Technology Category
Machine Learning: Hardware-aware MLIntelligent Robots: Learning & Optimization for ROBPlanning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
EARL: Energy-Aware Adaptive Antenna Control with Reinforcement Learning in O-RAN Cell-Free Massive MIMO Networks
Technology Category
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Cell-free massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) promises uniform high performance across the network, but also brings a high energy cost due to joint transmission from distributed radio units (RUs) and centralized processing in the cloud. Leveraging the resource-sharing capabilities of Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN), we propose EARL, an energy-aware adaptive antenna control framework based on reinforcement learning. EARL dynamically configures antenna elements in RUs to minimize radio, optical fronthaul, and cloud processing power consumption while meeting user spectral efficiency demands. Numerical results show power savings of up to 81% and 50% over full-on and heuristic baselines, respectively. The RL-based approach operates within 220 ms, satisfying O-RAN's near-real-time limit, and a greedy refinement further halves power consumption at a 2 s runtime.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
energy consumption
cell-free massive MIMO
O-RAN
antenna control
power efficiency
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Energy-aware antenna control
Reinforcement learning
O-RAN
Cell-free massive MIMO
Power consumption optimization
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