April 23rd of 2010, C-RAN International Workshop, hosted by CMRI, co-organized by FuTURE FORUM, was held in Beijing Xiyuan Hotel, on which China Mobile officially issued the C-RAN White Paper to reveal the C-RAN vision of China Mobile and propose the major challenges and research layout for C-RAN frameworks.

According to the White Paper, the mobile operators are facing with severe competition, as the slow growth of the single-user ARPU seriously weakens the profitability of the mobile operators. The high capital expenditure and operation maintenance costs of the Traditional radio access network make mobile operators gradually lose their competitive edge in the mobile Internet market. So the new network architecture has to be reconsidered to adapt to the new environment of the wireless access network, and to find a high-performance and low-cost method of green wireless access network suitable for the mobile Internet is the problem faced by the mobile operators. With such context, China Mobile proposed the C-RAN Vision on centralized pool based baseband processor, collaborative wireless network constituted by the remote radio frequency unit and antenna, and real-time cloud-based infrastructure-based wireless access network, aiming at provide the operators with a low-cost high-performance green network architecture to enable the users to enjoy colorful wireless broadband services at very low prices.

Ms. Wang Xiaoyun, from CMRI, stated four bottleneck problems in her speech on the seminar. First, great breakthrough is expected when the technical development no longer meets the current requirement; second, how to deploy high-performance and low-cost network to realized the all-over profit on the industrial chain; third, how to use less resource to solve more problems; fourth, how to make the communication network system more reliable with effective operation. Ms. Wang Xiaoyun believed that C-RAN concept, as the first judgment on the future requirement in wireless access fields made by the operators, will be the necessary orientation for the operators in the future. The operators is obliged to work with the industrial circle to promote the development of the new green wireless access system.

Prof. Zhang Ping from BUPT, Mr. Xiang Jiying from ZTE, Mr. Liu Sheng from Huawei, and many experts joined the discussion on C-RAN key technologies, and gave wide and in-depth analysis on the technical prospect and system framework. The discussion covers the subjects on the software radio platform, baseband pool, cloud computing based distributed wireless access system, Unipon based C-RAN carrier technologies and wireless base stations.

Ms. Wang Xiaoyun, representing China Mobile, signed the MoU with the important partners including IBM, ZTE, Huawei, and Intel, to work together on the R&D of C-RAN technologies. China Mobile hopes to build an international communication platform via this workshop to invite the mobile operators, telecommunication equipment providers, traditional IT manufacturers, and the academic research institutes interested in RAN evolution to participate in the R&D of C-RAN key technologies and to promote the realization of C-RAN Vision.