Making Cellular Networks Scalable and Flexible

Speaker:Dr.Li Erran Li (Columbia University)

Time and Date: 16:00-17:00, Nov. 27, 2014

Place: Room B415, Computer Centre Building, Handan Campus

 

 

Abstract

The exponential growth of mobile data has put tremendous stress on the cellular network infrastructure. As a result, mobile providers are scrambling to aggressively build up their networks. Unfortunately, with today's designs, as providers add network capacity, the growth of capital and operational costs greatly outpace the growth in revenues. To allow the network to scale cost-effectively, a radically new design of the cellular network infrastructure is necessary.

In this talk, I will present CellSDN, a design based on software defined networking principles. Departing from the current proprietary hardware based data plane such as base stations, S-GW, and P-GW in LTE, CellSDN data plane consists of simple SDN switches, radio elements (simplified base stations), and virtualized network functions. To enable flexible control, we abstract the radio resources in the network as a 3D grid (radio elements, time and frequency), and abstract both the data plane and control plane with a set of logical and reconfigurable data plane components such as virtual base stations and switches. Leveraging the abstractions, I will present scalable control plane for network wide applications such as interference management, mobility management, and flexible sharing of radio access networks.

This is joint work with my collaborators at Princeton, Stanford and University of Michigan.

 

 

Biography

Li Erran Li received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University. Since graduation, he has been with Bell Labs. He is also an adjunct professor at the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University, New York. He is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Distinguished Scientist. His research interests are in networking and systems with a focus on cellular networks and mobile computing. Since 2011, to address the fundamental limitations of current cellular networks, he has been working on software-defined cellular networks and massive MIMO systems. He has published over 87 papers and holds 23 US Patents.

Li is an Associate Editor for IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking and IEEE Trans. on Mobile Computing (TMC). He co-founded three recurring ACM workshops to address pressing challenges in cellular networks and mobile computing: ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Cellular Networks: Operations, Challenges, and Future Design (CellNet), August 2012, ACM MobiSys Workshop on Mobile Cloud Computing and Services (MCS), June 2010, and NDSS Workshop on Security of Emerging Networking Technologies (SENT), Feburary 2014.