NeTS: Small: Designing an Advanced Mobility Management and Utilization Framework for Enabling mmWave Multi-Band Ultra-Dense Cellular Networks of Future

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Harnessing millimeter-wave spectrum can solve the two long-standing, interlocked problems in mobile cellular networks: spectrum scarcity and interference. Therefore, deploying dense small-cell networks using millimeter wave and sub-5GHz spectrum is being pursued as a way to mitigate current wireless capacity problems. While advent of such multi-band ultra-dense networks may solve these two problems, it gives birth to a new challenging problem: managing user mobility efficiently and seamlessly in such a dense network consisting of cells of varying sizes on a wide range of frequency bands with entirely different propagation characteristics. As handling user mobility is essential in a mobile network, ensuring the viability of seamless and efficient mobility in emerging cellular network architectures calls for a shift from the way user mobility is currently managed. The overarching goal of this project is to trigger this shift by transforming mobility management from being a reactive to a proactive process by developing an Advanced Mobility Management and Utilization Framework (AM-MUF). This project offers strong workforce training in a highly sought-after multi-disciplinary skill set needed to conduct proposed research, while ensuring participation of women and other underrepresented groups, and K-12 outreach. The project also leverages collaboration with key national and international stakeholders in cellular ecosystems to: 1) validate the mobility prediction models with data from a live network; 2) evaluate proposed solutions on a full scale outdoor 5G testbed; 3) conduct field trials on a real network; 4) promote adaptation of the project outcomes by 5G standardization bodies through a testbed-based demonstration of results.AM-MUF will be developed through three interlinked research thrusts: 1) First, the project will develop practically implementable models for predicting a range of attributes of user mobility in ultra-dense multi-band networks; 2) Second, the prediction models will be leveraged to develop agile and scalable next generation solutions, algorithms and protocols for proactive mobility-based robust optimization and proactive mobility-based load balancing; 3) Third, the project will derive: the fundamental limits of accuracy of the prediction algorithms under different system configurations including cell density and mobility scenarios; and performance bounds of the developed solutions for a given prediction accuracy. To achieve this ambitious goal, the researchers will leverage a systematic methodology consisting of analytical modeling, system level simulations, synthetic data based training and testing, real data based validation, a full scale 5G test-bed based evaluations and field trials on a real network.