CloudRIC: Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) Virtualization with Shared Heterogeneous Computing
Authors: 
Leonardo Lo Schiavo, 
Gines Garcia-Aviles, Andres Garcia-Saavedra, Marco Gramaglia, 
Marco Fiore, Albert Banchs, Xavier Costa-PerezAuthors Info & Claims
Leonardo Lo Schiavo, Gines Garcia-Aviles, Andres Garcia-Saavedra, Marco Gramaglia, Marco Fiore, Albert Banchs, Xavier Costa-PerezAuthors Info & ClaimsPages 558 - 572
Abstract
Open and virtualized Radio Access Networks (vRANs) are breeding a new market with unprecedented opportunities. However, carrier-grade vRANs today are expensive and energy-hungry, as they rely on hardware accelerators (HAs) that are dedicated to individual distributed units (DUs). In this paper, we argue that sharing pools of heterogeneous processors among DUs leads to more cost- and energy-efficient vRANs. We then design CloudRIC, a system that, powered by lightweight data-driven models, meets specific reliability targets while (i) coordinating access between DUs and heterogeneous computing infrastructure; and (ii) assisting DUs with compute-aware radio scheduling procedures. Experiments on a GPU-accelerated O-Cloud show that CloudRIC can achieve, respectively, 3x and 15x mean gains in energy- and cost-efficiency under real RAN workloads while ensuring 99.999% reliability even in dense scenarios.
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Index Terms
- CloudRIC: Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) Virtualization with Shared Heterogeneous Computing
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May 2024
733 pages
ISBN:9798400704895
DOI:10.1145/3636534
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