Intelligent New Radio Access Network: Deployment and Management

The fifth and sixth generations (5G/6G) of cellular networks have to handle an unprecedented surge in data traffic, which comes as a result of the emergence of a wide range of applications, notably, the Internet of Everything, haptic internet, digital-twin, to name a few. On one hand, mobile users expect to experience high-speed and reliable wireless access at an affordable cost. On the other hand, service providers aim at maximizing profits and are expecting cost-effective solutions from wireless industry.Increasing the capacity of the Next Generation Radio Access Network (NG-RAN) capitalizes in a part on reducing the cell sizes and the transmissions on high-frequency bands (e.g., millimeter wave) that offer small coverage. However, these solutions call for a dense deployment of base stations, where traditionally each comes with the expenses of establishing fiber links to the core network and a site acquisition (tower lease). The wireless industry leaders opt for developing flexible and more cost-effective NG-RAN that revolve around the dense deployment of low-cost radio access nodes with Integrated Access and Backhauling (IAB). The wireless backhauling/fronthauling feature will ease the task of IAB nodes deployment/relocation and save in the cost of the fiber-based bakchauling network. Although IAB is an attractive solution that could make dense deployments economically viable, efficient approaches for the optimization and management of the resulting large-scale and heterogeneous NG-RAN remain subject to investigation. Together with my supervisor Prof O. Ercetin, I will contribute to the efforts of building cost-effective NG-RANs empowered by IAB nodes, in particular, to the automation of the deployment, operation, and fast-recovery of NG-RANs. This project investigates two overlapping and complementing research problems: unsupervised planning and optimization of NG-RAN; and reliable backhauling/fronthauling wireless network for IAB nodes.