EE Seminar - TRACER: Telemetry-driven Application-centric RAN Management

TRACER: Telemetry-driven Application-centric RAN Management

As cellular networks evolve towards 6G, Open RAN (O-RAN) has been playing a critical role in enabling fine-grained control and assurance in the radio access domain. While O-RAN provides a blueprint for designing next-generation access networks, much work remains to be done in the domains of base station programmability, RIC scalability, and application-centric network optimization. With a view to addressing some of these critical challenges, this talk first introduces the HexRAN and HexRIC platforms- a novel RAN-RIC combination that seeks to provide a customizable O-RAN-native base station and corresponding control architecture. Then, building upon these platforms, we introduce RANSight, a high-performance programmable RAN telemetry framework that delivers unprecedented insight into millisecond-level RAN performance metrics, which are ultimately used to drive application-centric RAN management paradigms. Finally, we conclude with an interactive demonstration that leverages HexRAN, HexRIC, and RANSight for enabling application performance policy-driven closed automation for RAN slicing.

[Bio]

Nakjung Choi is a Head of the Mobile Network Systems department at Nokia Bell Labs, in Murray Hill, NJ. He received the PhD degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea in 2009. His current research interests include 5G/6G network systems, O-RAN/vRAN, NFV/SDN/Cloud, end-to-end network orchestration and automation, and integration of network and compute.

Ahan Kak is a Member of Technical Staff within the Mobile Network Systems research group at Nokia Bell Labs, in Murray Hill, NJ. He received the BS degree in Electrical Engineering from VJTI, University of Mumbai, Mumbai, India, in 2016, and the PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA in 2021. His current research interests include 6G network systems, Open RAN systems, network programmability, satellite networking, and operations research.

Ram Sheshadri is a Member of Technical Staff in the Mobile Network Systems research group at Nokia Bell Labs, in Murray Hill, NJ. He was a researcher at NEC-Labs from 2017-2022. Before that, he received his PhD from SUNY, Buffalo in 2017. His research interests are broadly in wireless systems, and Wireless sensing with a current focus on optimizing L2/L3 network protocols for latency-sensitive 5G/6G applications.