RcUBe: Real-time reconfigurable radio framework with self-optimization capabilities

Abstract

Abstract-Existing commercial wireless systems are mostly hardware-based, and rely on closed and inflexible designs and architectures. Moreover, despite recent significant algorithmic developments in cross-layer network adaptation and resource allocation, existing network architectures are unable to incorporate most of these advancements. While software-defined radio (SDR) was envisioned as a new paradigm promising radical runtime adaptation through all layers of the networking protocol stack, the reality of the state-of-the-art in wireless networking practice is far from having fulfilled such promise of fast and intelligent reconfigurability and adaptability. Networking research based on the "software-defined radio" paradigm has suffered almost invariably from the lack of adequate and coherently designed abstractions to (i) define networking protocols and their crosslayer interactions across all layers of the protocol stack; (ii) define decision-making algorithms to control such interactions.To address this need, we introduce RcUBe (Real-time Reconfigurable Radio), a novel architectural radio framework based on abstractions that offer real-time reconfigurability and optimization capabilities at the PHY, MAC, and network layers of the protocol stack. Unlike state-of-the-art solutions, RcUBe offers a structured methodology at variable levels of abstraction to accommodate implementations of a wide range of network architectures and protocols and complex decision-making in a modular, platform-independent way. RcUBe provides these features through a design structured into four distinct, but interacting planes, namely decision, control, data, and register plane. The broad capabilities of the proposed framework are demonstrated on a network level software-defined radio setup through a range of experiments where RcUBe is used to implement various reconfigurable functionalities of a wireless system at the PHY, MAC, and network layer.

HELPER: Heterogeneous Efficient Low Power Radio for enabling ad hoc emergency public safety networks

“…The significance of cross-layer optimization in wireless communication has been widely studied [35,36,37,38,39,40] across various domains and optimization problems. Identifying the advantages of cross-layer optimization there has been some work recently to develop cross-layer platforms to facilitate these technologies [41,42,43]. Figure 5 depicts the design concept of a HELPER and how the design is currently implemented in a modular manner on the selected platform.…”

WNOS: An Optimization-based Wireless Network Operating System

“…e PPS provides abstractions and building blocks necessary to prototype complex cross-layer protocols based on a high level, abstract representation of the so ware radio platform without hiding, and instead while retaining control of, implementation details at all layers of the protocol stack and while maintaining platform independence [12][13][14]. e control interface between the PPS and the distributed solution algorithms is de ned so that (i) the solution algorithm can retrieve network status information from the register plane of the PPS, such as noise and interference power level, queue status, available spectrum band, among others, and then use the retrieved information as input parameters of the distributed optimization problems; and (ii) based on the optimized solutions, the programmable protocol stack is able to con gure in an on-line fashion the parameters of the adopted protocol stack via its decision engine in the decision plane, e.g., update the modulation scheme based on the optimized transmission power hence SINR, con gure the TCP window size based on the optimized application-layer rate injected into the network.…”

“…For example, in [4] Bansal et al proposed OpenRadio, which provides a programmable wireless network data plane to enable users/controllers to upgrade and optimize the network in a so ware-de ned fashion. Demirors et al proposed RcUBe in [14], a new architectural radio framework to provide a programmable protocol stack and to ease the implementation of protocols in a cross-layer fashion. Gudipati et al presented So RAN [5] to redesign the radio access layer of LTE cellular networks.…”

SEANet G2

“…In this way, processingintensive physical layer functionalities are software-defined, but executed in hardware that can be reconfigured in realtime (through registers and partial reconfiguration of the FPGA). Therefore, unlike purely software-defined implementations that introduce high processing latency [18,19] and limit data rates; or pure hardware implementations that lack reconfiguration capabilities, SEANet G2 is able to provide both the low latency and high-data-rate characteristics of hardware implementations, as well as the reconfiguration capabilities of software implementations.…”