{"id":965136,"date":"2023-09-03T00:21:30","date_gmt":"2023-09-03T07:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&p=965136"},"modified":"2023-10-18T06:07:35","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T13:07:35","slug":"enabling-resilience-in-virtualized-rans-with-atlas","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/enabling-resilience-in-virtualized-rans-with-atlas\/","title":{"rendered":"Enabling Resilience in Virtualized RANs with Atlas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtualized radio access networks (vRANs), which allow running RAN processing on commodity servers instead of proprietary hardware, are gaining adoption in cellular networks. Two properties of the vRAN’s “Distributed Unit (DU)” that implements the lower RAN layers—real-time deadlines and black-box nature—make it challenging to provide resilience features such as upgrades and failover without long service disruptions. These properties preclude the use of existing resilience techniques like virtual machine migration or state replication that are used for typical workloads. This paper presents Atlas, the first system that provides resilience for the DU. The central insight in Atlas is to repurpose existing cellular mechanisms for wireless<\/em>\u00a0resilience, namely handovers and cell reselection, to provide\u00a0software<\/em>\u00a0resilience for the DU. For planned resilience events like upgrades, we design a novel technique that simultaneously serves cells from both the old and new DUs via the same radio, and uses handovers between these cells to migrate user devices. For unplanned failures, we identify deficiencies in existing RAN protocols that disrupt cell reselection after DU failure, and show how we can eliminate these disruptions using a network function between the DU and higher layers. Our evaluation with a state-of-the-art 5G vRAN testbed shows that Atlas achieves minimal disruption to cellular connectivity during resilience events, while incurring low overhead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Virtualized radio access networks (vRANs), which allow running RAN processing on commodity servers instead of proprietary hardware, are gaining adoption in cellular networks. Two properties of the vRAN’s “Distributed Unit (DU)” that implements the lower RAN layers—real-time deadlines and black-box nature—make it challenging to provide resilience features such as upgrades and failover without long service […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13547],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-965136","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-systems-and-networking","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2023-10-2","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2023\/09\/atlas_mobicom.pdf","id":"965142","title":"atlas_mobicom","label_id":"243109","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[{"id":965142,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2023\/09\/atlas_mobicom.pdf"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Jiarong Xing","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Junzhi Gong","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Xenofon Foukas","user_id":39276,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Xenofon Foukas"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Anuj Kalia","user_id":38865,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Anuj Kalia"},{"type":"text","value":"Daehyeok Kim","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Manikanta Kotaru","user_id":38862,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Manikanta Kotaru"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[715138],"msr_project":[922440],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":922440,"post_title":"Project Janus: Programmable RAN and Platform","post_name":"programmable-ran-platform","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2023-02-24 04:30:21","post_modified":"2024-10-08 06:33:47","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/programmable-ran-platform\/","post_excerpt":"Programmable RAN and Platform Check our latest MWC 2024 announcement and the demo videos: Virtualization of telco networks is beginning to happen in Radio Access Networks (RAN), especially regarding Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN). However, there are some obstacles to this trend. The current O-RAN architecture limits programmability to predefined telemetry and control that an xApp can access through existing, standardized service models which may limit the pace of innovation. 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