PlaceRAN - Uma solução de posicionamento das funções de rádio de acesso móveis virtualizadas de quinta geração

Abstract

To achieve the digital transformations envisioned and driven by the demand for services from society, the advances in the fifth-generation mobile networks, specified by the standardizing organizations jointly with the industry, are largely disruptive compared to the previous networks. To meet the demand scale, the new generation of access radio networks (NG-RAN) is guided by two concepts: (i) radio functions decoupling and disaggregation in up to three units and (ii) immersion in software concepts, mainly virtualization. Thus resulting in the vNG-RAN architecture. In this context, placement of the radio functions in three units under the transport networks and the computational resources is defined as an NP-hard problem. Also, the decision-making between the RAN disaggregation, the routing in the transport network, and the strategies for allocating computational resources is an unprecedented research challenge and with high interest from the industry. Therefore, this dissertation presents the PlaceRAN solution: a placement optimization solution focused on network planning, combined with an orchestrator to develop vNG-RAN, i.e., a virtualized RAN. First, the placement optimization solution has three stages with the objectives: (i) maximize the aggregation of radio functions and minimize the use of computational resources, (ii) minimize the number of Disaggregated RAN Combination (DRC), (iii) prioritize DRCs according to the chosen placement strategy. For the orchestrator, it is aligned with the Network Function Virtualization (NFV) architecture. It aims to: (i) provide the allocation of virtualized radio functions based on the placement optimization solution and (ii) be aware of the network topology and computational resources. The evaluation was conducted with two real networks and parameters for the optimization solution, and for the orchestrator, an experiment based on one of these real networks was emulated. The results show that the placement solutions reach up to 80% aggregation of the virtualized radio units (vRU, vDU, and vCU) in less than 20% of the computational resources, reducing the number of DRCs guided by the placement strategy. Likewise, the orchestrator has total functionality in allocating demand for the optimization solution under the production container orchestration platform. Thus obtaining total viability for the development of vNG-RAN. Finally, the PlaceRAN solution contributes to the scientific field for the advancement of virtualization and disaggregation of the NG-RAN architecture and aligns with the main industry initiatives.