Garcia-Aviles, Gines
Garcia-Saavedra, Andres
Gramaglia, Marco
Costa-Perez, Xavier
Serrano, Pablo
Banchs, Albert
2021-10-25
<p>RAN virtualization will become a key technology for the last mile of next-generation mobile networks driven by initiatives such as the O-RAN alliance. However, due to the computing fluctuations inherent to wireless dynamics and resource contention in shared computing infrastructure, the price to migrate from dedicated to shared platforms may be too high. Indeed, we show in this paper that the baseline architecture of a base station¿s distributed unit (DU) collapses upon moments of deficit in computing capacity. Recent solutions to accelerate some signal processing tasks certainly help but do not tackle the core problem: a DU pipeline that requires predictable computing to provide carrier-grade reliability. We present Nuberu, a novel pipeline architecture for 4G/5G DUs specifically engineered for non-deterministic computing platforms. Our design has one key objective to attain reliability: to guarantee a minimum set of signals that preserve synchronization between the DU and its users during computing capacity shortages and, provided this, maximize network throughput. To this end, we use techniques such as tight deadline control, jitter-absorbing buffers, predictive HARQ, and congestion control. Using an experimental prototype, we show that Nuberu attains >95% of the theoretical spectrum efficiency in hostile environments, where state-of-art approaches lose connectivity, and at least 80% resource savings</p>
This work has been supported by the European Commission through Grant No. 101017109 (DAEMON project) and Grant No. 101015956 (Hexa-X project), and the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5599123
oai:zenodo.org:5599123
eng
Zenodo
https://doi.org/10.1145/3447993.3483266
https://zenodo.org/communities/hexa-x
https://zenodo.org/communities/h2020daemon
https://zenodo.org/communities/eu
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5599122
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
ACM MobiCom 2021, ACM MobiCom 2021: The 27th Annual International Conference On Mobile Computing And Networking, New Orleans, United States, January 31 - February 04 2022
Mobile networks
RAN virtualization
vRAN
O-RAN
3GPP
5G,
6G
Distributed Unit
RAN disaggregation
NFV
Network virtualization
Nuberu: Reliable RAN Virtualization in Shared Platforms
info:eu-repo/semantics/preprint