Fog-Aided Data Reception in Next-Generation MIMO Radio Access Networks with Edge Sensing

Fog radio access networks (F-RANs) with edge compute and caching capabilities have been proposed as an advanced RAN architecture for fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks. This work considers a novel application of fog-RAN for assisting physical-layer data reception at user equipments (UEs), by leveraging edge nodes of the fog-RAN as sensors to estimate statistical parameters of interest to UEs in the vicinity. As a specific example, UEs offload the estimation of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) second-order channel and noise statistics to the fog-RAN. Since knowledge of these statistics is necessary for downlink channel estimation and data decoding, the fog-RAN is able to enhance the estimation accuracy by accumulating a larger number of samples. Following a quantitative outline and feasibility analysis of the fog-aided reception protocol, numerical examples demonstrate that fog assistance can enhance the quality of MIMO channel and data demodulation estimates, while simultaneously reducing the need for lengthy UE sensing durations.