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Niloofar Mohamadi

Publications and source records attributed to Niloofar Mohamadi.

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Predicting Conflict Impact on Performance in O-RAN

The O-RAN Alliance promotes the integration of intelligent autonomous agents to control the Radio Access Network (RAN). This improves flexibility, performance, and observability in the RAN, but introduces new challenges, such as the detection and management of conflicts among the intelligent autonomous agents. A solution consists of profiling the agents before deployment to gather statistical information about their decision-making behavior, then using the information to estimate the level of conflict among agents with different goals. This approach enables determining the occurrence of conflicts among agents, but does not provide information about the impact on RAN performance, including potential service degradation. The problem becomes more complex when agents generate control actions at different timescales, which makes conflict severity hard to predict. In this paper, we present a novel approach that fills this gap. Our solution leverages the same data used to determine conflict severity but extends its use to predict the impact of such conflicts on RAN performance based on the frequency at which each agent generates actions, giving more weight to faster applications, which exert control more frequently. Via a prototype, we demonstrate that our solution is viable and accurately predicts conflict impact on RAN performance.

cs.NI

TENORAN: Automating Fine-grained Energy Efficiency Profiling in Open RAN Systems

The transition to disaggregated and interoperable Open Radio Access Network (RAN) architectures and the introduction of RAN Intelligent Controllers (RICs) in O-RAN creates new resource optimization opportunities and fine-grained tuning and configuration of network components to save energy while fulfilling service demand. However, unlocking this potential requires fine-grained and accurate energy measurements across heterogeneous deployments. Three factors make this particularly challenging [...]. To address these challenges, we design the TENORAN framework, an automated measurement scaffold for fine-grained energy efficiency profiling of O-RAN deployments, and prototype it on a heterogeneous OpenShift cluster. TENORAN instruments an end-to-end deployment based on high-level specifications (e.g., gNB software stack and split options, traffic profiles), and collects synchronized performance metrics and power measurements for individual RAN components while the network is under controlled workloads including over-the-air traffic. Our experimental results demonstrate energy profiling of end-to-end experiments with xApps in the loop, energy efficiency differences between two RAN stacks, OpenAirInterface and srsRAN, in uplink and downlink, and core network power consumption trends.

cs.NI

Beyond Connectivity: An Open Architecture for AI-RAN Convergence in 6G

Data-intensive Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications at the network edge demand a fundamental shift in Radio Access Network (RAN) design, from merely consuming AI for network optimization, to actively enabling distributed AI workloads. This presents a significant opportunity for network operators to monetize AI while leveraging existing infrastructure. To realize this vision, this article presents a novel converged O-RAN and AI-RAN architecture for unified orchestration and management of telecommunications and AI workloads on shared infrastructure. The proposed architecture extends the Open RAN principles of modularity, disaggregation, and cloud-nativeness to support heterogeneous AI deployments. We introduce two key architectural innovations: (i) the AI-RAN Orchestrator, which extends the O-RAN Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) to enable integrated resource and allocation across RAN and AI workloads; and (ii) AI-RAN sites that provide distributed edge AI platforms with real-time processing capabilities. The proposed architecture enables flexible orchestration, meeting requirements for managing heterogeneous workloads at different time scales while maintaining open, standardized interfaces and multi-vendor interoperability.

cs.NI

dApps: Enabling Real-Time AI-Based Open RAN Control

Open Radio Access Networks (RANs) leverage disaggregated and programmable RAN functions and open interfaces to enable closed-loop, data-driven radio resource management. This is performed through custom intelligent applications on the RAN Intelligent Controllers (RICs), optimizing RAN policy scheduling, network slicing, user session management, and medium access control, among others. In this context, we have proposed dApps as a key extension of the O-RAN architecture into the real-time and user-plane domains. Deployed directly on RAN nodes, dApps access data otherwise unavailable to RICs due to privacy or timing constraints, enabling the execution of control actions within shorter time intervals. In this paper, we propose for the first time a reference architecture for dApps, defining their life cycle from deployment by the Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) to real-time control loop interactions with the RAN nodes where they are hosted. We introduce a new dApp interface, E3, along with an Application Protocol (AP) that supports structured message exchanges and extensible communication for various service models. By bridging E3 with the existing O-RAN E2 interface, we enable dApps, xApps, and rApps to coexist and coordinate. These applications can then collaborate on complex use cases and employ hierarchical control to resolve shared resource conflicts. Finally, we present and open-source a dApp framework based on OpenAirInterface (OAI). We benchmark its performance in two real-time control use cases, i.e., spectrum sharing and positioning in a 5th generation (5G) Next Generation Node Base (gNB) scenario. Our experimental results show that standardized real-time control loops via dApps are feasible, achieving average control latency below 450 microseconds and allowing optimal use of shared spectral resources.

cs.NI