Statistically Sound Experiments with OpenAirInterface Cloud-RAN Prototypes
Research on 4G/5G cellular networks is progressively shifting to paradigms that involve virtualization and cloud computing. Within this context, prototyping assumes a growing importance as a performance evaluation method, besides large-scale simulations,
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University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy {niccolo.iardella,giovanni.stea,a.virdis,frangio}@di.unipi.it 2 Telecom Italia Lab, Turin, Italy [email protected]
Abstract. Research on 4G/5G cellular networks is progressively shifting to paradigms that involve virtualization and cloud computing. Within this context, prototyping assumes a growing importance as a performance evaluation method, besides large-scale simulations, as it allows one to evaluate the computational requirements of the system. Both approaches share the need for a structured and statistically sound experiment management, with the goal of reducing errors in both planning and measurement collection. In this paper, we describe how we solve the problem with OpenAirInterface (OAI), an open-source system for prototyping 4/5G cellular networks. We show how to integrate a sound, validated software, namely ns2-measure, with OAI, so as to enable harvesting samples of arbitrary metrics in a structured way, and we describe scripts that allow structured experiment management, such as launching a parametric simulation campaign and harvesting its results in a plot-ready format. We complete the paper by demonstrating some advantages brought about by our modifications. Keywords: LTE-A · Cloud-RAN · OpenAirInterface · Performance evaluation · Experimentation · ns2-measure
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Introduction
Future 5G cellular networks will employ virtualization and cloudification of the Radio Access Network (RAN) [12], whereby the baseband processing is done on virtual base‐ band units (BBU) running on commodity hardware, leaving only antennas on site. On the other hand, software products, both commercial and open-source, are already avail‐ able that emulate a software BBU compliant with the 3GPP standards. One such product OpenAirInterface (OAI), which runs an LTE protocol stack entirely implemented in software [2]. OAI also allows one to carry out experiments using hardware equipment and commercial terminals. The above two fact motivate a shift in the research paradigm, which is progressively based on prototypes of cellular networks. In fact, OAI has been and is being widely used in EU-funded and academic projects in the field of cellular © ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2016 D. Noguet et al. (Eds.): CROWNCOM 2016, LNICST 172, pp. 754–766, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-40352-6_62
Statistically Sound Experiments
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networks. The Flex5GWare EU project [6], where the authors of this paper are involved, aims at building cost-effective hardware/software platforms for 5G so as to increase the hardware versatility and reconfigurability, increase capacity and decrease the overall energy consumption. Within it, one of the proof of concepts will consist in evaluating resource allocation algorithms in a Cloud-RAN environment, which will be realized running a customized version of the OpenAirInterface software on virtual machines. This implies the need to get credible performance metrics out of the OAI software, for both the cell
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