US 12,439,283 B2
Load estimation and balancing in virtualized radio access networks
Daehyeok Kim, Redmond, WA (US); Anuj Kalia, San Francisco, CA (US); and Xenofon Foukas, Cambridge (GB)
Assigned to MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed by MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed on May 28, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/827,681.
Prior Publication US 2023/0388827 A1, Nov. 30, 2023
Int. Cl. H04W 24/08 (2009.01); H04L 47/28 (2022.01)
CPC H04W 24/08 (2013.01) [H04L 47/28 (2013.01)] 19 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for estimating workloads in a virtualized radio access network (vRAN), comprising:
monitoring, during a first transmission time interval (TTI) of the vRAN, data traffic between a radio unit (RU) of a cellular network and a first vRAN instance of the vRAN, the first vRAN instance executing on a first server of the vRAN, the first vRAN instance configured to perform PHY layer processing and L2 processing of the data traffic, wherein the PHY layer is Layer 1 of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model and the L2 is Layer 2 of the OSI model, and wherein the TTI is a smallest time duration over which data is scheduled and transmitted between a base station of the cellular network (gNodeB or eNodeB) and user equipment (UE);
based on the data traffic between the RU of the cellular network and the first vRAN instance during the first TTI, estimating a workload at the first vRAN instance during a second TTI, wherein the second TTI is a next immediate TTI following the first TTI;
determining that the first vRAN instance does not have computing capacity to process the workload during the second TTI based on determining that a time required to process the estimated workload exceeds the second TTI;
in response to determining that the first vRAN instance does not have computing capacity to process the workload during the second TTI, allocating the workload to a second vRAN instance executing on a second server of the vRAN; and
causing the workload to be processed by the second vRAN instance executing on the second server of the vRAN during the second TTI.