Home > Communication Service Provider Solutions > Enabling Telecom Transformation > RAN Pooling - The case for RAN pooling with Cloud/Virtualized RAN > Efficient interference management with C-RAN pooling
Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) is a technique used to increase bit rates and decrease inter-cell interference within and among cell sites, through coordination within and among RAN nodes (gNodeBs). This especially helps User Equipment (UE) handovers at cell edges. CoMP requires fast, dynamic coordination between gNodeBs over the Xn interface. A C‑RAN deployment with pooled BBU (CU) enables this fast communication over Xn interface, as compared to D-RAN.
A Centralized RAN pool of DUs (due to centralized MAC schedulers) enables easier implementation and faster coordination for CoMP techniques like coordinated scheduling, coordinated beamforming, and transmission point selection (Figure 11). A Dual Split RAN deployment can achieve much lower scheduling latencies for CoMP across DU sites or gNodeBs (due to lower fronthaul latencies, especially for coordination between cells and between sites) and for CoMP scheduling techniques. Pooling also lowers Xn interface latencies for inter-CU coordination. Efficient and fast coordination minimizes UE handovers at the cell edges. The impact of C-RAN with a 7.2 split deployment and pooling for CoMP will be profound in cases where interference is a challenge, like in deployments with many small cells, small cells inside macro cell, and private 5G deployments.