Towards 6G zero touch networks: The case of automated Cloud-RAN deployments

• Main Authors: Angui, Bini, Corbel, Romuald, Rodriguez, Veronica Quintuna, Stephan, Emile
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 18-02-2022
• Subjects: Computer Science - Networking and Internet Architecture
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2202.09274

The arrival of 6G technologies shall massively increase the proliferation of
on-demand and ephemeral networks. Creating and removing customized networks on
the fly notably requires fully automation to guarantee commissioning-time
acceleration. In this paper, we address the deployment automation of an
end-to-end mobile network, with special focus on RAN units (referred to as
Cloud-RAN). The Cloud-RAN automation is especially challenging due to the
strong latency constraints expected in 6G as well as the required management of
physical antennas. To automatically instantiate a Cloud-RAN chain, we introduce
a Zero Touch Commissioning (ZTC) model which performs resource discovery while
looking for both antennas and computing capacity as near as possible to the
targeted coverage zone. We validate the ZTC model by a testbed which deploys,
configures and starts the network service without human intervention while
using Kubernetes-based infrastructures as well as open-source RAN and core
elements implementing the mobile network functions.