IEEE Access (Jan 2019)
Data Plane Framework for Software-Defined Radio Access Network Based on ETSI-Standard Mobile Device Architecture
Abstract
This paper addresses how to achieve efficient programmability and software portability in the data plane of a software-defined radio access network (SDRAN). We assume a cloud RAN environment that builds on multi-vendor hardware components. Recent literature on SDRAN data plane indicates that software portability remains an issue in terms of efficient execution of software, even if the software is abstracted from the underlying hardware. In addition, software interfaces typically vary across different hardware components in the SDRAN data plane, leading to platform-dependent software management. Generalizing the European Telecommunications Standards Institute approach for a mobile device architecture, this paper presents a novel SDRAN data plane framework, providing efficient hardware platform-independent programmability and software portability. First, to resolve the software portability issue, the proposed data plane framework employs a specific (radio) virtual machine as well as a radio library; the heterogeneous hardware platforms are abstracted, enabling the joint optimization of the radio application code and hardware platform. Second, to achieve platform-independent software management, the proposed data plane framework adopts a double-layered structure enabling users to exploit high-level software management for the SDRAN data plane. Third, the feasibility of the proposed data plane framework is verified through a proof-of-concept (PoC) system with the proposed double-layered structure. Based on this PoC system, we show that users can efficiently perform software management. According to the numerical results obtained from the PoC system, the proposed double-layered structure introduces negligible additional footprint in terms of computational resources, memory requirements, and latency.
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