Fronthauling for Cloud-RAN and distributed antenna systems

Next generation wireless access networks are expected to make much wider use of distributed antenna systems, in which the antennas are physically separated from the baseband and higher layer processing: the "Cloud-RAN" concept is perhaps the ultimate example of this. This can reduce complexity of the access point and can also significantly improve network performance, but requires signals to be relayed across what is then known as the "front-haul" network, which can require these networks to provide very high capacity, typically several times the total user throughput. The talk reviews the issues, and some potential solutions, some involving the applications of pure number theory