Latency-aware flow allocation in 5G NGFI networks

The next generation fronthaul interface (NGFI) architecture has been proposed as a flexible and cost-effective solution developed for meeting stringent latency and high throughput requirements of future centralized and virtualized radio access networks (C-RAN/vRAN) in 5G mobile networks. In the NGFI network, the radio data to be processed is transmitted between a radio unit (RU), distributed unit (DU), and centralized unit (CU) by means of packets routed over a packet-switched transport network. In this paper, we focus on the latency-aware flow allocation (LFA) problem in the NGFI network, which concerns allocation of transmission resources for data flows assuming quality of service requirements related to maximal latency of these flows. To assess the network performance, we apply a meta-heuristic optimization algorithm and perform numerical experiments in a grid network topology connected using high capacity fiber links.