a coverage and are used as anchor points and small- Operator A Operator B core network core network Operator A Shared Operator B Site A Site A E-UTRA E-UTRA Shared RAN deployment scenario Cosited deployment with LTE Figure 8 Cosited and shared RAN deployment scenarios [16]. xlii Introduction and Background ((p)) LTE (macrocell) Co-located cell NR (small cell) Non-co-located cell Figure 9 Co-deployment scenarios of NR and LTE [15,16]. cell access points provide high-throughput small coverage areas within macrocell coverage. In these deployment scenarios, depending on the cell layout and the location of the access nodes, both NR and LTE coverage may coexist in the same geographical area. One of the scenarios in Fig. 9 illustrates both LTE and NR cells that are overlaid and co-located, both providing similar coverage area. In this case, both LTE and NR cells are either macro or small cells. Fig. 9 further depicts a scenario where LTE and NR cells are overlaid, but not necessarily co-located, where each providing different coverage area. In this case, LTE serves macrocells and NR serves small cells. The opposite scenario is also possible which may not be practically useful for initial deployments of 5G networks. According to 3GPP definition, a co-located cell refers to a small cell together with a macro cell for which the eNBs are installed at the same location, whereas a non-co-located cell refers to a small cell alongside a macro cell for which the respective eNBs are installed at different locations. The distributed base station model leads way to the centralized and cooperative C-RAN architectural concept where all or part of baseband functions are performed in a CU. Centralized signal processing greatly reduces the number of site equipment needed to cover the same areas served by a distributed network of base stations. Cooperative radio transmis- sion combined with distributed antenna scheme provided by RRHs provides higher spectral efficiency and interference coordination. Real-time cloud infrastructure based o