Small cell networks are currently seen as a new way to satisfy the increasing wireless traffic demand. The proximity of base stations to subscribers brings many possibilities for the development of new applications, including new offerings based on cloud computing. Smartphones can directly offload applications to close base stations, provided that these are equipped with additional computational and storage resources. The cloud concept applied in the framework of small cells can also combine radio and computation aspects in order to optimise the service delivery. This paper introduces a new element called the Small Cell Manager (SCM), which optimises the overall operation of a cluster of cloud-enabled small cells. The SCM, aware of the cluster situation in terms of both radio and cloud aspects, interacts not only with the cloud-enabled base stations, but also with LTE core network components. To that end, different possibilities for the general architecture of a small-cell-cloud are analysed. Furthermore, the paper describes different evaluation criteria an LTE operator has to consider before adopting this approach in order to optimise the required investment and maximise benefits.

Peer Reviewed