NEW YORK-British Telecommunications plc and Korea Telecom have joined forces to develop a form of artificial intelligence for network management they hope will eliminate channel interference on cell sites.
Known as the Universally Reconstructable Artificial Neural Network, or URAN, the microchip already has been produced in sufficient quantities for research. BT soon plans to apply it to a variety of network applications on an experimental basis, but commercial deployment could be five years down the road, said Rod Webb, a URAN project researcher with BT Labs in Ipswich, England.
Korea Telecom invented the URAN chip, while BT Labs has general expertise in the use of neural networks, he said.
The goal in network management is to assign as many channels as possible to a single cell site for maximum efficiency in handling call volume. Doing so, however, creates interference.
Software solutions to this problem often follow the law of unintended consequences in that they solve one set of interferences only to create others. Furthermore, they are slow relative to the speed at which channels must be assigned to available cell sites.
“It would be useful to be able to assign channels to cell sites quickly on a dynamic basis as demand warrants,” Webb said.
Research into artificial intelligence borrows terminology from biology, Webb noted, as he explained the theory behind the URAN research project.
“To control a mobile network, each artificial neuron would represent, or assign, a channel to one cell site,” he said.
Synapses connecting the artificial neurons would be set to a negative value, which would make the neurons compete with each other. The intended result is to make it impossible for the network to assign two channels to the same cell site at the same time, thereby eliminating channel interference while also allowing calls to go through.
“The chip runs so that it settles these conflicts and develops an answer (for routing) in less than 100 microseconds,” a measure of time so fast as to be beyond notice by human perception, Webb said.
