Towards scalable and cost-effective RAN emulation leveraging the public cloud

Ujjwal Pawar; Andrew E. Ferguson; Yuto Takano; Jon Larrea; Xenofon Foukas; Mahesh K. Marina; Bozidar  Radunovic

doi:10.1145/3708468.3711895

Towards scalable and cost-effective RAN emulation leveraging the public cloud

Ujjwal Pawar, Andrew E. Ferguson, Yuto Takano, Jon Larrea, Xenofon Foukas, Mahesh K. Marina, Bozidar Radunovic

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

The rise of data-driven and AI-powered monitoring in 5G and beyond has created a need for RAN digital twins to test and enhance network performance without disrupting real-world operations. However, large-scale RAN emulation remains challenging due to the complexity of the RAN protocol stack and the high cost of hardware-based solutions. Software alternatives are more affordable but current solutions sacrifice fidelity or scalability. This paper presents Chronos, a cloud-based RAN emulation system that overcomes these challenges by abstracting the compute-intensive PHY layer, virtualizing emulation time, RAN slot level synchronization and scalable switch based traffic forwarding. Experiments using OpenAirInterface based prototype on public cloud infrastructure demonstrate Chronos' ability to emulate 250 base stations and 1000 UEs with 468 CPU cores at high fidelity, reflecting its potential for enabling scalable RAN emulation in an affordable manner.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	HotMobile '25
Subtitle of host publication	Proceedings of the 26th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications
Place of Publication	New York, NY, United States
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages	43-48
Number of pages	6
ISBN (Electronic)	9798400714030
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3708468.3711895
Publication status	Published - 26 Feb 2025
Event	The 26th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications - Palm Springs, United States Duration: 26 Feb 2025 → 27 Feb 2025 Conference number: 26 https://hotmobile.org/2025/

Workshop

Workshop	The 26th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications
Abbreviated title	HotMobile 2025
Country/Territory	United States
City	Palm Springs
Period	26/02/25 → 27/02/25
Internet address	https://hotmobile.org/2025/

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

RAN emulation
5G digital twin
public cloud

Access to Document

10.1145/3708468.3711895Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY)

PawarEtalHotMobile2025TowardsScalableandCost-EffectiveRANEmulationAccepted author manuscript, 591 KBLicence: Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY)

Cite this

Pawar, U., Ferguson, A. E., Takano, Y., Larrea, J., Foukas, X., Marina, M. K., & Radunovic, B. (2025). Towards scalable and cost-effective RAN emulation leveraging the public cloud. In HotMobile '25: Proceedings of the 26th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (pp. 43-48). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). https://doi.org/10.1145/3708468.3711895

@inproceedings{a04de7c5b46248ca8a72647ab0f7efb2,

title = "Towards scalable and cost-effective RAN emulation leveraging the public cloud",

abstract = "The rise of data-driven and AI-powered monitoring in 5G and beyond has created a need for RAN digital twins to test and enhance network performance without disrupting real-world operations. However, large-scale RAN emulation remains challenging due to the complexity of the RAN protocol stack and the high cost of hardware-based solutions. Software alternatives are more affordable but current solutions sacrifice fidelity or scalability. This paper presents Chronos, a cloud-based RAN emulation system that overcomes these challenges by abstracting the compute-intensive PHY layer, virtualizing emulation time, RAN slot level synchronization and scalable switch based traffic forwarding. Experiments using OpenAirInterface based prototype on public cloud infrastructure demonstrate Chronos' ability to emulate 250 base stations and 1000 UEs with 468 CPU cores at high fidelity, reflecting its potential for enabling scalable RAN emulation in an affordable manner.",

keywords = "RAN emulation, 5G digital twin, public cloud",

author = "Ujjwal Pawar and Ferguson, {Andrew E.} and Yuto Takano and Jon Larrea and Xenofon Foukas and Marina, {Mahesh K.} and Bozidar Radunovic",

year = "2025",

month = feb,

day = "26",

doi = "10.1145/3708468.3711895",

language = "English",

pages = "43--48",

booktitle = "HotMobile '25",

publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)",

address = "United States",

note = "The 26th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, HotMobile 2025 ; Conference date: 26-02-2025 Through 27-02-2025",

url = "https://hotmobile.org/2025/",

}

Pawar, U, Ferguson, AE, Takano, Y, Larrea, J, Foukas, X, Marina, MK & Radunovic, B 2025, Towards scalable and cost-effective RAN emulation leveraging the public cloud. in HotMobile '25: Proceedings of the 26th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), New York, NY, United States, pp. 43-48, The 26th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, Palm Springs, California, United States, 26/02/25. https://doi.org/10.1145/3708468.3711895

Towards scalable and cost-effective RAN emulation leveraging the public cloud. / Pawar, Ujjwal; Ferguson, Andrew E.; Takano, Yuto et al.
HotMobile '25: Proceedings of the 26th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications. New York, NY, United States: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2025. p. 43-48.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

TY - GEN

T1 - Towards scalable and cost-effective RAN emulation leveraging the public cloud

AU - Pawar, Ujjwal

AU - Ferguson, Andrew E.

AU - Takano, Yuto

AU - Larrea, Jon

AU - Foukas, Xenofon

AU - Marina, Mahesh K.

AU - Radunovic, Bozidar

N1 - Conference code: 26

PY - 2025/2/26

Y1 - 2025/2/26

N2 - The rise of data-driven and AI-powered monitoring in 5G and beyond has created a need for RAN digital twins to test and enhance network performance without disrupting real-world operations. However, large-scale RAN emulation remains challenging due to the complexity of the RAN protocol stack and the high cost of hardware-based solutions. Software alternatives are more affordable but current solutions sacrifice fidelity or scalability. This paper presents Chronos, a cloud-based RAN emulation system that overcomes these challenges by abstracting the compute-intensive PHY layer, virtualizing emulation time, RAN slot level synchronization and scalable switch based traffic forwarding. Experiments using OpenAirInterface based prototype on public cloud infrastructure demonstrate Chronos' ability to emulate 250 base stations and 1000 UEs with 468 CPU cores at high fidelity, reflecting its potential for enabling scalable RAN emulation in an affordable manner.

AB - The rise of data-driven and AI-powered monitoring in 5G and beyond has created a need for RAN digital twins to test and enhance network performance without disrupting real-world operations. However, large-scale RAN emulation remains challenging due to the complexity of the RAN protocol stack and the high cost of hardware-based solutions. Software alternatives are more affordable but current solutions sacrifice fidelity or scalability. This paper presents Chronos, a cloud-based RAN emulation system that overcomes these challenges by abstracting the compute-intensive PHY layer, virtualizing emulation time, RAN slot level synchronization and scalable switch based traffic forwarding. Experiments using OpenAirInterface based prototype on public cloud infrastructure demonstrate Chronos' ability to emulate 250 base stations and 1000 UEs with 468 CPU cores at high fidelity, reflecting its potential for enabling scalable RAN emulation in an affordable manner.

KW - RAN emulation

KW - 5G digital twin

KW - public cloud

U2 - 10.1145/3708468.3711895

DO - 10.1145/3708468.3711895

M3 - Conference contribution

SP - 43

EP - 48

BT - HotMobile '25

PB - Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

CY - New York, NY, United States

T2 - The 26th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications

Y2 - 26 February 2025 through 27 February 2025

ER -

Pawar U, Ferguson AE, Takano Y, Larrea J, Foukas X, Marina MK et al. Towards scalable and cost-effective RAN emulation leveraging the public cloud. In HotMobile '25: Proceedings of the 26th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications. New York, NY, United States: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). 2025. p. 43-48 doi: 10.1145/3708468.3711895

Towards scalable and cost-effective RAN emulation leveraging the public cloud

Abstract

Workshop

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

Access to Document

Fingerprint

Cite this