Incorporating diversity in cloud-computing: a novel paradigm and architecture for enhancing the performance of future cloud radio access networks

The incorporation of cloud computing in cloud radio access networks (C-RAN) implies that drawbacks of existing cloud platforms influence wireless network performance. Two of such drawbacks are power usage effectiveness and cloud content access latency. New locations such as the ocean, stratosphere and outer space are suitable alternative locations for cloud computing platforms. These new locations have cooling benefits and enhance the power usage effectiveness of future cloud computing platforms. The latency is also reduced when cloud computing platforms in these locations are closer to subscribers. This paper proposes the cloud diversity concept for C-RANs. Cloud diversity proposes combining cloud computing platforms at locations close to subscribers and with cooling benefits. Cloud computing platforms in the aforementioned locations are closer to different subscribers for which they reduce the latency of data access. This paper presents an architecture showing a future C-RAN that incorporates cloud diversity. It formulates a performance model and presents simulation results. The results obtained show that the incorporation of cloud diversity enhances power usage effectiveness by up to 74.9% on average. Cloud diversity also enhances data transmission by reducing the number of round trips associated with data access by up to 63.6% on average.