transmit signal path may be configured to up-convert input baseband signals based on the synthesized frequency provided by the synthesizer circuitry 932 to generate RF output signals for the FEM circuitry 940. The baseband signals may be provided by the baseband circuitry 920 and may be filtered by filter circuitry 933. The filter circuitry 933 may include a low-pass filter (LPF), although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect.

In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry 931 of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry 931 of the transmit signal path may include two or more mixers and may be arranged for quadrature downconversion and/or upconversion respectively. In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry 931 of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry 931 of the transmit signal path may include two or more mixers and may be arranged for image rejection (e.g., Hartley image rejection). In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry

931 of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry 931 may be arranged for direct downconversion and/or direct upconversion, respectively. In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry 931 of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry 931 of the transmit signal path may be configured for super-heterodyne operation.

In some embodiments, the output baseband signals and the input baseband signals may be analog baseband signals, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect. In some alternate embodiments, the output baseband signals and the input baseband signals may be digital baseband signals. In these alternate embodiments, the RF circuitry 930 may include analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) circuitry and the baseband circuitry 920 may include a digital baseband interface to communicate with the RF circuitry 930.

In some dual -mode embodiments, a separate radio IC circuitry may be provided for processing signals for each spectrum, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect.

In some embodiments, the synthesizer circuitry 934 may be a fractional-N synthesizer or a fractional N/N+l synthesizer, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect as other types of frequency synthesizers may be suitable. For example, synthesizer circuitry 934 may be a delta-sigma synthesizer, a frequency multiplier, or a synthesizer comprising a phase-locked loop with a frequency divider.

The synthesizer circuitry 934 may be configured to synthesize an output frequency for use by the mixer circuitry 931 of the RF circuitry 930 based on a frequency input and a divider control input. In some embodiments, the synthesizer circuitry 934 may be a fractional N/N+l synthesizer.

In some embodiments, frequency input may be provided by a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), although that is not a requirement. Divider control input may be provided by either the baseband circuitry 920 or the applications processor 910 depending on the desired output frequency. In some embodiments, a divider control input (e.g., N) may be determined from a look-up table based on a channel indicated by the applications processor 910.

Synthesizer circuitry 934 of the RF circuitry 930 may include a divider, a delay- locked loop (DLL), a multiplexer and a phase accumulator. In some embodiments, the divider may be a dual modulus divider (DMD) and the phase accumulator may be a digital phase accumulator (DP A). In some embodiments, the DMD may be configured to divide the input signal by either N or N+l (e.g., based on a carry out) to provide a fractional division ratio. In some example embodiments, the DLL may include a set of cascaded, tunable, delay elements, a phase detector, a charge pump and a D-type flip-flop. In these embodiments, the delay elements may be configured to break a VCO period up into Nd equal packets of phase, where Nd is the number of delay elements in the delay line. In this way, the DLL provides negative feedback to help ensure that the total delay through the delay line is one VCO cycle.

In some embodiments, synthesizer circuitry 934 may be configured to generate a carrier frequency as the output frequency, while in other embodiments, the output frequency may be a multiple of the carrier frequency (e.g., twice the carrier frequency, four times the carrier frequency) and used in conjunction with quadrature generator and divider circuitry to generate multiple signals at the carrier frequency with multiple different phases with respect to each other. In some embodiments, the output frequency may be a LO frequency (fLO). In some embodiments, the RF circuitry 930 may include an IQ/polar converter.

FEM circuitry 940 may include a receive signal path which may include circuitry configured to operate on RF signals received from one or more antennas 950, amplify the received signals and provide the amplified versions of the received signals to the RF circuitry 930 for further processing. FEM circuitry 940 may also include a transmit signal path which may include circuitry configured to amplify signals for transmission provided by the RF circuitry 930 for transmission by one or more of the one or more antennas 950.

In some embodiments, the FEM circuitry 940 may include a TX/RX switch to switch between transmit mode and receive mode operation. The FEM circuitry may include a receive signal path and a transmit signal path. The receive signal path of the FEM circuitry may include a low-noise amplifier (LNA) to amplify received RF signals and provide the amplified received RF signals as an output (e.g., to the RF circuitry 930). The transmit signal path of the FEM circuitry 940 may include a power amplifier (PA) to amplify input RF signals (e.g., provided by RF circuitry 930), and one or more filters to generate RF signals for subsequent transmission (e.g., by one or more of the one or more antennas 950).

In various embodiments, network interface controller (NIC) circuitry 960 may include one or more transmission and reception (TX/RX) signal paths, which may connect to one or more data packet networks via network interface circuitry 965. In some embodiments, NIC circuitry 960 may connect to the data packet networks via multiple network interface circuitries 965. The NIC circuitry 960 may support one or more data link Layer standards, such as Ethernet, Fiber, Token Ring, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), and/or any other suitable data link Layer standard(s). In some embodiments, each network element that the electronic device 900 may connect to (for example, a base station, network controller, a radio access network (RAN) device, a S-GW, SDN switch, MME, P-GW, and the like) may contain a same or similar network interface circuitry 965. Furthermore, The NIC circuitry 960 may include, or may be associated with processing circuitry, such as one or more single-core or multi-core processors and/or logic circuits, to provide processing techniques suitable to carry out communications according to the one or more data link Layer standards used by the NIC circuitry.

In some embodiments, the electronic device 900 may include additional elements such as, for example, memory/storage, display, camera, sensor, and/or input/output (I/O) interface.

In embodiments where the electronic device 900 is, implements, is incorporated into, or is otherwise part of a radio access network (RAN), the NIC circuitry 960 may be to divide network resources into one or more slices wherein each of the one or more slices correspond to a service to be provided by a radio access network (RAN); and network interface circuitry 965 may be to provide the network resources of a slice of the one or more slices according to a corresponding service to be provided.

In embodiments where the electronic device 900 is, implements, is incorporated into, or is otherwise part of an evolved nodeB (eNB), the network interface circuitry 965 may be to receive a division of network resources into one or more slices wherein each of the one or more slices correspond to a service to be provided by a radio access network (RAN). The baseband circuitry 920 may be to allocate the network resources of a slice of the one or more slices according to the division of network resources.

In some embodiments, the electronic device of Figure 9 may be configured to perform one or more processes, techniques, and/or methods as described herein, or portions thereof. A first example method of such a process is depicted in Figure 10. For example, the process may include partitioning baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH) functions 1010 to enable network slicing according to different deployment scenarios 1020. A second example method is shown in Figure 11. For example, the process may include dividing network resources 1110 into one or more slices. Each of the one or more slices may correspond to a service to be provided by a radio access network (RAN). The process may include providing 1120 the network resources of a slice of the one or more slices according to a corresponding service to be provided. Both these example methods dynamically (re) configure the RAN architecture in use on the RAN or C-RAN according to the needs of the RAN and/or network slices operating the RAN at any given point in time.

Figure 12 is a block diagram illustrating components, according to some example embodiments, able to read instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a machine-readable storage medium) and perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein. Specifically, Figure 12 shows a diagrammatic representation of hardware resources 1200 including one or more processors (or processor cores) 1210, one or more memory/storage devices 1220, and one or more communication resources 1230, each of which are communicatively coupled via a bus 1240.

The processors 1210 (e.g., a central processing unit (CPU), a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processor, a complex instruction set computing (CISC) processor, a graphics processing unit (GPU), a digital signal processor (DSP) such as a baseband processor, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a radio-frequency integrated circuit (RFIC), another processor, or any suitable combination thereof) may include, for example, a processor 1212 and a processor 1214. The memory/storage devices 1220 may include main memory, disk storage, or any suitable combination thereof.

The communication resources 1230 may include interconnection and/or network interface components or other suitable devices to communicate with one or more peripheral devices 1204 and/or one or more databases 1206 via a network 1208. For example, the communication resources 1230 may include wired communication components (e.g., for coupling via a Universal Serial Bus (USB)), cellular communication components, Near Field Communication (NFC) components, Bluetooth® components (e.g., Bluetooth® Low Energy), Wi-Fi® components, and other communication components.

Instructions 1250 may comprise software, a program, an application, an applet, an app, or other executable code for causing at least any of the processors 1210 to perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein. The instructions 1250 may reside, completely or partially, within at least one of the processors 1210 (e.g., within the processor's cache memory), the memory/storage devices 1220, or any suitable combination thereof. Furthermore, any portion of the instructions 1250 may be transferred to the hardware resources 1200 from any combination of the peripheral devices 1204 and/or the databases 1206. Accordingly, the memory of processors 1210, the memory/storage devices 1220, the peripheral devices 1204, and the databases 1206 are examples of computer-readable and machine-readable media.

EXAMPLES

Example 1 may include a method of baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head

(RRH) function partition to enable network slicing with different deployment scenarios.

Example 2 may include the method of example 1 or some other example herein, wherein an evolved nodeB (eNB) will perform the BBU and RRH function partition using scheduling information for each network slice. The eNB is merely one example of a base station.

Example 3 may include the method of example 2 or some other example herein, wherein the eNB performs common public radio interface (CPRI)-like and/or CPRI- advanced or physical Layer (PHY) split BBU and RRH function partition to frequency/time resources scheduled for mobile broadband services with advanced multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) scheme and medium/high bandwidth (BW) front-haul.

Example 4 may include the method of example 2 or some other example herein, wherein the eNB will perform Layer-2 (L2)/Layer-3 (L3) BBU and RRH function partition to frequency/time resources scheduled for low latency service such as mission critical internet of things (IoT) applications and/or devices.

Example 5 may include the method of example 2 or some other example herein, wherein the eNB performs a CPRI-like, PHY split, remote PHY, or L2/L3 split BBU and RRH functional split to frequency/time resources scheduled for massive machine type communications (MTC) service or mobile broadband service.

Example 6 may include the method of example 1 or some other example herein, wherein the eNB performs front-haul packtization using scheduling information for each network slice.

Example 7 may include the method of example 6 or some other example herein, wherein the eNB performs front-haul packtization procedure defined for CPRI-like or PHY split BBU and RRH partition, to the frequency/time resource scheduled to support advanced MIMO scheme like coordinated multipoint (CoMP), beam aggregation, cell-less operation, etc.

Example 8 may include the method of example 6 or some other example herein, wherein the eNB performs front-haul packtization procedure defined for L2/L3 BBU and RRH partition, to the frequency/time resource scheduled for extreme delay sensitive application such as mission critical IoT applications or mission critical IoT devices.

Example 9 may include the method of example 6 or some other example herein, wherein the eNB performs front-haul packtization procedure including CPRI-like, PHY split, remote PHY, L2/L3 split, etc., based on front-haul BW and delay to the frequency/time resource scheduled for massive IoT and mobile broad band service.

Example 10 may include a method comprising: dividing network resources into one or more slices wherein each of the one or more slices correspond to a service to be provided by a radio access network (RAN); and providing the network resources of a slice of the one or more slices according to a corresponding service to be provided.

Example 11 may include the method of example 10 or some other example herein, wherein the dividing includes defining a first slice of the one or more slices is associated with massive internet of things (IoT) applications and/or IoT devices and defining a second slice of the one or more slices is associated with mobile broadband services, and wherein the providing includes allocating a narrow subcarrier spacing or code division multiple access (CDMA) waveform over a desired time/frequency grid to services associated with the first slice, and allocating an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform with a larger subcarrier spacing to services associated with the second slice.

Example 12 may include the method of example 11 or some other example herein, wherein the providing includes allocating network resources for high throughput requirement to the services associated with second slice and allocating low latency resource to services associated with the first slice.

Example 13 may include the method of example 10 or some other example herein, further comprising: determining, for a transmission time interval (TTI), frequency resources for each of the one or more slices; determining whether a service associated with the TTI is a service with massive connections; and selecting a radio access network (RAN) split when it is determined that the service associated with the TTI is a service with massive connections and based on a front-haul rate.

Example 14 may include the method of example 10 or some other example herein, wherein the RAN split includes one of a common public radio interface (CPRI)-like, PHY split, remote PHY, or L2/L3 split, baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH) functional split to frequency/time resources Example 15 may include the method of example 13 or some other example herein, further comprising: determining whether the service associated with the TTI is a service beam aggregation; and packetizing front-haul packets using a split PHY architecture when the service associated with the TTI is a service using beam aggregation.

Example 16 may include the method of example 15 or some other example herein, further comprising: determining whether the service associated with the TTI is a mission critical service; and using the L2/L3 split when the when the service associated with the TTI is a mission critical service.

Example 17 may include the method of example 14 or some other example herein, wherein the selecting comprises selecting the RAN split when it is determined that the service associated with the TTI is a service with massive connections and based on a front- haul bandwidth (BW) and front-haul delay, and wherein each RAN split includes a corresponding data packetization format.

Example 18 may include the method of example 17 or some other example herein, wherein further comprising: determining whether the service associated with the TTI is a service beam aggregation; using corresponding resource blocks (RBs) for the beam aggregation; selecting a CPRI-advanced RAN split when the front-haul includes a high BW and low latency; and selecting an I/Q quantization and/or a compression scheme RAN split when the front-haul includes a medium BW and low latency.

Example 19 may include the method of example 17 or some other example herein, wherein further comprising: determining whether the service associated with the TTI is a delay sensitive service; and selecting a media access control (MAC) protocol data unit (PDU) front-haul.

Example 20 may include an apparatus comprising: network interface controller (NIC) circuitry to divide network resources into one or more slices wherein each of the one or more slices correspond to a service to be provided by a radio access network (RAN); and network interface circuitry to provide the network resources of a slice of the one or more slices according to a corresponding service to be provided.

Example 21 may include the apparatus of example 20 or some other example herein, wherein to divide network resources, the NIC circuitry is to define a first slice of the one or more slices is associated with massive internet of things (IoT) applications and/or IoT devices and define a second slice of the one or more slices is associated with mobile broadband services, and wherein to provide the network resources, the network interface circuitry is to allocate a narrow subcarrier spacing or code division multiple access (CDMA) waveform over a desired time/frequency grid to services associated with the first slice, and allocate an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform with a larger subcarrier spacing to services associated with the second slice.

Example 22 may include the apparatus of example 21 or some other example herein, wherein to provide the network resources, the network interface circuitry is to allocate network resources for high throughput requirement to the services associated with second slice and allocate low latency resource to services associated with the first slice.

Example 23 may include the apparatus of example 20 or some other example herein, wherein the NIC circuitry is to determine, for a transmission time interval (TTI), frequency resources for each of the one or more slices; determine whether a service associated with the TTI is a service with massive connections; and select a radio access network (RAN) split when it is determined that the service associated with the TTI is a service with massive connections and based on a front-haul rate.

Example 24 may include the apparatus of example 20 or some other example herein, wherein the RAN split includes one of a common public radio interface (CPRI)- like, PHY split, remote PHY, or L2/L3 split, baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH) functional split to frequency/time resources.

Example 25 may include the apparatus of example 23 or some other example herein, the NIC circuitry is to determine whether the service associated with the TTI is a service beam aggregation; and packetize front-haul packets using a split PHY architecture when the service associated with the TTI is a service using beam aggregation.

Example 26 may include the apparatus of example 25 or some other example herein, the NIC circuitry is to determine whether the service associated with the TTI is a mission critical service; and use the L2/L3 split when the when the service associated with the TTI is a mission critical service.

Example 27 may include the apparatus of example 24 or some other example herein, wherein to select, the NIC circuitry is to select the RAN split when it is determined that the service associated with the TTI is a service with massive connections and based on a front-haul bandwidth (BW) and front-haul delay, and wherein each RAN split includes a corresponding data packetization format.

Example 28 may include the apparatus of example 27 or some other example herein, the NIC circuitry is to determine whether the service associated with the TTI is a service beam aggregation; use corresponding resource blocks (RBs) for the beam aggregation; selecting a CPRI-advanced RAN split when the front-haul includes a high BW and low latency; and select an I/Q quantization and/or a compression scheme RAN split when the front-haul includes a medium BW and low latency.

Example 29 may include the apparatus of example 27 or some other example herein, the NIC circuitry is to determine whether the service associated with the TTI is a delay sensitive service; and select a media access control (MAC) protocol data unit (PDU) front-haul.

Example 30 may include the apparatus of examples 20-29 or some other example herein, wherein the services are to be provided by the RAN and the apparatus is to be implemented in an electronic device associated with the RAN and the network resource allocation according to examples 20-29 is to be provided to one or more evolved nodeBs (eNBs) via the network interface circuitry.

Example 31 may include an apparatus comprising: network interface circuitry to receive a division of network resources into one or more slices wherein each of the one or more slices correspond to a service to be provided by a radio access network (RAN); and baseband circuitry to allocate the network resources of a slice of the one or more slices according to the division.

Example 32 may include the apparatus of example 31 or some other example herein, wherein the apparatus is to be implemented in an evolved nodeB (eNB).

Example 33 may include the apparatus of example 31 or some other example herein, wherein the apparatus is to be implemented in a device served by the wireless network, such as a User Equipment (UE).

Example 34 may include a radio access network (RAN) control entity apparatus operable in a wireless communication network, the apparatus comprising: radio frequency (RF) circuitry to receive at least one communication originating from a wireless network device or transmit at least one communication to a wireless network device; wherein the RAN control entity is coupled to a baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH); and circuitry to: partition a physical RAN infrastructure or C-RAN into one or more network slices; and partition the BBU and/or RRH according to a deployment scenario of the one or more network slices.

Example 35 may include the apparatus of example 34 or some other example herein, wherein the circuity is further to partition the BBU and/or RRH according to a deployment scenario of the one or more network slices using scheduling information of each of the one or more networks slice in, or to be in, operation on the physical radio access network, or C-RAN.

Example 36 may include the apparatus of examples 34-36 or some other example herein, wherein the circuity is further to partition the BBU and/or RRH according to a deployment scenario of the one or more network slices using any one or more of: a common public radio interface (CPRI)-like/CPRI-advanced technique; a physical Layer (PHY) split technique across the BBU and RRH.

Example 37 may include the apparatus of examples 34-37 or some other example herein, wherein the circuitry is to partition the BBU and/or RRH to partition the wireless network resources of the wireless network, where the wireless resources include frequency/time resources and/or physical resource block (PRBs).

Example 38 may include the apparatus of examples 34-37 or some other example herein, wherein the wireless network resources are partitioned according to a vertical slice or horizontal slice.

Example 39 may include the apparatus of examples 34-38 or some other example herein, wherein a vertical slice is mobile broadband service using an advanced multiple in multiple out (MEVIO) scheme and a medium to high bandwidth front-haul.

Example 40 may include the apparatus of examples 34-39 or some other example herein, wherein the circuitry is to partition the BBU and/or RRH according to parameters of the vertical or horizontal network slice.

Example 41 may include the apparatus of examples 39-40 or some other example herein, wherein the parameters of the vertical or horizontal network slice include any one or more of: a data rate; a data bandwidth; a number of devices to be served; a latency; a mission criticality; a delay; a quality of service (QoS); a network profile of a service.

Example 42 may include the apparatus of examples 39-40 or some other example herein, wherein the circuitry is further to determine or carry out front-haul packetization using scheduling information for or of each network slice.

Example 43 may include the apparatus of example 42 or some other example herein, wherein is further to determine or carry out front-haul packetization procedure defined by any of: a common public radio interface (CPRI)-like/CPRI-advanced technique; and a physical Layer (PHY) split technique across the BBU and RRH. Example 44 may include the apparatus of example 43 or some other example herein, wherein the circuitry is further to determine or carry out front-haul packetization procedure defined by a frequency/time resource schedule that supports an advanced MIMO technique, wherein the technique may include any one or more of CoMP, beam aggregation or cell-less operation.

Example 45 may include the apparatus of example 43 or some other example herein, wherein the circuitry is further to determine or carry out front-haul packetization procedure defined by a frequency/time resource schedule or technique that supports any of: a mission criticality, delay or bandwidth.

Example 46 may include the apparatus of example 45 or some other example herein, wherein mission criticality applies to a delay sensitive application.

Example 47 may include the apparatus of example 45 or some other example herein, wherein the apparatus comprises a base station.

Example 48 may include the apparatus of example 47 or some other example herein, wherein the base station comprises an enhanced-Node B (e B).

Example 49 may include the apparatus of examples 34 to 48 or some other example herein, wherein a vertical network slice comprises any one or more of: a logical partition of a physical radio access network infrastructure for or in exclusive use of a single type of communication; a logical partition of a physical radio access network infrastructure for or in exclusive use by communications of a specific use-case of communication; a logical partition of a physical radio access network infrastructure having self-contained operation and traffic flow independent of operation and traffic flow on any other logical partition of the physical radio access network infrastructure; and wherein a horizontal network slice comprises a logical partition of a computational resource of at least one device operating in the RAN, wherein the at least one device comprises a base station, a controller, or a device being served by the RAN.

Example 50 may include a user equipment for use with a radio access network (RAN) control entity apparatus operable in a wireless communication network, the apparatus comprising: radio frequency (RF) circuitry to receive at least one communication originating from a wireless network device under control of the RAN control entity or transmit at least one communication to a wireless network device under control of the RAN control entity; wherein the RAN control entity comprises the apparatus of any of examples 34 to 49 or some other example herein. Example 51 may include one or more computer-readable media comprising instructions to cause an electronic device, upon execution of the instructions by one or more processors of the electronic device, to perform one or more elements of a method in a radio access network (RAN) of a wireless communication network, the method comprising: partitioning a physical RAN infrastructure or C-RAN into one or more network slices; and partitioning the BBU and/or RRH according to a deployment scenario of the one or more network slices.

Example 52 may include the method of example 51 or some other example herein, wherein the method further comprises partitioning the BBU and/or RRH according to a deployment scenario of the one or more network slices using scheduling information of each of the one or more networks slice in, or to be in, operation on the physical radio access network, or C-RAN.

Example 53 may include the method of examples 51-52 or some other example herein, wherein the method further comprises partitioning the BBU and/or RRH according to a deployment scenario of the one or more network slices using any one or more of: a common public radio interface (CPRI)-like/CPRI-advanced technique; a physical Layer (PHY) split technique across the BBU and RRH.

Example 54 may include the method of examples 51-53 or some other example herein, wherein the method further comprises partitioning n the BBU and/or RRH to partition the wireless network resources of the wireless network, where the wireless resources include frequency/time resources and/or physical resource block (PRBs).

Example 55 may include the method of examples 51-54 or some other example herein, wherein the wireless network resources are partitioned according to a vertical slice or horizontal slice.

Example 56 may include the method of examples 51-55 or some other example herein, wherein a vertical slice is mobile broadband service using an advanced multiple in multiple out (MEVIO) scheme and a medium to high bandwidth front-haul.

Example 57 may include the method of examples 51-56 or some other example herein, the method further comprises partitioning the BBU and/or RRH according to parameters of the vertical or horizontal network slice.

Example 58 may include the method of examples 51-57 or some other example herein, wherein the parameters of the vertical or horizontal network slice include any one or more of: a data rate; a data bandwidth; a number of devices to be served; a latency; a mission criticality; a delay; a quality of service (QoS); a network profile of a service.

Example 59 may include the method of examples 51-58 or some other example herein, wherein the method further comprises determining or carrying out front-haul packetization using scheduling information for or of each network slice.

Example 60 may include the method of example 59 or some other example herein, wherein the method further comprises determining or carrying out a front-haul packetization procedure defined by any of: a common public radio interface (CPRI)- like/CPRI-advanced technique; and a physical Layer (PHY) split technique across the BBU and RRH.

Example 61 may include the method of example 60 or some other example herein, wherein the method further comprises determining or carrying out the front-haul packetization procedure defined by a frequency/time resource schedule that supports an advanced MEVIO technique, wherein the technique may include any one or more of CoMP, beam aggregation or cell-less operation.

Example 62 may include the method of example 60 or some other example herein, wherein the method further comprises determining or carrying out the front-haul packetization procedure defined by a frequency/time resource schedule or technique that supports any of: a mission criticality, delay or bandwidth.

Example 63 may include the method of example 62 or some other example herein, wherein mission criticality applies to a delay sensitive application.

Example 64 may include the method of example 62 or some other example herein, wherein the method, or at least part thereof, executes in a Cloud-RAN (C-RAN), a RAN control entity, a base station, a device served by the RAN, a UE, a BBU or a RRH.

Example 65 may include the method of examples 51 to 64 or some other example herein, wherein a vertical network slice comprises any one or more of: a logical partition of a physical radio access network infrastructure for or in exclusive use of a single type of communication; a logical partition of a physical radio access network infrastructure for or in exclusive use by communications of a specific use-case of communication; a logical partition of a physical radio access network infrastructure having self-contained operation and traffic flow independent of operation and traffic flow on any other logical partition of the physical radio access network infrastructure; and wherein a horizontal network slice comprises a logical partition of a computational resource of at least one device operating in the RAN, wherein the at least one device comprises a base station, a controller, or a device being served by the RAN.

Example 67 may comprise one or more computer-readable media comprising instructions to cause an electronic device, upon execution of the instructions by one or more processors of the electronic device, to perform one or more elements of any methods described in or related to any one or more of examples 1-19, 51-64 or any other method or process described herein, or to provide the functionality of the apparatus or device according to any one or more of examples 20-50 or 66, or any other device described herein.

Example 66 may comprise an apparatus comprising logic, modules, means for and/or circuitry to perform one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of examples 1-19, 51-64, or any other method or process described herein.

Example 67 may comprise a method, technique, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-19, 51-64 or portions or parts thereof.

Example 68 may comprise an apparatus comprising: one or more processors and one or more computer readable media comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method, techniques, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-19, 51-64, or portions thereof, or to provide the functionality of the apparatus or device according to any one or more of examples 20-50 or 66, or any other device described herein.

Example 69 may comprise a method of communicating in a wireless network as shown and described herein. Example 70 may comprise a system for providing wireless communication as shown and described herein. Example 71 may comprise a device for providing wireless communication as shown and described herein.

Examples use-cases/types of communications may include: Wireless/Mobile

Broadband (MBB) communications; Extreme Mobile Broadband (E-MBB) communications; Real-time use-case such as Industrial Control communications, Machine-to-Machine communications (MTC/MTC1); non-real-time use-case, such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors communications, or massive-scale Machine-to-Machine communications (M-MTC/MTC2); Ultra Reliable Machine-to-Machine communications (U-MTC); Mobile Edge Cloud, e.g. caching, communications; Vehicle-to- Vehicle (V2V) communications; Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications; Vehicle-to-anything communications (V2X). This is to say, the present disclosure relates to providing network slicing according to any readily definable/distinguishable type of communication that can be carried out over a wireless network.

In some examples, the radio access network (RAN) control entity is distributed across portions of the RAN. In some examples, the portions of RAN are the base stations (e.g. eNBs) of the RAN, in others, the portion(s) of the RAN may be a UE, or any other device being or to be served by the wireless network/RAN, or forming part of (or serving) the same, e.g. mobility management engine (MME), baseband unit (BBU), remote radio head (RRH) or, etc. In some examples, if the RAN control entity is physically distributed, the RAN control entity can be collocated with the macro BS, and only manage the slice portions that under the coverage of the macro BS. In some examples, if the RAN control entity is in a central location, the RAN control entity can manage a slice portion across multiple BSs which are under the coverage of the RAN control entity. The RAN control entity may comprise at least a portion controlling allocation of RAN, or device, resources according to a need of the one or more horizontal or vertical slices, for example computational resources at/in, or available to, a device in the wireless network.

As herein described, where an example or claim recites RF circuitry, for example, to form a greater entity within the wireless network, e.g. a base station, this is also intended to cover the or an alternative embodiment which does not include the RF circuitry, for example for use in (or to provide) a distributed form of entity according to the disclosure. This may be applicable, for example, when the entity forms part of a Cloud RAN, where the radio portions (e.g. RRH) are not co-located/within the same entity as at least a significant portion of the control function (entity, module, etc.) , e.g. BBU. Thus, no embodiments are intended to be restricted to only those having an RF portion that sends or receives messages to or form the wireless network. For example, some implementations may be part of front-haul capabilities, which may be the connections to radio front ends (e.g. RRHs) from a centralized, or more centralized baseband function (e.g. BBU).

As used herein, any reference to computer program product or computer readable medium, may include reference to both transitory (e.g. physical media) and non-transitory forms (e.g. signals or data structures thereof).

Various examples disclosed herein may provide many advantages, for example, but not limited to: providing full(er) coverage for the devices being served, for any given amount of core network and/or RAN resources (e.g. computing, radio, etc); less control signaling delay and signaling exchange overhead among transmission points; providing improved coverage and at the same time reducing control signaling exchange among network nodes (inc. transmission points); a more efficient (overall, or substantial portion of a) wireless network, for example because, it allows a given amount of (e.g. a single) physical radio access network infrastructure to be used by multiple use-cases, thereby resulting in less hardware/infrastructure than would otherwise be used (e.g. double, or more, hardware, for example to provide separate physical radio access network infrastructure for each use case); generally improved radio access network performance, efficiency, reliability, maintaining/maintenance of service and quality of service, for all devices operating across the RAN, and within each slice of the RAN.

As herein described, turn-on, activation or logical separation, or the like, of the, or a, network slice may be equivalent to one another, and the terms used inter-changeably. Similarly, the turn-off, deactivation or logical desperation, or the like, of a network slice may all be equivalent to one another, and the terms used inter-changeably. A network slice may also be referenced as a logically separate (separated, partitioned, etc.) radio network access, or as a logically separate (separated, partitioned, etc.) radio network access portion. A device being, or to be served by the physical radio access network infrastructure, or a network slice may include a UE, however any and all other forms of devices that may be served are also interchangeable with a reference to a UE herein. A device may be referenced as a wireless network device. However, a wireless network device as used herein may also reference a serving entity, such as base station, MME, BBU, RRH, etc., dependent on context of use. Operationally, in terms of the disclosed network slicing, an access point and base station may be considered similar in use or deployment.

As herein described, specific examples have been used to explain the disclosed methods and functions (and function units that carry out those functions), however, the disclosure is not so limited. For example, embodiments of the disclosure is/are not limited to any specific example, such as: where a specific vertical market is disclosed in relation to a Figure, this is only an example, and any vertical market may be used instead; where a specific portion of a slice is disclosed in relation to a Figure, any portion of a slice may be used instead; where a RAN has been disclosed as having a certain size, type or number of slices (horizontal or vertical) in relation to a Figure, any size, type or number of slices may be used instead; where a slice or slice portion has been disclosed as having a certain size, type or number (in the horizontal or the vertical) in relation to a Figure, any size, type or number of slice or slice portion may be used instead. Also, in the foregoing, whilst a numbering scheme for the slices has been applied starting from 1, other numbering schemes may also be implemented, e.g. the numbers may start from 0 instead, such that Slice#l may be Slice#0, and the like. Thus, the specific numbers are not limiting, other than by showing an exemplary distinction between slices (by being differently numbered) or an exemplary relation between numbered slice portions (by being consecutively numbered sub-parts of the same numbered slice).

As used herein, the term "circuitry" may refer to, be part of, or include an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), an electronic circuit, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group), and/or memory (shared, dedicated, or group) that execute one or more software or firmware programs, a combinational logic circuit, and/or other suitable hardware or software components, including a one or more virtual machines that can provide the described functionality. In some embodiments, the circuitry may be implemented in, or functions associated with the circuitry may be implemented by, one or more software or firmware modules. In some embodiments, circuitry may include logic, at least partially operable in hardware. In some embodiment, the processing/execution may be distributed instead of centralized processing/execution.

As used herein, any reference to a (RAN) architecture may include anything that may be defined as or thought of as any form of specific process(es), technique(s), technology(ies), implementation detail, improvement in or type of operation of a wireless network (or similar networking system entity), particularly in the RAN. Architectures may be typically introduced, maintained and updated in the standards documents for the respective wireless network technologies in use, for example the third generation partnership project (3 GPP) standards, and the like.

It will be appreciated that any of the disclosed methods (or corresponding apparatuses, programs, data carriers, etc.) may be carried out by either a host or client, depending on the specific implementation (i.e. the disclosed methods/apparatuses are a form of communication(s), and as such, may be carried out from either 'point of view', i.e. in corresponding to each other fashion). Furthermore, it will be understood that the terms "receiving" and "transmitting" encompass "inputting" and "outputting" and are not limited to an RF context of transmitting and receiving radio waves. Therefore, for example, a chip or other device or component for realizing embodiments could generate data for output to another chip, device or component, or have as an input data from another chip, device or component, and such an output or input could be referred to as "transmit" and "receive" including gerund forms, that is, "transmitting" and "receiving", as well as such "transmitting" and "receiving" within an RF context.

As used in this specification, any formulation used of the style "at least one of A, B or C", and the formulation "at least one of A, B and C" use a disjunctive "or" and a disjunctive "and" such that those formulations comprise any and all joint and several permutations of A, B, C, that is, A alone, B alone, C alone, A and B in any order, A and C in any order, B and C in any order and A, B, C in any order. There may be more or less than three features used in such formulations.

In the claims, any reference signs placed between parentheses shall not be construed as limiting the claim. The word 'comprising' does not exclude the presence of other elements or steps then those listed in a claim. Furthermore, the terms "a" or "an," as used herein, are defined as one or more than one. Also, the use of introductory phrases such as "at least one" and "one or more" in the claims should not be construed to imply that the introduction of another claim element by the indefinite articles "a" or "an" limits any particular claim containing such introduced claim element to inventions containing only one such element, even when the same claim includes the introductory phrases "one or more" or "at least one" and indefinite articles such as "a" or "an." The same holds true for the use of definite articles. Unless stated otherwise, terms such as "first" and "second" are used to arbitrarily distinguish between the elements such terms describe. Thus, these terms are not necessarily intended to indicate temporal or other prioritization of such elements. The mere fact that certain measures are recited in mutually different claims does not indicate that a combination of these measures cannot be used to advantage.

Unless otherwise explicitly stated as incompatible, or the physics or otherwise of the embodiments, example or claims prevent such a combination, the features of the foregoing embodiments and examples, and of the following claims may be integrated together in any suitable arrangement, especially ones where there is a beneficial effect in doing so. This is not limited to only any specified benefit, and instead may arise from an "ex post facto" benefit. This is to say that the combination of features is not limited by the described forms, particularly the form (e.g. numbering) of the example(s), embodiment s), or dependency of the claim(s). Moreover, this also applies to the phrase "in one embodiment", "according to an embodiment" and the like, which are merely a stylistic form of wording and are not to be construed as limiting the following features to a separate embodiment to all other instances of the same or similar wording. This is to say, a reference to 'an', 'one' or 'some' embodiment(s) may be a reference to any one or more, and/or all embodiments, or combination(s) thereof, disclosed. Also, similarly, the reference to "the" embodiment may not be limited to the immediately preceding embodiment.

In the foregoing, reference to 'layer' may be a reference to a predefined (or definable) portion of the infrastructure, whereas reference to 'Layer' may be a reference to a network protocol Layer in operation on/in the network infrastructure, or portion thereof. As used herein, a vertical slice may be referenced as or related to a vertical market segment. As used herein, any machine executable instructions, or compute readable media, may carry out a disclosed method, and may therefore be used synonymously with the term method, or each other.

The foregoing description of one or more implementations provides illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the scope of the invention to the precise form disclosed. Modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of various implementations of the invention.

Claims

CLAIMS:

1. An apparatus of radio access network (RAN) control entity operable in a wireless communication network, the RAN control entity coupled to a baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH), the apparatus comprising:

radio frequency (RF) circuitry to receive at least one communication originating from a wireless network device or transmit at least one communication to a wireless network device;

and

circuitry to:

partition a physical RAN infrastructure or cloud-RAN (C-RAN) into one or more network slices; and

partition the BBU and/or RRH according to a deployment scenario of the one or more network slices.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the circuity is further to partition the BBU and/or RRH according to a deployment scenario of the one or more network slices using scheduling information of each of the one or more networks slice in, or to be in, operation on the physical radio access network, or C-RAN.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the circuity is further to partition the BBU and/or RRH according to a deployment scenario of the one or more network slices using any one or more of:

a common public radio interface (CPRI)-like/CPRI-advanced technique; and a physical Layer (PHY) split technique across the BBU and RRH.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is to partition the BBU and/or RRH to partition the wireless network resources of the wireless network, where the wireless resources include frequency/time resources and/or physical resource blocks (PRBs).

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the wireless network resources are partitioned according to a vertical slice or horizontal slice.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein a vertical slice is mobile broadband service using an advanced multiple in multiple out (MTMO) scheme and a medium to high b andwi dth front-haul .

7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is to partition the BBU and/or RRH according to parameters of the vertical or horizontal network slice.

8. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the parameters of the vertical or horizontal network slice include any one or more of: a data rate; a data bandwidth; a number of devices to be served; a latency; a mission criticality; a delay; a quality of service (QoS); or a network profile of a service.

9. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is further to determine or carry out front-haul packetization using scheduling information for or of each network slice.

10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the circuitry is further to determine or carry out front-haul packetization procedure defined by any of:

11. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the circuitry is further to determine or carry out front-haul packetization procedure defined by a frequency/time resource schedule that supports an advanced MTMO technique, wherein the technique may include any one or more of Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP), beam aggregation or cell-less operation.

12. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the circuitry is further to determine or carry out front-haul packetization procedure defined by a frequency/time resource schedule or technique that supports any of: a mission criticality, delay or bandwidth.

13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein mission criticality applies to a delay sensitive application.

14. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the apparatus comprises a base station.

15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the base station comprises an enhanced-Node B (e B).

16. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein a vertical network slice comprises any one or more of:

a logical partition of a physical radio access network infrastructure for or in exclusive use of a single type of communication;

a logical partition of a physical radio access network infrastructure for or in exclusive use by communications of a specific use-case of communication;

a logical partition of a physical radio access network infrastructure having self- contained operation and traffic flow independent of operation and traffic flow on any other logical partition of the physical radio access network infrastructure; and wherein a horizontal network slice comprises a logical partition of a computational resource of at least one device operating in the RAN, wherein the at least one device comprises a base station, a controller, or a device being served by the RAN.

17. Machine executable instructions arranged, when executed by one or more than one processor, to implement a method of baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH) function partition to enable network slicing with different deployment scenarios.

18. The machine executable instructions of claim 17, wherein an evolved nodeB (eNB) will perform the BBU and RRH function partition using scheduling information for each network slice.

19. The machine executable instructions of claim 18, wherein the eNB performs a common public radio interface (CPRI)-like and/or CPRI-advanced or physical Layer (PHY) split BBU and RRH function partition to frequency/time resources scheduled for mobile broadband services with advanced multiple input and multiple output (MTMO) scheme and medium/high bandwidth (BW) front-haul.

20. The machine executable instructions of claim 18, wherein the eNB will perform Layer 2 (L2)/Layer 3 (L3) BBU and RRH function partition to frequency/time resources scheduled for low latency service such as mission critical internet of things (IoT) applications and/or devices.

21. The machine executable instructions of claim 18, wherein the eNB performs a CPRI-like, PHY split, remote PHY, or L2/L3 split BBU and RRH functional split to frequency/time resources scheduled for massive machine type communications (MTC) service or mobile broadband service.

22. The machine executable instructions of claim 17, wherein the eNB performs front- haul packetization using scheduling information for each network slice.

23. The machine executable instructions of claim 22, wherein the eNB performs front- haul packetization procedure defined for CPRI-like or PHY split BBU and RRH partition, to the frequency/time resource scheduled to support advanced MIMO scheme like coordinated multipoint (CoMP), beam aggregation, cell-less operation, etc.

24. The machine executable instructions of claim 22, wherein the eNB performs front- haul packetization procedure defined for L2/L3 BBU and RRH partition, to the frequency/time resource scheduled for extreme delay sensitive application such as mission critical IoT applications or mission critical IoT devices.

25. The machine executable instructions of claim 22, wherein the eNB performs front- haul packetization procedure including CPRI-like, PHY split, remote PHY, L2/L3 split, etc., based on front-haul BW and delay to the frequency/time resource scheduled for massive IoT and mobile broad band service.