Three-Stage DRX Scheduling for Joint Downlink Transmission in C-RAN

Cloud-RAN (C-RAN) is a promising network architecture to provide 5G broadband services. In C-RAN, the base stations (BSs) are separated as the computation entities (i.e., Baseband Units (BBUs) ) and the radio entities (i.e., Remote Radio Heads (RRHs) ), where the BBUs are put in a centralized cloud to realize centrally control and the RRH are left at cell sites for signal transmission. With C-RAN, multiple collaborative cells can transmit data to user equipments (UEs) by Joint Transmission (JT) technology to improve network efficiency. On the other hand, 3GPP standard has defined the Discontinuous Reception (DRX) mechanism, which allows UEs to turn off their radio interfaces periodically to save their energy. However, how to cooperate DRX with JT under the C-RAN architecture is still an open issue. Therefore, this letter studies how to optimize UEs’ DRX parameters while considering their quality-of-service (QoS) in C-RAN with JT. To solve this problem, we propose an energy-efficient JT scheduling scheme. The main idea of our scheme is to well pair UEs and BSs with the consideration of joint transmission quality and then optimizes DRX parameters to further save energy. Extensive simulation results show that our scheme can improve system throughput, well utilize resource and save UEs’ energy consumption.