Descrizione del progetto
Progettare reti mobili dotate di efficienza e risparmio energetico elevati con la rete di accesso radio aperta
L’intento del progetto BeGREEN, finanziato dall’UE, è progettare reti radio in evoluzione in grado di gestire un aumento di traffico e servizi senza compromettere il consumo energetico. I ricercatori valuteranno vari meccanismi che incidono sul consumo energetico a livello di architettura, hardware e infrastruttura, nonché di collegamento e sistema. Sarà adottata l’architettura della rete di accesso radio aperta (O-RAN, Open Radio Access Network) per trasformare la rete di accesso radio in una rete mobile disaggregata, aperta, virtualizzata e completamente interoperabile. Le tecniche di intelligenza artificiale e apprendimento automatico agevoleranno il riconoscimento degli schemi nei dati a livello di sistema in relazione al comportamento di una base di utenti e aiuteranno a definire la risposta più appropriata per tale comportamento in termini di prestazioni di rete e consumo energetico.
Obiettivo
BeGREEN will take a holistic view to propose evolving radio networks that not only accommodate increasing traffic and services but also consider power consumption as a factor. Determining the metrics by which power consumption should be included is a key feature which will be studied as first stage of the project. This will include not only the cost of the energy but also societal factors.
BeGREEN will evaluate different mechanisms by which power consumption could be reduced based on the following pillars:
At the architecture level, planning and evaluation of a massive MIMO included RAN design to achieve flexible and energy efficient connectivity considering spectrum utilisation, interference mitigation and architecture/processing complexity.
At the hardware and infrastructure level, radio-unit controlling schemes will be used in power amplifiers energy optimisation. Also, an offloading engine for hardware acceleration will be employed to achieve energy efficiency when performing radio access functions and network function virtualisation.
At the link level, the integrated sensing techniques are used to provide a better estimate of the impact of the radio channel toward improvements in spectral efficiency against the increased power consumption associated with the resulting calculations.
At the system level, the project pursues the development and evaluation of AI-based procedures to adapt the energy consumption of softwarised network functions, aiming to minimize the overall consumed energy according to the utilisation patterns of network. BeGREEN proposes an “Intelligent Plane”, as an additional plane along with user plane and data plane, that allows the data, model and inference to be seamlessly exchanged between network functions.
BeGREEN will use O-RAN as the baseline architecture, due to new/suitable interfaces and protocols it can provide, to be used for the movement of data around the network to the appropriate location for performance and efficiency assessments. In addition, the disaggregation, virtualisation and network and service management capabilities inherent in O-RAN provide the mechanisms to realise many of the infrastructure changes and techniques for energy optimisation pursued in BeGREEN.
BeGREEN will use AI/ML techniques to provide solutions for reducing the required calculations and to recognise patterns in the system level data associated with the behaviour of the user-base and to learn the most appropriate response to this behaviour in terms of both network performance and energy consumption. In this scheme, impact of the location of the AI/ML operations within the network on the performance of the approach, the consumption of power and the ability to share resources between different operations will be considered.
BeGREEN technologies will be showcased in three demonstrations. At IHP premises, the joint communications and sensing techniques toward efficient resource allocation and optimised power consumption. The project targets using reconfigurable intelligent surfaces for energy saving scenarios in the demonstrations. Furthermore, two major project demonstrations will be performed at BT premises in Adastral park. First, the ‘Intelligent Plane’ implemented using ORAN rApps and xApps will be demonstrated on a network emulator. Then, the project final integrated demonstrator using the Adastral testbed facilities to showcase BeGREEN technology innovations.
Campo scientifico
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligence
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationstelecommunications networksmobile network5G
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationsradio technology
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.2.4 - Digital, Industry and Space Main Programme
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-JU-RIA - HORIZON JU Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinatore
2018 Antwerpen
Belgio
L’organizzazione si è definita una PMI (piccola e media impresa) al momento della firma dell’accordo di sovvenzione.