CHRONOS

CHRONOS [Cloud based Hybrid RF-Optical Network Over Synchronous Links]

Relevant Publications: IEEE 5GWF '18

#1. CHRONOS System

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CHRONOS (Cloud based Hybrid RF-OpticalNetwork Over Synchronous Links) is a multi-node, heterogeneous, wideband, scalable, hybrid and synchronous Cloud RAN, specifically to support high throughput wireless access for emerging applications like Virtual Reality (VR), Industrial IoT, 3D broadcast video, telesurgery, etc. Visit CHRONOS Project Page for more detailed information.

#2. CHRONOS Architecture

The combination of tight synchrony and heterogeneity among the network constituents make CHRONOS radically different and foundational to investigate previously unexplored research problems in wireless networking and communication. The key architectural advantage of CHRONOS is the decoupling of baseband signal processing from the front-end allowing for complex, joint processing of signals from spatially distributed radio units. It also optimizes real-time performance by having computation capabilities at the network edge while trading off energy consumption. The flexible architecture of CHRONOS implements DSP kernels by pooling FPGA, CPU and GPU resources for scalable and on-demand provisioning.

This infrastructure cuts across multiple domains including wireless networks, digital communication, signal processing, optical communication, hardware and software architecture and parallel processing. The ability to synchronize distant radio unit to simultaneously communicate in RF and Optical frequencies alleviates the inefficiencies imposed by co-located antennas in existing communication methods. Innovation in distributed antenna geometry will enable spatially efficient applications that can only be sustained by carefully designed architecture of CHRONOS. It also advances the research in virtual cloud platforms that support partial reconfiguration of FPGA to scale the DSP tasks based on demand. These efforts in multiple fundamental domains are not isolated, but are tightly coupled and require close interaction to realize the full potential of this infrastructure.