Optimal Task Allocation in Near-Far Computing Enhanced C-RAN for Wireless Big Data Processing

With the increasing popularity of user equipments, the corresponding UE generated big data (UGBD) is also growing substantially, which makes both UEs and current network structures struggle to process those data and applications. This article proposes a near-far computing enhanced C-RAN (NFC-RAN) architecture that can better process big data and its corresponding applications. NFC-RAN is composed of near edge computing (NEC) and far edge computing (FEC) units. NEC is located in the remote radio head,, which can quickly respond to delay-sensitive tasks from the UEs, while FEC sits next to a baseband unit pool, which can do other computation-intensive tasks. Task allocation between NEC and FEC is introduced in this article. Also, WiFi indoor positioning is illustrated as a case study of the proposed architecture. Moreover, simulation and experiment results are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed task allocation and architecture.