Collaborative Research: CNS Core: Medium: Softwarizing Millimeter-wave Radio Access Networks (RANs) at the Edge

增强现实、互联自动驾驶汽车和工业物联网系统中的新兴应用对下一代移动网络提出了苛刻的要求，仅靠低于7 GHz的无线电资源很难满足这些要求。因此，5G及以后的网络已经采用了工作在毫米波(毫米波)频段的无线电，这种频段在全球范围内提供25倍或更高的带宽。另一方面，毫米波无线网络需要密集部署基础设施节点以实现理想的覆盖，因为毫米波无线电信号遭受高传播损耗，并且容易受到阻塞和移动性的影响。不幸的是，毫米波基础设施节点，例如5G中的gNodeB，是由专门的专用硬件组成的，因此，它们的密集部署将产生巨大的资本和运营成本。拟议项目的目标是通过将毫米波无线电基础设施节点的无线电接入网络(RAN)功能软件化并从靠近最终用户的数据中心(即边缘数据中心)为其提供服务，从而促进网络密集化，从而降低毫米波无线电基础设施节点的成本。更重要的是，它将在网络实施和配置方面实现前所未有的灵活性，并提高网络和边缘数据中心的资源分配效率。在社会层面，该项目将推动正在进行的移动网络虚拟化革命，并加快下一代网络系统的开发和部署。解决边缘毫米波无线局域网软件化相关挑战的关键洞察力是利用毫米波基带及其固有结构中的海量数据并行，在所有领域使用可编程硬件。该项目的目标是在三个相互关联的研究项目中做出以下科学贡献。(I)适用于边缘部署的商用服务器集群的毫米波物理层的低延迟软件实现。(Ii)自适应RAN配置和网络内压缩方案，可在实践中应对有限的前端容量，而不会大幅增加毫米波基础设施节点的成本。(3)基于用于通信的毫米波无线电信号的新型传感和成像方案。这些措施包括使用单个毫米波基础设施节点进行检测，以及利用多个协调的毫米波节点实现以前不可能实现的覆盖和解决方案。该奖项反映了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。

Emerging applications in augmented reality, connected autonomous vehicles, and industrial IoT systems impose demanding requirements on next-generation mobile networks that can hardly be met alone with radio resources below 7 GHz. Therefore, 5G and beyond networks have embraced radios operating in millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency bands, which offer 25 times or more bandwidth worldwide. On the other hand, mmWave radio networks require the dense deployment of infrastructure nodes to achieve desirable coverage, because mmWave radio signals suffer from high propagation loss and are vulnerable to blockage and mobility. Unfortunately, mmWave infrastructure nodes, e.g., gNodeB in 5G, are made of specialized, dedicated hardware and as a result, their dense deployment would incur formidable capital and operational cost. The goal of the proposed project is to reduce the cost of mmWave radio infrastructure nodes by softwarizing their radio access network (RAN) functions and serving them from data centers close to end users, i.e., edge data centers, therefore facilitating network densification. More importantly, it will allow for previously impossible flexibility in network implementation and configuration as well as efficiency in resource allocation across the network and the edge data center. At the societal level, this project will fuel the ongoing revolution of mobile network virtualization and accelerate the development and deployment of next-generation network systems.The key insight toward addressing the challenges associated with softwarizing mmWave RANs at the edge is to exploit the massive data parallelism inside the mmWave baseband and its inherent structures, with programmable hardware in all domains. The project targets the following scientific contributions in three interrelated research thrusts. (i) A low-latency software realization of the mmWave physical layer for commodity server clusters suitable for edge deployment. (ii) Adaptive RAN configuration and in-network compression schemes that cope with the limited fronthaul capacity in practice, without substantially increasing the cost of mmWave infrastructure nodes. (iii) Novel sensing and imaging schemes based on mmWave radio signals intended for communications. These include sensing with a single mmWave infrastructure node and sensing that leverages multiple coordinated mmWave nodes to achieve previously impossible coverage and resolution.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.