BeGREEN: Beyond 5G Artificial Intelligence Assisted Energy Efficient Open Radio Access Network

BeGREEN将从整体上提出不断发展的无线电网络，不仅要适应日益增长的流量和服务，还要考虑到功耗。确定应包括电力消耗的指标是一个关键特征，将作为项目的第一阶段进行研究。这不仅包括能源成本，还包括社会因素。BeGREEN将根据以下支柱评估降低功耗的不同机制：在架构层面，大规模MIMO的规划和评估包括RAN设计，以实现灵活且节能的连接，考虑到频谱利用、干扰缓解和架构/处理复杂性。在硬件和基础设施层面，无线电单元控制方案将用于功率放大器的能量优化。此外，在执行无线电接入功能和网络功能虚拟化时，将采用硬件加速的卸载引擎来实现能源效率。在链路级别，综合感测技术用于更好地估计无线电信道对频谱效率改进的影响，而不是与由此产生的计算相关的增加的功率消耗。在系统层面，该项目致力于开发和评估基于人工智能的程序，以适应软件化网络功能的能耗，旨在根据网络的使用模式将整体能耗降至最低。BeGREEN提出了一个智能平面，作为与用户平面和数据平面一起的额外平面，允许数据、模型和推理在网络功能之间无缝交换。BeGREEN将使用O-RAN作为基准架构，因为它可以提供新的/合适的接口和协议，用于将数据在网络中移动到适当的位置，以进行性能和效率评估。此外，O-RAN固有的分解、虚拟化以及网络和服务管理能力提供了实现BeGREEN所追求的许多基础设施变化和能源优化技术的机制。BeGREEN将使用AI/ML技术提供解决方案，以减少所需的计算，识别与用户群行为相关的系统级数据中的模式，并从网络性能和能源消耗方面了解对这种行为的最适当响应。在该方案中，将考虑AI/ML操作在网络中的位置对方法的性能、功率消耗以及不同操作之间共享资源的能力的影响。BeGREEN技术将在三个演示中展示。在国际水文计划驻地，联合通信和传感技术有助于实现高效的资源分配和优化的电力消耗。该项目的目标是在演示中使用可重新配置的智能表面来实现节能。此外，将在阿斯塔尔公园的BT场地进行两个主要项目演示。首先，将在网络仿真器上演示使用Oran Rapps和xApps实现的智能飞机。然后，项目最后使用Adstral试验台设施进行集成演示，展示BeGREEN技术创新。

BeGREEN will take a holistic view to propose evolving radio networks that not only accommodate increasing traffic and services but also consider power consumption as a factor. Determining the metrics by which power consumption should be included is a key feature which will be studied as first stage of the project. This will include not only the cost of the energy but also societal factors. BeGREEN will evaluate different mechanisms by which power consumption could be reduced based on the following pillars: At the architecture level, planning and evaluation of a massive MIMO included RAN design to achieve flexible and energy efficient connectivity considering spectrum utilisation, interference mitigation and architecture/processing complexity. At the hardware and infrastructure level, radio-unit controlling schemes will be used in power amplifiers energy optimisation. Also, an offloading engine for hardware acceleration will be employed to achieve energy efficiency when performing radio access functions and network function virtualisation. At the link level, the integrated sensing techniques are used to provide a better estimate of the impact of the radio channel toward improvements in spectral efficiency against the increased power consumption associated with the resulting calculations. At the system level, the project pursues the development and evaluation of AI-based procedures to adapt the energy consumption of softwarised network functions, aiming to minimize the overall consumed energy according to the utilisation patterns of network. BeGREEN proposes an “Intelligent Plane”, as an additional plane along with user plane and data plane, that allows the data, model and inference to be seamlessly exchanged between network functions. BeGREEN will use O-RAN as the baseline architecture, due to new/suitable interfaces and protocols it can provide, to be used for the movement of data around the network to the appropriate location for performance and efficiency assessments. In addition, the disaggregation, virtualisation and network and service management capabilities inherent in O-RAN provide the mechanisms to realise many of the infrastructure changes and techniques for energy optimisation pursued in BeGREEN. BeGREEN will use AI/ML techniques to provide solutions for reducing the required calculations and to recognise patterns in the system level data associated with the behaviour of the user-base and to learn the most appropriate response to this behaviour in terms of both network performance and energy consumption. In this scheme, impact of the location of the AI/ML operations within the network on the performance of the approach, the consumption of power and the ability to share resources between different operations will be considered. BeGREEN technologies will be showcased in three demonstrations. At IHP premises, the joint communications and sensing techniques toward efficient resource allocation and optimised power consumption. The project targets using reconfigurable intelligent surfaces for energy saving scenarios in the demonstrations. Furthermore, two major project demonstrations will be performed at BT premises in Adastral park. First, the ‘Intelligent Plane’ implemented using ORAN rApps and xApps will be demonstrated on a network emulator. Then, the project final integrated demonstrator using the Adastral testbed facilities to showcase BeGREEN technology innovations.