A Survey of Resource Management Toward 5G Radio Access Networks

The next generation 5G radio access network (RAN) system is believed to be a true world wide wireless web (WWWW). This is because such system will seamlessly and ubiquitously connect everything, and support at least 1000-fold traffic volumes, 100 billion connected wireless devices, and diversified use cases as well as quality of service (QoS) requirements (e.g., reliability, latency, data rates, coverage, security, and privacy) of multimedia applications by 2020. Recently, a number of research challenges including the explosive growth in mobile traffic volumes, unprecedented connected devices, and diversified use cases have been identified for the 5G RAN systems. In addition, specific technologies such as multitier communication, massive MIMOs, mmWave backhauling, extreme densifications of nodes (UDNs), full-duplex communications (FDCs), and energy harvesting techniques have emerged in the literature to resolve some of these challenges of the 5G RAN systems. However, the research activities defining specific technical advancements for 5G RAN systems are yet to continue in the next half decade before specifications for standardization and commercialization are concluded. Motivated by the limited number of existing surveys of such technical advancements in a broader perspective (i.e., interference, spectrum-efficient, and energy-efficient management schemes), this paper seeks to take stock of state-of-the-art (SOTA) on such technical developments. Our attention focuses on relevant radio interference and resource management (RIRM) schemes that have been proposed in the last five years. Our contribution lies in the analysis, synthesis, and summarized alignments of the conventional RIRM schemes toward overcoming the identified challenges for the 5G RAN systems. Finally, the review highlights a number of open research issues deduced from recently proposed RIRM schemes.