RAPID: Assessing the Impact on Operational Mobile Networks in the Face of COVID-19 Public Health Crisis

本项目针对新冠肺炎大流行，提出对国家4G/4.5G移动网络的性能和可靠性进行测量和诊断。其目标是满足在这场公共卫生危机期间评估运行中的移动网络、揭示技术问题、了解其紧迫挑战以及在不进行重大基础设施升级的情况下提出补救措施的迫切需要。该项目开发了一种新的设备上测量方法。它利用近年来在构建软件工具和进行大规模测量方面的广泛努力，进行了五次推进。首先，它计划进行一项纵向研究，量化美国运营商网络在面对新冠肺炎时的性能变化，并分析迫在眉睫的技术挑战背后的原因。其次，它计划设计和评估数据驱动的设备端解决方案，以在不进行任何基础设施升级的情况下提高数据性能。第三，它计划对这段时间内可能更频繁发生的故障进行表征和诊断。第四，它计划评估之前研究中披露的安全问题，并检查可能的攻击如何变化。第五，它计划开放数据，促进社区的研究人员支持长期的网络创新。该项目将有助于评估移动用户在新冠肺炎疫情期间的体验。从长远来看，该项目收集和发布的开放数据集将使数据驱动的软件解决方案能够有效地利用增强的网络能力，并加速移动网络研究界的5G创新。软件工具和收集的数据将在http://milab.cs.purdue.edu/.上获得该储存库将维护至少五年。这一奖励反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project proposes to measure and diagnose performance and reliability of the national 4G/4.5G mobile networks in face of COVID-19 pandemic. The objective is to meet the immediate need of assessing operational mobile networks, unveiling technical issues, understanding their pressing challenges, and proposing remedies without major infrastructure upgrade during this public health crisis. The project exploits a novel on-device measurement approach. It leverages extensive efforts in building software tools and conducting large-scale measurement in the recent years to conduct five thrusts. First, it plans to conduct a longitudinal study to quantify how performance of US carrier networks change in face of COVID-19 and analyze why behind the pressing technical challenges. Second, it plans to design and assess data-driven device-side solutions to boost data performance without any infrastructure upgrade. Third, it plans to characterize and diagnose failures which likely occur more often during this period of time. Forth, it plans to assess security issues disclosed in prior studies and examine how possible attacks vary. Fifth, it plans to open up data and facilitate researchers in the community to empower long-term network innovations.The project will help assess the mobile users' experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the long term, open datasets collected and released by this project will empower data-driven software solutions to efficiently utilize enhanced network capabilities and accelerate 5G innovations in mobile network research community.The software tools and collected data will be available at http://milab.cs.purdue.edu/. The repository will be maintained for at least five years.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.