Utilization-aware VB migration strategy for inter-BBU load balancing in 5G cloud radio access networks

The battle between traffic demand and resource availability limits the efficiency of the existing cellular network. To overcome these limitations, the 5G needs to be scalable and flexible to allow multiple radio access technology. The next-generation base station architecture also aims to maximize physical resource utilization and minimize its associated cost. In this paper, we proposed a framework for inter-BBU load balancing based on VB's live migration in a C-RAN architecture. The migration is performed in-between two C-BBU, which resides at a single BBU-Pool. The load balancing across BBU is performed based on two consecutive steps, i.e. (a) an expected completion time-based resources allocation and (b) a utilization factor-based VB migration. We validate our proposed approach using CloudSim simulator. The result shows that the adaptation of cloud-computing technology along with suitable resources allocation and load balancing strategy increases BBU utilization by overcoming the imbalance load conditions. Further, the use of the live migration technique improves the QoS of C-RAN by reducing the server downtime and migration time.