AIRIC: Orchestration of Virtualized Radio Access Networks With Noisy Neighbours

• Published in: IEEE journal on selected areas in communications Vol. 42; no. 2; pp. 432 - 445
• Main Authors: Lozano, Josep Xavier Salvat, Garcia-Saavedra, Andres, Li, Xi, Perez, Xavier Costa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.02.2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Computation; deep Q-learning; Neural networks; Noise measurement; noisy neighbours problem; Open RAN; Performance degradation; Radio access networks; Radio equipment; RAN virtualization; Random access memory; Resource management; Signal to noise ratio; Throughput; Virtual networks; Virtualization
• ISSN: 0733-8716; 1558-0008
• DOI: 10.1109/JSAC.2023.3339749

Radio Access Networks virtualization (vRAN) is on its way becoming a reality driven by the new requirements in mobile networks, such as scalability and cost reduction. Unfortunately, there is no free lunch but a high price to be paid in terms of computing overhead introduced by noisy neighbors problem when multiple virtualized base station instances share computing platforms. In this paper, first, we thoroughly dissect the multiple sources of computing overhead in a vRAN, quantifying their different contributions to the overall performance degradation. Second, we design an AI-driven Radio Intelligent Controller (AIRIC) to orchestrate vRAN computing resources. AIRIC relies upon a hybrid neural network architecture combining a relation network (RN) and a deep Q-Network (DQN) such that: (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">i </tex-math></inline-formula>) the demand of concurrent virtual base stations is satisfied considering the overhead posed by the noisy neighbors problem while the operating costs of the vRAN infrastructure is minimized; and (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">ii </tex-math></inline-formula>) dynamically changing contexts in terms of network demand, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the number of base station instances are efficiently supported. Our results show that AIRIC performs very closely to an offline optimal oracle, attaining up to 30% resource savings, and substantially outperforms existing benchmarks in service guarantees.