Emergent Behaviour of Telecommunication Control System
Supervisor: Dr Paul Harvey
Industry Partner: Rakuten Mobile
School: Computing Science
Description:
Telecommunication networks are the connectivity fabric that allows us to work, play, study, and call for help when we need it. This means that their high-quality continuous operation is essential for all of us.
In the last 100 years, the way that we use networks has changed a lot – to the point where our toothbrushes, toilets, cars, tvs, and home assistants use them as much as people. All this added pressure means that running these networks is now beyond the human capability to handle thousands of events requiring sub-second response times. Also, given that telco’s annual labour budget is ~$273 billion, hiring more people is not a practical option without increasing subscription costs.
In light of this, network operators want their networks to become autonomous networks: networks which can optimise, configure, heal, and adapt by themselves with little or no human involvement.
The goal of this project is to research how algorithms based on biological evolution can be used to automatically configure how information is delivered in the telecommunication network. This internship will focus on a code implementation aligned to the ITU-T’s Autonomous Network Architecture Framework1.
Specifically, we demonstrate a working software “evolution controller”: a software application responsible for adapting other software in response to events observed in the network. This will be tested against two resource allocation problems using a simulator, with extension to real hardware if time permits. Additionally, this project benefits from industry input from a global leader in the field of autonomous networks.
Concrete outcomes are:
- An open-source implementation of the “evolution controller”
- A collection of example generations for the resource allocation problems.
- Evidence-based documentation of the feasibility of the approach and the design of the tool.