  To mitigate the severe inter-tier interference and enhance limited
cooperative gains resulting from the constrained and non-ideal transmissions
between adjacent base stations in heterogeneous networks (HetNets),
heterogeneous cloud radio access networks (H-CRANs) are proposed as
cost-efficient potential solutions through incorporating the cloud computing
into HetNets. In this article, state-of-the-art research achievements and
challenges on H-CRANs are surveyed. In particular, we discuss issues of system
architectures, spectral and energy efficiency performances, and promising key
techniques. A great emphasis is given towards promising key techniques in
H-CRANs to improve both spectral and energy efficiencies, including cloud
computing based coordinated multi-point transmission and reception, large-scale
cooperative multiple antenna, cloud computing based cooperative radio resource
management, and cloud computing based self-organizing network in the cloud
converging scenarios. The major challenges and open issues in terms of
theoretical performance with stochastic geometry, fronthaul constrained
resource allocation, and standard development that may block the promotion of
H-CRANs are discussed as well.
