Smart Infrastructures for Radio Access as a Service (SIRAS) - Software-defined Wireless Access Networks for Future Generations

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To meet the exponential growth of wireless data traffic, anticipated to exceed 300 Exabytes/year worldwide by 2020, mobile service providers are deploying heterogeneous networks that augment conventional macro-cells with micro-, pico-, and femto-cells, and are utilizing a mix of radio access technologies (RAT) like 3G/4G cellular and 802.11n/ac. However, advances in RAT have not been matched by new development of system architectures that facilitate their efficient deployment. New wireless system architectures should be scalable to provide increased capacity, programmable to support new functions and advanced RAT, and self-organized to enable “plug-and-play” deployment. We propose to fill these gaps by addressing important research problems leading to the development of SIRAS, Smart Infrastructures for Radio Access as a Service (RAaaS) to enable cost effective and efficient future generation wireless access by leveraging emerging cloud computing and virtualization techniques, which are promising but not yet widely explored approaches for wireless access networks. SIRAS extends the efficiency of cloud computing and the controllability and programmability of software-defined networks (SDN) to wireless access networks, while exploiting recent advances in distributed antenna systems and software defined radios (SDR). We envisage that SIRAS replaces the current centralized cellular architecture with a distributed architecture employing massively distributed antenna systems and autonomous small cells that collaborate to provide the required Quality of Service (QoS) to individual traffic stream using one of several supported RAT that is appropriate for the specific environment, where the distributed interactions are coordinated by an extended control plane that employs SDN techniques, and resource allocation is optimized on a per-flow basis. This distributed architecture would enable RAaaS by utilizing cloud computing resources in an on-demand basis, in combination with local resources, to virtualize management and signal processing functions in a cost effective and scalable manner. SIRAS is thus expected to be able to offer mobile services by increased infrastructure capacities and guaranteed QoS instantly and efficiently in cost, energy, complexity and latency wherever and whenever the demand arises. To realize this vision, we propose to pursue a new direction in wireless access networking research to develop new architecture, protocols and management algorithms that realize the potential benefits of SIRAS described above. The overall objective of this research project is to make fundamental contributions to this new research direction, which will have significant impacts on future generation wireless access networks. Specifically, our work in the proposed project will be divided into the following inter-related research tasks: (A) SIRAS architectural design to enable virtualized RAaaS for multi-RAT, (B) Algorithm design to enhance and optimize allocation of radio and core network resources for RAaaS, (C) SDN-based protocol design to enable traffic load balancing and management function virtualization in SIRAS, (D) Design of distributed algorithms and protocols to support cognitive and cooperative operations among virtualized SIRAS radio access nodes, and (E) SIRAS testbed development and experimentations. These tasks will be accomplished through novel design and performance evaluations by means of theoretical modeling and computer simulations. Utilizing the proposed fine-tuned experimental testbed, promising techniques proposed for aforementioned tasks in SIRAS will be implemented and evaluated under realistic conditions for proof-of-concept demonstrations and possible commercialization.