CIT 02-CentralController

Joint power and PRB allocation with centralized controllers in Beyond-5G networks

CIT - Electrical and Computer Engineering

Chair of Communication Networks

Wireless networks

Computer EngineeringComputer Science/ InformaticsElectrical Engineering

Participation also possible online only:

Planned project location:

TUM City Campus

Dr.

Fidan

Mehmeti

fidan.mehmeti@tum.de

+49 89 289-23506

In the previous generations of cellular networks, in Radio Access Networks (RANs) both the data plane and control plane operations were performed jointly. With the emergence of Software Defined Networks (SDNs), and its adaptation in RANs, known as SD-RAN, the separation of control from data plane became possible for the first time in RANs of 5G networks, as a paradigm shift on how the assignment of network resources is handled in particular, and how cellular networks operate in general. The control is transferred to centralized units known as SD-RAN controllers. This brings a lot of benefits into the mobile network since it detaches the monolithic RAN control and enables co-operation among RAN components, i.e., Base Stations (BSs), improving the network performance along different dimensions.

This increased level of flexibility arises from having a broader view of the network, which is provided by the centralized SD-RAN approach. In that way, depending on the current spread of the users (UEs) across BSs, and their channel conditions for which the UEs periodically update their serving BSs, and BSs send that information to the SD-RAN controller, the latter can reallocate resources to BSs accordingly. BSs then perform the resource allocation across their corresponding UEs. As a consequence, exploiting the wide network knowledge leads to an overall improved performance as it allows for optimal allocation decisions. As opposed to SD-RAN, in a classical RAN approach, each BS has its own fixed set of resources, and allocates them to the UEs within its operational area.

So far, the research in SD-RAN has focused only on allocating the resource blocks (i.e., frequencies) adaptively to the BSs. In this project, the focus will be on the joint allocation of both the resource blocks and transmission power to BSs within the area of the controller, in order to optimize different performance aspects. To that end, the student will formulate optimization problems and solve them either analytically or using an optimization solver, like Gurobi, CVX, etc. The other part would be conducting realistic simulations and showing the improvements with this approach.

35

3 years of bachelor studies completed

Basic knowledge of wireless networks, probability theory, and optimizations.

Knowledge of any programming language