Pico Satellites for Cloud Radio Access Network

Among main targets of fifth generation and beyond networks, there are perceived availability of 99.999% and 'anytime anywhere' connectivity. That would allow future generation networks to fully support very sensitive governmental services such as military and emergency ones. However, verticals like complex border monitoring would require connectivity in places where there is no available access network. Thus, the deployment of mobile base stations and the design of a system, based on virtualisation (e.g. cloud radio access network) and satellite-based network function virtualisation, can promise to achieve the desired goals for the mentioned verticals. This paper investigates the possibility to implement cloud radio access network in a system based on mobile base stations and CubeSats (pico satellites), which host the virtual network functions and the baseband processing. In particular, the investigation takes into account baseband functional split to study the feasibility of satellite-based cloud radio access network.