Resource Orchestration for Diverse Radio Systems (REORDER)

Future wireless communication networks are expected to address unprecedented challenges to cope with a high degree of heterogeneity in terms of devices, deployment types, environments, carrier frequency, etc. Moreover, they are expected to provide orders of magnitude improvement to such heterogeneous networks in key technical requirements including throughput, number of connected devices, latency and reliability. With such diverse services and diverging requirements, it is cumbersome to design a unified all-in-one radio system to meet the technical needs for all types of services. In addition, designing separate systems that run on separate infrastructures make the operation and management of the system highly complex, expensive and spirally inefficient. The scope of the project is to establish a radio ecosystem on a common infrastructure that efficiently accommodates communication services for all vertical sections from manufacturing, entertainment, public safety, public transport, healthcare, financial services, automotive and energy utilities. This can be enabled by an algorithmic framework orchestrating all radio slices that are individually customised and optimally designed.

Network slicing is an overarching feature towards 5G-and-beyond to support all scenarios efficiently. Core network slicing has attracted much attention through network functions virtualisation. However, from the radio level, an algorithmic framework for spectrum- and cost-efficient air-interface to achieve the true potential of end-to-end network slicing for the future diverse radio systems is still an open problem yet to be solved.

To guarantee the required performance for each individual user case efficiently, the physical layer (PHY) configurations should be delicately optimised and medium access control layer (MAC) radio resource should be allocated on-demand. For instance, subcarrier spacing is one of the paramount importance parameters for modern multicarrier communication systems (e.g., LTE, WiFi, etc.), the service for future massive machine type communications (mMTC) might require smaller subcarrier spacing (thus larger symbol duration) to support massive delay-tolerant devices. While vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications, on the other hand, have more stringent latency requirements, thus, symbol duration should be significantly reduced compared to mMTC. However, cohabitation of the individually optimised services in one system may bring several technical challenges from both PHY and MAC. It will destroy the system orthogonality and PHY algorithm framework that the state-of-the-art telecommunication systems built on. From the resource allocation perspective, one of the challenges is that not only the multi-slice system forests a complex multiple layers resource structure, but also technical requirement of each slice can be significantly different. Thus, a cross-layer and cross-slice optimisation is envisioned to maximise the overall air-inference performance.

The aim of REORDER is to address the abovementioned challenges, by establishing the framework of air-interface heterogeneous signal orchestration and efficient resource allocation. The proposed work fills in the last piece of the puzzle for realistic and efficient end-to-end network slicing. From this sense, REORDER will "reorder" the radio resource allocation caused by slice configuration disorders.

The project will be undertaken in the Communication, Sensing and Imaging research group (CSI) in the University of Glasgow, by the PI, a PDRA and a PhD student based at the University of Glasgow. Our industrial partners include NEC Telecom MODUS (UK), Mathworks Research Centre Glasgow, and VIAVI Solutions (UK). The radical approaches proposed in this project will be verified though both state-of-the-art standard compatible system-level simulation and software defined radio (SDR) based over-the-air experimentations.

Future wireless communication systems will have to handle very diverse radio environments in order to provide tailored services to variant vertical industries and users. Focusing on the air-interface radio slices, the proposed research paves the way towards future full and efficient end-to-end network slicing. It enables the UK vertical industries gain market advantage and to strengthen their position by developing innovative products and services based on the research outcomes. The research will also benefit a wide range of vertical sections from manufacturing, entertainment, public safety, public transport, healthcare, financial services, automotive and energy utilities. Such impacts will be primarily measured by IPR, global telecommunication standardisation, and the follow-up industry funded collaborations. In addition, this project holds the potential for high impact academic research of maintaining and advance the UK's role as a leader for cutting edge research in wireless communication technology.

The research delivers solutions to coexist the diverse communication services for vertical industries and meet all-round needs of future generation networks. Such a unified design can significantly reduce the capital expenditure and operating expense in the field of telecommunications, which could be up to 66.7% reduction by using a single common infrastructure to support all three main 5G scenarios. The research will boost the UK digital economy by serving it as an enabler for the relevant vertical industries such as V2V communication, unmanned aerial vehicle communications, virtual reality and IoT, and potentially enhance their market advantage and strengthen their position. In addition, The PI has extensive experience of contributing to telecommunication internationally standardisation and a strong sense of IPR protection which gives a potential of commercialisation.

The proposed research paves the way towards the future full end-to-end efficient network slicing. The project will generate new research areas in air-interface slicing and will open new horizons for multiple dimension resource allocation by employing multiple objective optimisation and game theory. Moreover, the proposed project also designs a new system from concept to prototype, yielding precious hands-on experience in this exciting area.

The research orchestrates the overall vertical industries and horizontal user slices and meet the users need by improved service in terms of enhanced communication speed, service coverage and system sustainability. Through its targeted energy-efficient approach, the research work will act as a catalyst in making diverse but eco-radio-networks greener and cutting ICT-related CO2 emissions.

The project will benefit UK academic and scientific communities of telecommunications and particularly on network slicing, via extensive talks, seminars and presentations during the project progress. To ensure the adoption of the project findings, we engage relevant industrial collaborators via technical workshops and industrial visits at different phases of the project. The proposed research activities and industrial engagements can train our PDRA and PhD students with a wide range of research skills in various areas.