Virtual residential gateways: Architecture and performances

With the increase of the transmission bit rate on optical fibers, it is now possible to transmit a base band signal over long distances. A very promising technology called Digital Radio Over Fiber (DRoF) uses this principle and allows centralization of resource management in the base stations architecture. This architecture is consist of three components: a Base Band Unit (BBU), a Remote Radio Head (RRH) and the interface between them such us CPRI (Common Public Radio Interface). In this paper, we propose to use the DRoF technology to virtualize current residential gateways making them less complex and allowing centralization of resources management. We show however that the propagation delay can be a serious problem for WiFi as we increase the distance between terminals and the access point. We use then an analytical tool called Bianchi Model to evaluate the performances.