Neutrino: A Fast and Consistent Edge-Based Cellular Control Plane

• Published in: IEEE/ACM transactions on networking 2023-04, Vol.31 (2), p.754-769
• Main Authors: Ahmad, Mukhtiar, Ali, Syed Muhammad Nawazish, Tariq, Muhammad Taimoor, Jafri, Syed Usman, Abbas, Adnan, Zaidi, Syeda Mashal Abbas, Awan, Muhammad Basit Iqbal, Uzmi, Zartash Afzal, Qazi, Zafar Ayyub
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 5G mobile communication; Autonomous cars; Base stations; Cellular communication; cellular control plane; cellular core; Cellular networks; consistency; Delays; edge computing; geo-replication; Handover; Network latency; Neutrino sources; Neutrinos; Performance enhancement; Reliability; Traffic control
• ISSN: 1063-6692; 1558-2566
• DOI: 10.1109/TNET.2022.3202496

5G and next-generation cellular networks aim to support tactile internet to enable immersive and real-time applications by providing ultra-low latency and extremely high reliability. This imposes new requirements on the design of cellular core networks. A key component of the cellular core is the control plane. Time to complete cellular control plane operations (e.g., mobility handoff, service establishment) directly impacts the delay experienced by end-user applications. In this paper, we design Neutrino, a cellular control plane that provides users an abstraction of reliable access to cellular services while ensuring lower latency. Our testbed evaluations based on real cellular control traffic traces show that Neutrino provides an improvement in control procedure completion times by up to 3.1\times without failures, and up to 5.6\times under control plane failures, over existing 5G. We also show how these improvements translate into improving end-user application performance: for AR/VR applications and self-driving cars, Neutrino improves performance by up to 2.5\times and 2.8\times , respectively.