Sharing of baseband units in fifth generation networks and beyond

Abstract

Described is allocating and deallocating baseband unit resources of a distributed unit based on anticipated and/or actual demand for the resources. For example, when user equipment transitions to a connected state, a corresponding message can be detected and used to determine whether sufficient baseband unit resources are needed to handle the traffic of the newly connecting user equipment. If not, additional baseband unit resources are allocated. When user equipment transitions to an inactive state, the corresponding command can be detected and used to determine whether the baseband unit resources are still needed for other traffic. If not, baseband unit resources are deallocated; that is, if a distributed unit's resources are no longer needed, the distributed unit's resources are deactivated to reduce resource consumption. Deallocation can be performed by changing the resources to a power conservation (e.g., sleep) state, with allocation performed by changing such resources back to an active state.