Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

5G networks represent a breakthrough in the design of communication networks, for their ability to provide a single platform enabling a variety of different services, from enhanced mobile broadband communications to eXtended reality, haptic, automated driving and Internet-of-Things. Yet, witnessing the ever increasing demands for new services and predicting the evolution of new technologies within a decade from now, it is already possible to envision the need to move beyond 5G (B5G) and design a novel architecture integrating cutting-edge technologies to satisfy new needs at both individual and societal level. B5G will provide an Information and Communication Technology infrastructure that will enable the end users to perceive themselves as surrounded by a "huge artificial brain" providing virtual zero-latency services, unlimited storage, and immense cognition capabilities. The services enabled by B5G networks are characterized by very diverse sets of key performance indicators so that the design of a single platform enabling all of them in an efficient manner is a very challenging task. Besides, since most services enabled by B5G are enabled through fully virtualized functions that run overs heterogeneous distributed infrastructures, they all need to be managed by a common orchestration framework. However, a plethora of open research issues and challenges related to B5G can be identified, including but not limited to, holistic communication, computing and caching virtual resource allocation, end-to-end service provisioning, multi-domain orchestration issues, profit maximization for infrastructure providers, support of latency critical services. Therefore, my discovery research program will attempt to elaborate and address key research challenges and problems related to the design and operation of resource allocation and orchestration solutions to be adopted by B5G networks. This long-term objective will be attained via exploring innovative resource provisioning solutions in B5G through joint communication, computing and caching virtual resource allocation as well as intelligent and economically efficient resource orchestration. Resource allocation and orchestration will be first tackled through theoretical approaches including mathematical optimization to develop and analyze optimal solutions and performance bounds. Following, less-complex suboptimal and adaptive solutions using heuristic, AI-based centralized or distributed approaches will be designed and validated by simulation tools. Finally, customized testbeds will be built to demonstrate the proposed solutions in realistic environments. The benefits of this research program are expected in both academic knowledge and industrial advances in B5G networks as it involves the training of several graduate students. The research results will be shared via open access preprints and the resulting intellectual property (and patents) will be transferred to Canadian industries.