Carrier Wi-Fi RRM

Service Providers wishing to deploy profitable managed Wi-Fi services in homes, businesses, public hotspots and 3G/4G/LTE small cells face the growing threat of RF interference from all the Wi-Fi networks around them, which are outside of their control.

As Wi-Fi becomes more pervasive, the probability of unstable Wi-Fi performance due to RF contention from other networks puts Service Provider Wi-Fi monetization plans at risk, and could result in truck rolls, escalating support costs and subscriber churn.

embedUR’s automated Radio Resource Management (eRM) system is a licensable Wi-Fi Service Assurance solution. It enables Service Providers to dynamically manage radio resources on Wi-Fi access points and Wi-Fi enabled Cable modems, DSL, FTTH CPEs and small cells, in order to maintain optimal Wi-Fi performance when there are changes in the RF environment and utilization.

Key Differentiators

Automatically resolves RF interference issues on all affected Wi-Fi access points
Policy and user or application priority based triggers enable SLA compliance
Scalable carrier-grade cloud architecture with API for OSS integration
Foundation for additional OTT Service Assurance capabilities beyond RRM

The solution has three components which may be licensed together or individually to meet unique operator requirements. Perhaps you have your own algorithms you’d like to apply, or perhaps your APs support TR069 and have RRM/SON interfaces enabled per the CableLabs Wi-Fi Gateway Management specification. It is understood that service providers have implemented Wi-Fi in a variety of ways and need flexibility in how they manage it.

eRM AP Agent: Collects detailed radio data for itself, neighbors and all clients, and passes it upstream, for aggregation and processing. Also implements service profile changes pushed down to the AP.

eRM Controller: Aggregates data from multiple APs or Wi-Fi enabled CPEs organized into radio groups. It communicates with an eRM Engine upstream, and passes back configuration changes to APs.

eRM Engine: Sits in the Service Provider’s cloud, aggregating network-wide radio data, storing history and running algorithms to compute better configurations, based on triggered events.

eRM Feature Highlights

By aggregating spectrum and client data from all connected APs in a Service Provider’s network, the eRM Engine can evaluate in real-time whether a different configuration for one or more APs would result in better service overall. The eRM Engine uses a variety of algorithms to make that assessment, and as applicable, sends commands to APs via the eRM Controller governing them, to adjust the AP service profile and/or radio settings.

Data Collection: Spectral data, WiFi & non-WiFi interference events, client stats collected from every AP
Chipset Agnostic: Can optimize profiles using whatever data is collected by different chipsets
Continuous Analysis: Systematically evaluates data collected from APs to detect degraded service
Flexible Algorithms: Some algorithms can be fine-tuned with Operator preferences

SLA Verification:

Efficiency: APs take no performance hit, since all RRM computation is off-loaded to the eRM Engine
Scalability: Each eRM Engine instance can support up to 10,000 dual radio access points

eRM Demo

Demonstration of eRM resolving interference from a neighbor network