US Patent 10244507 Distributed processing in a centralized radio access network

Certain features relate to a centralized radio access network (C-RAN) that can flexibly and dynamically allocate protocol layer processing among baseband processing units and remote units. A C-RAN can be configured to include a media access control (“MAC”) scheduler and a fronthaul physical layer coordinator. The fronthaul physical layer coordinator can include a fronthaul physical layer scheduler, which can allocate spatial resources by determining the specific remote unit(s) that should serve a given mobile device. The MAC scheduler can allocate time/frequency resources to user devices communicating with the remote units. The fronthaul physical layer coordinator or the MAC scheduler can also determine the optimal transmission modes remote units can use to serve the user devices.