RANSight: Programmable Telemetry for Next-generation Open Radio Access Networks

The increasing complexity of cellular networks has resulted in dynamic network performance optimization (NPO) playing a critical role in streamlining network operations. While the success of NPO techniques primarily depends upon the quality and quantity of telemetry data available from the underlying network, up until now, third-party access to such data has been largely limited due to the prevalence of proprietary interfaces throughout the access network. However, the upcoming open radio access network (RAN) architecture is set to change this trend. While a significant first step, the open RAN architecture lacks a mechanism for the generation, collection, and exposure of RAN-level statistics in a programmable manner, thereby limiting the effectiveness of dynamic NPO. To that end, this paper introduces RANSight, a system for programmable telemetry within next-generation open RANs. Key highlights include the establishment of novel primitives for programmability within RAN telemetry, a detailed component-level description of the RANSight architecture, and the design and implementation of RANSight in support of a RAN slice monitoring use case. Furthermore, the paper also includes a comprehensive experimental evaluation on an over-the-air testbed which demonstrates that not only does RANSight fulfill its stated objectives of programmable telemetry, it also significantly improves system scalability by providing a staggering 65% reduction in compute resource utilization compared to systems without RANSight.

随着细胞网络的日益复杂化，动态网络性能优化（NPO）在简化网络操作中扮演了至关重要的角色。尽管NPO技术的成功主要依赖于从底层网络获取的遥测数据的质量和数量，然而，由于接入网络中广泛存在的专有接口，第三方对这类数据的访问一直受到很大限制。然而，即将到来的开放无线接入网络（RAN）架构有望改变这一趋势。尽管开放RAN架构是一个重要的第一步，但它缺乏一种以可编程方式生成、收集和暴露RAN级统计信息的机制，从而限制了动态NPO的有效性。鉴于此，本文提出了一种名为RANSight的系统，用于下一代开放RAN中的可编程遥测。本文的关键亮点包括在RAN遥测中建立新颖的可编程原语、对RANSight架构的详细组件级描述，以及针对RAN切片监控用例的设计与实现。此外，本文还包括了对空中测试平台的全面实验评估，该评估表明，RANSight不仅实现了其可编程遥测的既定目标，而且通过提供惊人的65%的计算资源利用率降低，相比未使用RANSight的系统，显著提高了系统的可扩展性。