Ranplan will use AI analytics to speed up 5G

Ranplan Wireless has been selected for a €225,000 EU research project in a bid to optimise 5G network slicing through using AI-based data analytics.

If you haven't heard of Ranplan Wireless before, that's hardly surprising, although we've featured them extensively over the years. The firm has been instrumental in everything from providing network planning tools to making smart cities a possibility. It's also vital when it comes to indoor and outdoor wireless network planning. The firm was developer of the world's first 5G HetNet combined in-building and outdoor wireless network planning tool for urban environment, enabling businesses substantially.

This time round, it aims to use Project Correlation to profile mobile users and their consumption of 5G services in a bid to help networks adapt dynamically to meet instant requests for bandwidth and services. Essentially, its AI-based data analytics will work to know what users probably want to do next, predicting traffic patterns and enabling operators to optimise how they slice up their network performance to best suit users.

2 year project

The project will run for 2 years and will investigate the correlation of traffic among different services by analysing usage and the profiles of user groups. It'll also help discover the underlying factors behind such results. Once that's been established, it will then go on to investigate whether service level traffic prediction accuracy can be improved over time by using such algorithms.

As founder and Chairman of Ranplan Group, Professor Jie Zhang, explained, "Research on the characterisation and prediction of service-level mobile traffic is still in its infancy, largely because the methodology, especially for 5G, has not been studied adequately," meaning this is the ideal time for businesses to jump on board and learn more.

He went on to explain that, "understanding the correlations between services will allow us to significantly reduce the time used to train deep neural networks and open up the opportunity for dynamic 5G network slicing."

Project Correlation will run alongside the Banyan project, a €1.4 million H2020 project that's led by Ranplan alongside other beneficiary partners such as CNR in Italy, Orange Labs in France, and the University of Cambridge in the UK. It's all part of Ranplan's strategy of "adapting its world leading radio network planning and optimisation technologies to continuous 4G/5G network operation automation."

It's the kind of technology that you might not be able to see, but could fundamentally change just how fast 5G appears to consumers, all thanks to accurate predictions and prior research by firms like Ranplan.

Useful read: What is 5G?