Literature Database Entry

franke2025overview-preprint

Max Franke, Fabian Göttsch, Ameya G Joshi, Furkan Özkoca, Abhishek Dandekar, Osman Tugay Basaran, Naveed Kaim Khani, Arash Pourdamghani, André Costa Drummond, Julius Schulz-Zander, Thomas Bauschert, Stefan Schmid, Giuseppe Caire, Falko Dressler and Sławomir Stańczak, "An Overview of Network-Related Challenges in Cell-Free 6G," TechRxiv, preprint, October 2025.

Abstract

User-centric Cell-Free architectures are envisioned to be deployed in 6G networks to overcome the limitations inherent to the current cell-based architectures. While they offer drastic improvements on the physical layer, they bring new challenges to many other parts of the network. Due to their user-centric approach, many long standing principles of RAN design need to be reconsidered. This comes at an opportune time as there is currently a large push to break apart the monolithic base station based approaches and disaggregate functionalities. The O-RAN architecture in particular is a potentially good fit to accommodate cell-free networks. In this work, we highlight and discuss several major open issues related to architecture, protocols, and other network aspects encountered on the path to cell-free deployments. We give initial pointers on how the O-RAN architecture would need to evolve to enable cell-free use cases. Finally, we report first results on how different fronthaul topologies could overcome some of the cell-free knock-on effects. This work serves as a notice to the network community to make it aware of these challenges.

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Max Franke
Fabian Göttsch
Ameya G Joshi
Furkan Özkoca
Abhishek Dandekar
Osman Tugay Basaran
Naveed Kaim Khani
Arash Pourdamghani
André Costa Drummond
Julius Schulz-Zander
Thomas Bauschert
Stefan Schmid
Giuseppe Caire
Falko Dressler
Sławomir Stańczak

BibTeX reference

@techreport{franke2025overview-preprint,
    author = {Franke, Max and G{\"{o}}ttsch, Fabian and Joshi, Ameya G and {\"{O}}zkoca, Furkan and Dandekar, Abhishek and Basaran, Osman Tugay and Khani, Naveed Kaim and Pourdamghani, Arash and Drummond, Andr{\'{e}} Costa and Schulz-Zander, Julius and Bauschert, Thomas and Schmid, Stefan and Caire, Giuseppe and Dressler, Falko and Sta{\'{n}}czak, Sławomir},
    doi = {10.36227/techrxiv.175994223.36861431/v1},
    title = {{An Overview of Network-Related Challenges in Cell-Free 6G}},
    institution = {TechRxiv},
    month = {10},
    type = {preprint},
    year = {2025},
   }
   
   

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Last modified: 2026-04-27