cellular network operators

Abstract: Geographically separated transmission/reception points (TRPs) report quantized measurements to a Location Management Function (LMF), even when the application requires only a coarse location region. We formulate this task as a distributed zero-error function-computation problem, in which each TRP transmits an index sufficient for the LMF to reproduce the required service decision. Since positioning geometry induces a sparse and nonrectangular support, independently constructed per-terminal characteristic-graph colorings are not necessarily jointly decodable. We introduce a conditional conflict graph that exactly characterizes valid single-terminal updates and develop an alternating codebook construction that preserves global zero-error decodability. In a reproducible three-TRP study with range-equivalent timing measurements and $120$ native bins, all resulting codebooks satisfy an explicit decoder-conflict test. For service-cell sizes up to $100$ m, the achieved ideal rate is $5.38$--$5.44$ bits per epoch per TRP, compared with $6.91$ bits for raw reporting and $6.56$--$6.87$ bits for a globally valid interval-based baseline. A complementary measured six-base-station TDoA study shows that $83.77\%$ of the learned native support recurs on an independent trajectory. For these recurrent tuples, the codebooks preserve the service decision exactly and reduce the ideal rate by $22.8$--$35.6\%$ for $2$--$8$ m service grids. The feasible report-tuple set also provides a single-epoch geometric-consistency check under injected timing bias. Finally, we identify the NRPPa/OpenAirInterface integration points and safeguards required for experimental implementation.

Abstract: Rate adaptation is a crucial mechanism in IEEE 802.11 networks and next-generation cellular systems. Since the time scale for rate adaptation is typically much shorter than that for user association and scheduling, we investigate a joint design of wireless user association and scheduling and rate adaptation across different time scales to maximize cumulative network throughput while ensuring desired fairness among users. We develop a MaxWeight-type user association and scheduling algorithm that integrates virtual queues -- tracking each user's scheduling debt to maintain fairness -- and Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) estimates in its weight measure. Each selected user then employs the UCB algorithm for rate adaptation on a short time scale. Our theoretical findings reveal that the proposed algorithm achieves cumulative regret that grows with the square root of the time horizon up to a logarithmic factor and results in zero cumulative fairness violation after a certain number of time frames. Furthermore, since the MaxWeight-type algorithm involves evaluating all the feasible schedules that can be exponential to the number of users due to the interference constraints, leading to high computational complexity, we introduce a low-complexity alternative utilizing the so-called pick-and-compare (PC) approach. We demonstrate the effectiveness of both algorithms through simulations based on real-world data traces.

Abstract: Link Adaptation (LA) in 5G NR is inherently reactive, relying on channel measurements and HARQ feedback that may become quickly obsolete when the channel changes quickly. This data is also noisy, making it hard to track accurately, and has to be fed to real-time controllers with feedback-loop effects which are hard to troubleshoot. This explains why most practical deployments select simple but robust algorithms, which accept that the lag can leave the scheduler operating at overly aggressive or unnecessarily conservative rates, trading spectrum efficiency for predictable performance. In this paper, we improve on this status-quo with NOSTRAdAMUS, a predictive LA framework which adds foresight to existing algorithms without replacing or redesigning them. NOSTRAdAMUS predicts whether a retransmission will occur in the next radio frame from recent HARQ history, and applies corrections to the Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) selected by the underlying policy. We benchmark several ML models and show that Gradient Boosting achieves 82.9% accuracy overall with high-confidence interventions that are correct 94.2% of the time, and an inference latency of 5.5 μs. We train the model based on data collected Over-the-Air (OTA) on the X5G testbed, using the open-source OpenAirInterface (OAI) 5G stack, NVIDIA Aerial, and COTS O-RAN Radio Units and User Equipments. The model is then deployed as a dApp, which we evaluate OTA as well as on various channels with hardware-in-the-loop channel emulators. This includes 3GPP TDL and CDL channels, SISO and MIMO configurations, and pedestrian and vehicular mobility. Our evaluation shows that without retraining, and across this variety of scenarios, the dApp augments two SOTA LA algorithms, and increases goodput by up to 71.5% while reducing retransmissions by up to 71.8%. This demonstrates the robustness and generalization capabilities of our approach.

Abstract: Quality-of-service (QoS)-aware random access requires adaptive allocation of a finite random access channel (RACH) preamble budget across heterogeneous traffic and access procedures. This paper proposes QP-BD3QN-RACH, a quota-projected branching deep reinforcement learning controller for mixed two-step (2RA) and four-step (4RA) contention-based random access. Four action branches correspond to the delay-sensitive and delay-tolerant 2RA/4RA preamble pools. A branching dueling Double DQN selects pool-specific multipliers, and deterministic quota projection converts them to nonnegative integer allocations that preserve the preamble budget. With five actions per branch, the controller represents 625 pre-projection branch-action tuples using 20 branch-action outputs. Evaluation covers five arrival loads, cross-method comparison under nominal seed 42, six-seed sensitivity of QP-BD3QN-RACH, and targeted ablations. Across the five-load grid, its mean direction-aligned differences relative to four comparators are positive: 5.74 to 8.21 percentage points for success/collision, 1.23 to 1.92 percentage points for fallback, 0.35 to 0.68 percentage points for blocking, and 0.128 to 0.456 decision intervals for successful-access delay. Load-wise results exhibit metric-dependent tradeoffs, particularly under intermediate and overload conditions.