ARE: Action Recommendation Engine for Network Operations Centers (Phase IIb)

该项目的目标是提供现实世界可部署的证据，并将渥太华大学研究团队的一项发明的技术转让给在加拿大拥有重要业务和研发业务的跨国电信公司Ciena Corp.(以下简称Ciena)。该发明的研究原型名为行动推荐引擎(ARE)，于2018年10月至2021年6月在MITACS Accelerate集群研究项目下与Ciena合作开发，耗资287,635.43美元，现已准备就绪，并在实验室环境中成功验证。ARE是一个基于人工智能(AI)的系统，它(1)自动检测IP网络中的问题，(2)就如何解决这些问题提供建议，以及(3)就采取行动将网络提供商的成本降至最低，同时最大化用户的体验质量(QOE)提供建议。ARE既可以部署为推荐器(需要操作员应用/覆盖推荐的操作)，也可以部署为以人在回路之外的方式完全自主的操作接受者。ARE的应用主要在网络运营中心(NOC)，在那里，ARE可以通过自动化NOC的部分或全部手动操作来显著降低运营成本。本项目的目标是针对真实环境进行微调，并将其集成到现实工具中，如该公司的Blue PlanetTM智能自动化产品线，以便在实际客户环境中验证ARE的设计和实施。在这个项目结束时，我们将对ARE技术进行优化，并建立其技术准备和现实世界可部署性的证据，而Ciena将获得将ARE推向市场的技术能力。Ciena已经独家许可了ARE，并为其申请了专利。

The goal of this project is to provide evidence of real-world deployability and transfer the technology of an invention by the University of Ottawa's research team to the multinational telecommunications company Ciena Corp. (hereafter Ciena) which has significant business and R&D operations in Canada. The research prototype of the invention, called Action Recommendation Engine (ARE), was developed from October 2018 to June 2021 under a $287,635.43 MITACS Accelerate Cluster research project in partnership with Ciena, and is now ready and successfully verified in a lab setting. ARE is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based system that (1) automatically detects problems in IP networks, (2) gives recommendations on how to fix those problems, and (3) gives recommendations on taking actions to minimize network provider's cost while maximizing users' quality of experience (QoE). ARE can be deployed either as a recommender, requiring a human operator to apply/override the recommended actions, or as a fully autonomous action taker in a human-out-of-the-loop fashion. ARE's applications are mainly in Network Operations Centers (NOC), where ARE can lead to a significant reduction in operation costs by automating some or all of NOC's manual operationsThe objectives of this project are to finetune ARE for a real environment and to integrate it inside a realistic tool such as the company's Blue PlanetTM Intelligent Automation product line in order to validate ARE's design and implementation in a practical customer setting. At the end of this project, we will have finetuned the ARE technology and established evidence of its technical readiness and real-world deployability, while Ciena will have acquired the technical capability to take ARE to the market. Ciena has exclusively licensed ARE and has also patented it.