CIF: Small: Collaborative Research: Optimal Provision of Backhaul and Radio Access Networks: A Cross-Network Approach

The explosive growth in the number of smart consumer devices leads to projections that within 10 years' time, wireless cellular networks need to offer 1000x throughput increase over the current 4G technology. By that time the network should be able to deliver fiber-like user experience boasting 10 Gb/s individual transmission rate for data intensive cloud-based applications. To move such a huge amount of data from the network to the users' handheld devices in real time, revolutionary network infrastructure and advanced network provision are required. Two key enablers of the envisioned future mobile networks are the ultra-dense deployment of base stations and centralized cloud-based processing. This project addresses the challenging problem of managing such densely deployed, cloud-based radio access networks.

The proposed research includes the introduction of a unified cross-network framework to manage a cloud-based radio access network. Important aspects of resource management in different sub-networks, including the backhaul and the cloud networks, will be considered. The project focuses on providing theoretical insights as well as designing practical algorithms for the optimal provisioning of a cloud-based radio access network. Fundamental computational issues of key cross-network resource management tasks will be investigated, revealing their intrinsic complexity. Moreover, practical schemes capable of optimally utilizing resources across networks will be developed, using cross-network optimization formulations. These algorithms will be optimized to fully exploit the computational resources offered by the cloud centers, addressing key issues such as parallel/distributed implementation, asynchronous computation, and load balancing. The goal is to determine how computational resources should be deployed through the proposed cross-network framework to dramatically improve the performance of a cloud-based radio access network.