Physical Wireless Resource Virtualization for Software-Defined Whole-Stack Slicing

Radio access network (RAN) virtualization is gaining more and more ground and expected to re-architect the next-generation cellular networks. Existing RAN virtualization studies and solutions have mostly focused on sharing communication capacity and tend to require the use of the same PHY and MAC layers across network slices. This approach has not considered the scenarios where different slices require different PHY and MAC layers, for instance, for radically different services and for whole-stack research in wireless living labs where novel PHY and MAC layers need to be deployed concurrently with existing ones on the same physical infrastructure. To enable whole-stack slicing where different PHY and MAC layers may be deployed in different slices, we develop PV-RAN, the first open-source virtual RAN platform that enables the sharing of the same SDR physical resources across multiple slices. Through API Remoting, PV-RAN enables running paravirtualized instances of OpenAirInterface (OAI) at different slices without requiring modifying OAI source code. PV-RAN effectively leverages the inter-domain communication mechanisms of Xen to transport time-sensitive I/Q samples via shared memory, making the virtualization overhead in communication almost negligible. We conduct detailed performance benchmarking of PV-RAN and demonstrate its low overhead and high efficiency. We also integrate PV-RAN with the CyNet wireless living lab for smart agriculture and transportation

Physical Wireless Resource Virtualization for Software-Defined Whole-Stack Slicing

Radio access network (RAN) virtualization is gaining more and more ground and expected to re-architect the next-generation cellular networks. Existing RAN virtualization studies and solutions have mostly focused on sharing communication capacity and tend to require the use of the same PHY and MAC layers across network slices. This approach has not considered the scenarios where different slices require different PHY and MAC layers, for instance, for radically different services and for whole-stack research in wireless living labs where novel PHY and MAC layers need to be deployed concurrently with existing ones on the same physical infrastructure. To enable whole-stack slicing where different PHY and MAC layers may be deployed in different slices, we develop PV-RAN, the first open-source virtual RAN platform that enables the sharing of the same SDR physical resources across multiple slices. Through API Remoting, PV-RAN enables running paravirtualized instances of OpenAirInterface (OAI) at different slices without requiring modifying OAI source code. PV-RAN effectively leverages the inter-domain communication mechanisms of Xen to transport time-sensitive I/Q samples via shared memory, making the virtualization overhead in communication almost negligible. We conduct detailed performance benchmarking of PV-RAN and demonstrate its low overhead and high efficiency. We also integrate PV-RAN with the CyNet wireless living lab for smart agriculture and transportation.This is a pre-print of the article Sander-Frigau, Matthias, Tianyi Zhang, Hongwei Zhang, Ahmed E. Kamal, and Arun K. Somani. "Physical wireless resource virtualization for software-defined whole-stack slicing." arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.12434 (2020). Posted with permission.</p

A Measurement Study of TVWS Wireless Channels in Crop Farms

Operating at lower frequencies than systems such as Wi-Fi, TVWS wireless communication can enable long-range communication in rural communities and can more easily penetrate obstacles (vegetation, terrains). Thus, it is appealing to scenarios where line-of-sight is not always guaranteed. In particular, TVWS communication is a good candidate for supporting precision agriculture such as camera-based plant phenotyping and sensor-based analysis of plant behaviour. Yet there lacks in-depth real-world measurement data on the behavior of TVWS wireless channels in agriculture farms. To fill this gap, we use the field-deployed TVWS network of CyNet to measure TVWS channel behaviour in the Curtiss Research Farm in Ames, Iowa, where the landscape is predominantly composed of soybean and corn fields. We investigate the impact that crop diversity (soybean vs. corn), height and density of corn fields, antennas’ placement and variations of temperature and humidity have on the spatiotemporal behaviour of TVWS channels. This study also helps identify path loss models that best reflect radio propagation characteristics of TVWS systems in corn farms for different antenna heights.This is a manuscript of a proceeding published as Sander-Frigau, Matthias, Tianyi Zhang, Chen-Ye Lim, Hongwei Zhang, Ahmed E. Kamal, Arun K. Somani, Stefan Hey, and Patrick Schnable. "A measurement study of TVWS wireless channels in crop farms." In 2021 IEEE 18th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Smart Systems (MASS), pp. 344-354. IEEE, 2021. DOI: 10.1109/MASS52906.2021.00051. Copyright 2021 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. Posted with permission