Speech given by Claudio Cicconetti at the CROSSFIRE 2nd plenary meeting at SUPELEC, Gif-Sur-Yvette, Paris, France

1. The road towards heterogeneous & dense
wireless networks: the CROWD perspective
CROSSFIRE 2nd plenary meeting, July 2, 2013 – Paris
Speech by Claudio Cicconetti (Intecs)

2. Outline
 The problem (capacity demands)
 The solution (many & small cells)
 The problem with the solution (do more with less)
 CROWD, a.k.a. the solution 
 Scenarios
 Architecture
 SDN approach
 Standardisation
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3. OK, you know this already
3
Traffic
Revenues
Data eraVoice era

4. Big deal! Or maybe, big deal?
 Need more capacity for your traffic?
 Come on, can’t you just wait for upcoming LTE, LTE-
A, LTE++, LTEx-super-WOW?
4

5. Whoops
 As a matter of fact, we don’t need new technologies
at all
 Radio access technology is (largely!)
overprovisioned:
 IEEE 802.11n: easily 100 Mb/s, can be 300 Mb/s
 HSPA+: up to 84 Mb/s
 LTE: up to 300 Mb/s
 Let’s not even mention LTE-A!
 Then the question is: what do we need?
 To answer that let’s have a look to the past
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6. The Past
 OK, not so much in the past…

7. Good ol’ GSM
 Launched in 1991
 Killer apps: voice, text messages

8. Good ol’ GSM
 Launched in 1991
 Killer apps: voice, text messages
 Skype 2003
 Gtalk 2005
 Twitter 2006
 Whatsapp 2009

9. UMTS
 Launched on 2001
 Killer apps: sending pictures, location-based services

10. UMTS
 Launched on 2001
 Killer apps: sending pictures, location-based services
 iPhone 2007
 Foursquare 2009
 Google latitude 2009
 Instagram 2010

11. The bottom line is
 Telecom industry used to work this way:
1. Understand what you can do with state-of-the-art
hardware / RF
 push technology (also requires standards)
2. Money invested will eventually come back when
somebody finds how to use the technology
actually very good at that
many success stories

12. BUT
 Theoretical capacity is already there
BUT
 Actual capacity is not always where the user wants it
to be (i.e., close to him/her)
HENCE
 NO NEED for a technology push
 the network is already adapting to what the users want
NOW  densification of wireless networks

13. Summary
 We have demands from market/users TODAY
 We have technology supporting those demands
TODAY
 UNFORTUNATELY, we just can’t continue to deploy
new base stations since that would break the spell 
we have a problem TODAY
backhauling constraints, control protocols
do not scale well, growth is not
economically viable, etc.

14. Conclusion: we need a
change of paradigm

15. Starting point
 Only way forward:
 deploy lots of access points operating efficiently in a
sustainable manner
 Sustainable = cost-effective
 hardware must be simple
 operation must be energy-efficient
 Efficient operation = continuous optimisation
 control must be complex

16. Let’s start with some good news
 Theoretical (refreshing) result:
 at a given SINR, adding more tiers and/or BSs neither
increases nor decreases the probability of coverage or
outage when all the tiers have the same target-SINR
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Dhillon et al., Modeling and
Analysis of K-Tier Downlink
Heterogeneous Cellular
Networks, JSAC, 2012

17. Evolution of cellular network topology
– Grid
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Dhillon et al., Modeling and Analysis of K-Tier Downlink
Heterogeneous Cellular Networks, JSAC, 2012

18. Evolution of cellular network topology
– Actual 4G
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19. Evolution of cellular network topology
– PPP macro-only
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20. Evolution of cellular network topology
– Actual macro + PPP
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21. Evolution of cellular network topology
– PPP all
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22. Corollary (false, though)
 Corollary 1. We can scale down any wireless
network to achieve arbitrarily high capacity per unit
of area
 Proof. Based on the theoretical results above cited,
interference never gets worse because of neighbors as
we add more and smaller cells. Q.E.D.
 Too bad that’s not the case…
 Why? Remember
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23. Problem #1
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Feasible area
Desired area
Efficiency
Cost

24. Problem #2
 As the capacity of wireless cells increases,
backhauling becomes a bottleneck
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€ € € €

25. Solution
 Do more with less, or
 To run complex optimisation on resource-limited base
stations
 Hey, I have already heard that. Any idea?
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26. Solution
 Do more with less, or
 To run complex optimisation on resource-limited base
stations
 Hey, I have already heard that. Any idea?
 Of course, cloud-based mobile apps!
 For instance, speech recognition works very well (usually)
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27. CROWD
 The concept can be realised in wireless networks, with a
few changes
 What you get is:
Software
Defined
Network
(for wireless)
 This is explored in CROWD in the context of DenseNets
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28. Facts
 Title: Connectivity management for enerRgy
Optimised Wireless Dense networks
 Call identifier: FP7-ICT-2011-8 (grant no. 318115)
 Start: 1/1/13
 End: 30/6/15 (duration 30 months)
 Total cost: 4,460 k€
 Total funding: 2,978 k€
 Total effort: 443 PM
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29. Scope
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30. Goal
 To enable sustainable deployment of very dense and
heterogeneous wireless networks (DenseNets)
 Sustainable =
 Cost effective
 Energy efficient
 Very dense =
 1000x compared to current density (in users/sqm vs. users/BS)
 Heterogeneous =
 Different range (macro vs. pico vs. femto)
 Different technologies (LTE vs. WiFi)
 Different deployments (planned vs. unplanned)
 Different backhauls (optical vs. wireless)
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31. Scenario 1
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32. Scenario 1 (cont’d)
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33. Scenario 2
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34. SDN approach
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

35. Proposed architecture
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36. CROWD Local Controller
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37. CROWD Regional Controller
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38. Connectivity management
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39. Standardisation: OmniRAN
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• Centrally controlled
configuration, from Core to
Terminal, of heterogeneous IEEE
802 links
• Dynamic creation of data paths
with dynamic reconfiguration and
mapping to the terminal at flow
granularity
• Clean separation of data and
control planes
A. de la Oliva et al.,
SDN-based OmniRAN
Use Cases Summary,
2013.

40. Standardisation: OmniRAN
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Terminal
Internet
Core
Operator A
Core Operators
Core
Operator B
Core
Operator C
Access Network
Operator
Backhaul
SDN
Controller
Data path
Control
path
Access 1
Access 3
Access 2
Access
Abstraction
Access
Abstraction
Access
Abstraction
• Multiple Cores
sharing Access
Network
• Access Abstraction
• Data and Control
plane separation
• Central control
Access
Abstraction
A. de la Oliva et al.,
SDN-based OmniRAN
Use Cases Summary,
2013.

41. Contacts
My name: Claudio Cicconetti
My affiliation: INTECS S.p.A.
My email: claudio.cicconetti@intecs.it
My bio: about.me/ccicconetti
My twitter channel: @ccicconetti
My ongoing project: www.ict-crowd.eu
@FP7CROWD
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