Measurement Study of Programmable Network Coding in Cloud-native 5G and Beyond Networks

TL;DR

This paper presents FlexNC and RecNet, innovative network coding solutions implemented on real hardware for 5G networks, demonstrating improved adaptability and reduced packet loss in diverse application scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces FlexNC and RecNet, novel programmable network coding methods that enhance flexibility and performance in 5G networks through real-world implementation.

Findings

FlexNC adapts to latency and packet loss requirements.

RecNet minimizes packet loss with minimal delay increase.

Implementation on OpenAirInterface confirms practical benefits.

Abstract

Emerging 5G/6G use cases span various industries, necessitating flexible solutions that leverage emerging technologies to meet diverse and stringent application requirements under changing network conditions. The standard 5G RAN solution, retransmission, reduces packet loss but can increase transmission delay in the process. Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) offers an alternative by proactively sending combinations of original packets, thus reducing both delay and packet loss. Current research often only simulates the integration of RLNC in 5G while we implement and evaluate our approach on real commercially available hardware in a real-world deployment. We introduce Flexible Network Coding (FlexNC), which enables the flexible fusion of several RLNC protocols by incorporating a forwarder with multiple RLNC nodes. Network operators can configure FlexNC based on network conditions and application requirements. To further boost network programmability, our Recoder in the Network (RecNet) leverages intermediate network nodes to join the coding process. Both the proposed algorithms have been implemented on OpenAirInterface and extensively tested with traffic from different applications in a real network. While FlexNC adapts to various application needs of latency and packet loss, RecNet significantly minimizes packet loss for a remote user with minimal increase in delay compared to pure RLNC.