Current cellular networks rely on closed and inflexible infrastructure tightly controlled by a handful of vendors. Their configuration requires vendor support and lengthy manual operations, which prevent Telco Operators (TOs) from unlocking the full network potential and from performing fine grained performance optimization, especially on a per-user basis. To address these key issues, this paper introduces CellOS, a fully automated optimization and management framework for cellular networks that requires negligible intervention ("zero-touch"). CellOS leverages softwarization and automatic optimization principles to bridge Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and cross-layer optimization. Unlike state-of-the-art SDN-inspired solutions for cellular networking, CellOS: (i) Hides low-level network details through a general virtual network abstraction; (ii) allows TOs to define high-level control objectives to dictate the desired network behavior without requiring knowledge of optimization techniques, and (iii) automatically generates and executes distributed control programs for simultaneous optimization of heterogeneous control objectives on multiple network slices. CellOS has been implemented and evaluated on an indoor testbed with two different LTE-compliant implementations: OpenAirInterface and srsLTE. We further demonstrated CellOS capabilities on the long-range outdoor POWDER-RENEW PAWR 5G platform. Results from scenarios with multiple base stations and users show that CellOS is platform-independent and self-adapts to diverse network deployments. Our investigation shows that CellOS outperforms existing solutions on key metrics, including throughput (up to 86% improvement), energy efficiency (up to 84%) and fairness (up to 29%).

中文翻译：

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CellOS：零接触软件化开放蜂窝网络

当前的蜂窝网络依赖于由少数供应商严格控制的封闭且不灵活的基础设施。他们的配置需要供应商支持和冗长的手动操作，这会阻止电信运营商 (TO) 释放全部网络潜力和执行细粒度的性能优化，尤其是在每个用户的基础上。为了解决这些关键问题，本文介绍了 CellOS，这是一种完全自动化的蜂窝网络优化和管理框架，需要可忽略不计的干预（“零接触”）。CellOS 利用软件化和自动优化原理来桥接软件定义网络 (SDN) 和跨层优化。与最先进的受 SDN 启发的蜂窝网络解决方案不同，CellOS：(i) 通过通用的虚拟网络抽象隐藏底层网络细节；(ii) 允许 TO 定义高级控制目标以规定所需的网络行为，而无需了解优化技术，以及 (iii) 自动生成和执行分布式控制程序，以同时优化多个网络切片上的异构控制目标。CellOS 已在具有两种不同 LTE 兼容实施的室内测试台上实施和评估：OpenAirInterface 和 srsLTE。我们在远程户外 POWDER-RENEW PAWR 5G 平台上进一步展示了 CellOS 功能。多个基站和用户场景的结果表明，CellOS 是独立于平台的，可以自适应不同的网络部署。