A multidisciplinary team of computer science researchers has been awarded $2 million from the Ontario Research Fund–Research Excellence (ORF–RE) program to develop key infrastructure technology for next-generation mobile networks. ORF–RE provides funding to support the costs of major research projects of strategic value to the province.
Under the program, ORF–RE contributes up to one-third of a project’s total cost, with the remaining two-thirds provided by a combination of private sector and institutional contributions. In this funding cycle, the government of Ontario has invested more than $92 million to advance research across universities, colleges, research institutes and research hospitals in the province.
The project, titled Designing the Next-G Platform for Future 5G and Beyond Applications, will advance technologies to improve the reliability, efficiency and scalability of 5G and 6G networks, enabling transformative applications across many critical sectors.
“When we invest in research, we invest in our province’s future,” said Nolan Quinn, Minister of Colleges and Universities. “These critical investments will ensure Ontario’s researchers can continue making discoveries that drive key sectors, create good-paying jobs, and improve the lives of all Ontarians.”
The project is led by principal investigator Raouf Boutaba, University Professor and Director of the Cheriton School of Computer Science, with Cheriton co-investigators Professors Martin Karsten, Samer Al-Kiswany and Kate Larson, along with Professor Chui Min Yeum of Waterloo’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Their research will focus on advancing two key technologies — network slicing and multi-access edge computing — to meet the demands of new and innovative mobile network applications such as autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, and healthcare delivery.
Left to right: University Professor Raouf Boutaba, Professors Martin Karsten, Samer Al-Kiswany, Kate Larson and Chui Min Yeum
Raouf Boutaba’s primary research interests are in the areas of network and service management, and he is known for his role in establishing automated network management, which directly influenced autonomic networking.
Martin Karsten’s research area is computer and communication systems, in particular system-level software. His interests concern the architecture and performance of software systems, with expertise in operating systems, system software, networking protocols, and architecture.
Samer AI-Kiswany’s research focuses on improving the reliability and performance of systems. In the last four years, his research has focused on designing systems that can leverage modern networking technology.
Kate Larson’s research is in artificial intelligence with a focus on multi-agent systems, decision-making under uncertainty, and reinforcement learning. Her research focuses on developing foundations of cooperative AI systems including addressing challenges that arise in the context of fair resource allocation across different domains.
Chui Min Yeum’s research focuses on developing novel implementations of computer vision and deep learning methods that enable visual assessment by analyzing large volumes of images.
“This project builds on our existing partnership with Rogers Communications, Rockport Networks, and NoviFlow,” said University Professor Boutaba. “Rogers and Waterloo are collaborating through a multi-year agreement to advance 5G research, including creating a 5G-enabled smart campus for testing infrastructure, frequencies, and applications.”
This research is among the 22 projects receiving support from the Ontario Research Fund at the University of Waterloo.
More about this research
5G and 6G networks promise to revolutionize communication by offering ultra-reliable, low-latency services across critically important sectors of society. While advancements in radio technology have enabled advances in mobile networking, they must be matched with advances in network management and service architecture.
The project aims to develop innovations in network slicing and multi-access edge computing, two key technologies that complement the high-capacity radio transmission used by 5G and 6G mobile networks. Network slicing allows virtual networks to be created as needed and managed to respond to specific services or customer requirements across the entire network while simultaneously providing quantifiable and reliable service. However, managing network slice resources efficiently while satisfying the diverse and stringent quality-of-service requirements of various applications is a complex algorithmic challenge.
To tackle this problem, the research team will leverage its expertise to design novel and efficient end-to-end network slice-management and orchestration techniques. Moreover, the overall service architecture will be improved to support the requirements of emerging mobile network applications.
Traditional service delivery models are based on centralized cloud infrastructure that does not provide low latency. This deficiency limits the ability to expand uses for mobile networks. The edge computing paradigm was proposed to address this problem, but little is known about the appropriate arrangement of cloud computing components for optimal edge-centred service delivery. To this end, the researchers plan to make critical design and experimental contributions to expand the concept of edge computing from theory to practice.
The project will be conducted in collaboration with three private-sector partners: Rogers Communications, Rockport Networks and NoviFlow. Rogers will provide access to its experimental 5G testbed, while technologies from Rockport and NoviFlow form an integral part of Waterloo’s in-lab 5G testbed. These testbeds will be used to demonstrate the efficacy of the developed solutions for representative 5G and 6G edge applications that require reliable, low-latency communication. This project will lay the foundation to support diverse, strict quality-of-service requirements of novel 5G applications and those envisioned for 6G.
University Professor Boutaba and his co-investigators have extensive experience in network and service management and service architecture. They have identified and comprehensively studied the foundational concepts and principles that underpin the proposed research. This experience includes a broad range of knowledge, ranging from various facets of artificial intelligence and machine learning and their practical applications in 5G networks to an in-depth understanding of 5G and multi-access edge computing architectures, along with benchmarking and profiling techniques. The project also benefits greatly from industry-supported in-lab and Rogers 5G testbeds to evaluate and validate the developed solutions in real-world settings.