Collaborative Research: WiFiUS: Heterogeneous Resource Allocation for Hierarchical Software-Defined Radio Access Networks at the Edge

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Wireless cellular infrastructure is becoming dense and heterogeneous. Software-defined networking has brought new opportunities for enhancing network planning and administration. When applied in geographically large-scale radio access networks, software-defined networking suffers from scalability and survivability problems due to high centralization. In this project, a hierarchical software-defined radio access network architecture is designed. In contrast to a flat version of software defined radio access networks, which have large control overhead and system latency for large scaled networks, the proposed scheme offers reduced control overhead and system latency by exploration locality, thereby enhancing system scalability. In addition, the tree structure of the hierarchical design can easily deal with single points of failure. The plan is to first investigate the architecture design of the hierarchical software-defined radio access network, the protocol design for the control network, survivability, and locality and optimization, followed by large-scale elastic approaches, machine learning based approaches, and matching theory based approaches for network-wide resource allocation. The intellectual merit originates from the interdisciplinary fusion of different technologies including software-defined networking, wireless communications, software-defined radio, machine learning, and game theory. The research plan addresses challenging issues of coexistence of interfering clusters and elastic resource allocation for a large-scale radio access networks, while developing theoretically novel frameworks to tackle these challenges. This research will lead to simpler and more efficient resource allocation schemes for wireless networks by exploring the power of software-defined networks. The transformative and interdisciplinary project involves a complementary mix of network architecture design, theoretical modeling and analysis, and experimental simulations quantifying performance benefits. The outcomes will be made available to the research community through high quality journal articles and conference presentations which may be used by industrial entities for network development and future industrial standardization. This project will strengthen collaboration in the research field of wireless communication between the United States and Finland. The proposed research activities will complement and enrich the growing curriculum on game theory and optimization at the University of Houston and Arizona State University through course development and special topic seminars. Highly skilled personnel in related areas will be trained in carrying out the proposed research tasks. Special efforts will be made to engage minority and underrepresented groups, including African-American, Hispanic and female graduate students. K-12 outreach is also planned so as to motivate high school students in science and engineering.