IEEE Future Directions
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One of the potential of 5G is its capability to hand over the control of communications resources to applications/users. These can self organise their network capabilities/resources. To what extent this will happen remains to be seen, since Network Operators are not likely to open up their network resources. Network slicing ( a way to “carve” a set of resources in the network dedicating them to support a certain service/user) is likely to be used by the Operators themselves as a way to cut cost (and deliver service quality at a premium price).
A different story is for the Edge of the network where it is much more likely that a multitude of networks owners will be willing to pool and share resources, giving rise to a self-organising communications network. Actually, I expect in the first part of the next decade to see smartphones (through apps or may be through their OS) take the lead in this direction dynamically orchestrating with other phones in the area the best use of available resources. This might result in the spot creation of networks at the edges beyond the control of Network Operators. The evolution of edge computing and fog is pushing in this direction.
Of course the Network Operators may resist this evolution but once a critical mass of cooperating smartphones is reached the N.O. may be cut off from a good portion of the communications business. Add to this the fact that some N.O. may decide to join the bandwagon of reource sharing to set itself apart from the other and benefit from it and you can see that in a few years all resources are bound to be shared. This will give a strong impulse to self-organising networks, an area that is being pursued at scientific and research level for autonomous systems (and autonomous systems swarms).
6G, as I mentioned in a previous post, will embed the capability for self planning and self organising. It will naturally stem out from the just outlined evolution.
There are a number of examples of self organising structures in Nature, just think of a coral reef, a ant colony and even our brain!
The key is the relative flexibility of each component and the huge number of them with a relatively simple interactions set. The huge number is required because the self organisation is not orchestrated/driven by an authority. It just happens and it happens by reinforcing what is working and discarding what does not work.
As we are creating environments with a significant number of components each having a certain degree of autonomy, we are going to see this happening to our artifacts. Think about self driving cars. It has been shown that by providing each one with some very basic set of rules (like keep your distance from the one near you) they start to act like a swarm and generate traffic patterns that optimise the use of roads.
Of course, the challenge is to create the set of rules that lead to what can be seen as an intelligent behaviour in a context that keeps changing. And this is what is being studied by researchers in several places. This is seen as an emerging strategic technology for this year and the next ones by Gartner.
More on this in the next post.
