  Centralized Radio Access Network (C-RAN) is a new paradigm for wireless
networks that centralizes the signal processing in a computing cloud, allowing
commodity computational resources to be pooled. While C-RAN improves
utilization and efficiency, the computational load occasionally exceeds the
available resources, creating a computational outage. This paper provides a
mathematical characterization of the computational outage probability for
low-density parity check (LDPC) codes, a common class of error-correcting
codes. For tractability, a binary erasures channel is assumed. Using the
concept of density evolution, the computational demand is determined for a
given ensemble of codes as a function of the erasure probability. The analysis
reveals a trade-off: aggressively signaling at a high rate stresses the
computing pool, while conservatively backing-off the rate can avoid
computational outages. Motivated by this trade-off, an effective
computationally aware scheduling algorithm is developed that balances demands
for high throughput and low outage rates.
