Autonomic Data Management for the

Radio Network Controller

Topics
1. What is a Radio Network Controller?
2. RNC Functions
3. Complex Environment
4. Autonomic Data Management
5. Autonomic Data Management in the RNC
Self-Test
Correct Answers
Glossary

1. What is a Radio Network Controller?

A Radio Network Controller (RNC) provides the interface between the wireless
devices communicating through Node B transceivers and the network edge. This
includes controlling and managing the radio transceivers in the Node B
equipment, as well as management tasks like soft handoff. The RNC performs
tasks in a 3G wireless network analogous to those of the Base Station Controller
(BSC) in a 2G or 2.5G network. It interfaces with GPRS Service Nodes (SGSNs)
and Gateways (GGSNs) to mediate with the network service providers.

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Figure 1. The RNC in its Context

2. RNC Functions
A radio network controller manages hundreds of Node B transceiver stations
while switching and provisioning services off the Mobile Switching Center and
3G data network interfaces. The connection from the RNC to a Node B is called
the User Plane Interface Layer and it uses T1/E1 transport to the RNC. Due to
the large number of Node B transceivers, a T1/E1 aggregator is used to deliver
the Node B data over channelized OC-3 optical transport to the RNC. The OC-3
pipe can be a direct connection to the RNC or through traditional SONET/SDH
transmission networks.
A typical Radio Network Controller may be built on a PICMG or Advanced TCA
chassis. It contains several different kinds of cards specialized for performing the
functions and interacting with the various interfaces of the RNC.

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Figure 2: RNC Interfaces

Typical line card functions are as follows.

Controller Cards
The controller card controls the entire chassis and performs application-level
functions complementary to the other line cards. It also interfaces to the Element
Management System (EMS). Because this role is so critical, typically a pair of
redundant cards is used.
Radio Access Network (RAN) Line Cards
This card is a Node B controller. A Node B aggregates T1/E1 uplinks and
forwards OC-3 optical data to the RNC.
Core Network (CN) Cards
These cards provide OC-12 connections to the back-end circuit-switched and
packet-switched infrastructure. The CN card provides the bandwidth to manage
the Node B traffic from the RAN line cards.
Real Time Unit (RTU) Line Cards
This card implements real-time user stream processing that is complementary to
the other line cards. These control functions span all RAN and CN interfaces in
and out of the RNC. Multiple RTU cards with redundant Gigabit Ethernet links
are required to support the bi-directional traffic.
Ethernet Switching Modules
These cards provide the Gigabit Ethernet fabric for the chassis. Every line card in
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the system contains one or more connections to each switching module,

depending on the individual bandwidth requirement for each line card.

3. Complex Environment
Like many other network infrastructure applications, the RNC presents an
environment of forbidding complexity for the software developer. Multiple
applications run on different cards, some with peer-to-peer and some with
controller-slave relationships. The unit as a whole must maintain carrier-grade
availability and share data with external entities like other RNCs and the
management system that controls the device.
A serious challenge for the developer is control of the data that must be locally
managed, and in some cases locally generated, and shared with other entities in
order to coordinate the RNC as a whole. This piece of essential housekeeping can
overwhelm the complexity of the other aspects of the application. The remainder
of this paper deals with a powerful technique for solving these critical data
management problems.

4. Autonomic Data Management

Cutting edge research on ways to build flexible, scalable, highly-available,
distributed systems has been motivated by the observation that many of the
complex systems involved in maintaining the living body require no conscious
interaction. We don't have to think about how to digest food or heal a cut, for
example. Such unconscious systems are called autonomic, because they act
autonomously, as if they have their own intelligence.
According to IBM, ("Autonomic Computing Concepts", IBM publication G3256904-00) an autonomic system must display the following characteristics:

Self-Configuring
An autonomic system must be able to adapt immediately to a change in its
environment, reconfiguring itself on the fly

Self-Healing
It must detect improper events and work around them. Typical day-today failures and breaks should not disrupt operations.

Self-Optimizing
It should be to efficiently optimize its use of the resources at its disposal.

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Self-Protecting
Finally, it should be able to detect and foil attempts at intrusion, as well as
protecting itself from entering unreliable states like bandwidth overload.

While much of the research on autonomic computing is, properly, very forwardlooking, some of the concepts can be applied now. System developers can
design-in the basic elements of autonomic data management, ensuring that all
the components of the system have enough intelligence to behave correctly
under a variety of situations. This is not a blue-sky appeal to fringe ideas of
machine intelligence. Rather it is the simple requirement that devices should be
able to know their own resources, be able to make local decisions based on their
best understanding of their role and how to achieve their goals, and be able to
cooperate with other components to achieve shared goals. Autonomy is not a
characteristic of a single application or component, but rather of the system as a
hole. Various elements of the system may contribute different functions to create
a system that behaves autonomously.
An autonomic data management system eliminates the task of managing the
complex control data flows in the RNC. It is as if the data takes care of itself.

Autonomic Data Management Components

An autonomic data management system is not a single element, but rather a suite
of components that operate together. The key elements are: a local data
management system, a high availability system, and asynchronous data
distribution. All of these components need to support the development of
systems that are self-configuring, self-healing, self-configuring and selfprotecting.

Local Data Manager

At the core of any autonomic data management system is a relational database
management system (RDBMS). The RDBMS has become a critical component in
almost all enterprise software, but is only recently that it has also become an
available solution for network elements like RNCs. This is because the classical
RDBMS, represented by products like Oracle and IBM's DB/2, were designed for
the large, central, tightly controlled corporate data center. It has required the
development of a new generation of streamlined, light-weight RDBMS to extend
their reach to the network infrastructure device.
Software developers prize the RDBMS because it:

improves time to market,

delivers flexible application architecture,

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controls multi-user access to data,

supports transactions that guarantee data integrity,

provides full data recovery after node failure.

While the classical enterprise RDBMS is notorious for the amount of on-going
management it requires, the autonomic data manager must be self-managing. It
must protect the data by coordinating access several concurrent applications
making complex data changes, ensuring no loss of data integrity or consistency.
It must heal itself automatically from the most basic of failures--board reboot-without any data loss or corruption.

High Availability
Because hardware inevitably fails, an autonomic data management system must
be able to self-configure around the hardware failure and heal itself after the
hardware is repaired. The autonomic data management system is responsible for
ensuring that state of the system survives the hardware failure. The state of a
system is defined by its state variables, which in an autonomic data management
system are stored in the local RDBMS. So a key to service availability is
redundant databases running in a hot standby configuration on redundant
hardware.
"Hot standby" means that the two RDBMS are up and running at the same time
on the two redundant cards, and that their databases are transactionally identical
at all times. Under these circumstances, if one of the redundant boards fails or is
taken down for maintenance, the other is fully capable of supporting the
applications that are running with no delay caused by reloading the data or
booting an RDBMS.
The autonomic data management system is responsible for protecting the
integrity of the system by maintaining identity between the two copies of the
database. It must detect that one of the pair is unavailable and self-configure into
a stand-alone mode. When the hardware is repaired or replaced, the autonomic
data management system must heal itself by creating a new RDBMS instance and
copying the database from the surviving RDBMS in order to return to the faulttolerant state.

Data Distribution
In a complex environment like the RNC, data must not only be locally managed,
but also moved to where it needs to be. As a simple example, when a new line
card is inserted into an RNC, it needs to announce itself to the chassis controller
and self-configure for the environment. The controller, in turn, needs to report
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the new configuration to the EMS. In addition, cards collect their own
performance statistics andmust report these to the chassis controller which can
aggregate them and report the aggregated results to the EMS.
Like local data management, data distribution must also be autonomous.
Application developers should not have to worry about where the data has to go,
but rather just write it to the local data store and assume that the system will selfoptimize by moving the data to where it needs to be. The autonomic platform
must ensure that its data is transmitted reliably, securely, and recoverably to its
correct destination.
In the RNC, and in most other applications, data is managed in a hierarchical
manner: the EMS controls the system, the chassis controller manages the chassis,
and the line cards control their own data. This architecture lends itself to a data
distribution technique based on master and replicas. In this context a master is
the "copy of record" for a given piece of data. The RDBMS controlling the master
copy has full authority over the integrity, security and reliability of its data.
Replicas are local copies of master data, under the control of the local data
manager. Replicas may be modified locally but the results are not authorized
until approved at the master.
A replica configures itself by subscribing to a publication of the master data. The
master protects the system by ensuring that the would-be replica has permission
to see the view it is requesting, and if so provides the requested subset of its data.
The replica can maintain its currency by requesting refreshes periodically from
the master. It can also send to the master a report of actions it has taken against
its local copy of the data. If the master validates these changes, they become part
of the permanent record of the system. If the master does not approve the
changes, it protects the integrity of the system by over-riding the local changes
and restoring the replica to a valid state.

5. Autonomic Data Management in the RNC

Autonomic data management systems are not yet fast enough to manage the
actual packet data flowing through the RNC, but they can take care of much of
the FCAPS data (Fault, Configuration, Provisioning, Accounting, Security). Let
us look a few scenarios.

New Line Card

Line cards may be inserted into a chassis to replace cards that have failed. Also,
as the load on an RNC increases it may be necessary to add new line cards. In
addition, hardware evolution means that cards with superior functionality or
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lower cost will periodically become available, and carriers will want to upgrade
their systems. For all these reasons, new line cards are a fact of life for the RNC.
In an autonomous RNC system, when the line card is initialized it will detect the
chassis controller automatically, and configure itself by downloading a suitable
database replica from the controller. The controller will automatically
reconfigure the pre-existing line cards to spread the load over the new
processing power and bandwidth self-optimizing the chassis. The controller
application does this by writing the desired configuration into its local data store.
The autonomic data management system takes care of forwarding this new
master data to the line card replicas. Because the controller is also a replica to the
EMS database, the changes are automatically forwarded to the EMS as well. The
EMS can always over-ride the controller's decision because it is the master for all
configuration data.

Controller Card Failure and Repair

In a hierarchically managed autonomic system, one of the controller cards is the
primary and the other acts as its jot standby. The role of the standby is to
maintain its copy of the chassis state and watch for a failure of the primary card.
If the primary card fails, the system heals itself by immediately forcing the
standby to take over as a lone primary. Any application using the controller card
always connects to both primary and standby. When an application discovers it
has lost communication with the primary, it heals itself by switching its attention
to its connection with the standby If it had a transaction in flight against the
primary when the failure occurred, it reissues it. Otherwise it just continues
work, knowing that the self-protecting system has ensured that the standby
contains every transaction that was committed at the primary.
When the controller card is repaired, it starts itself as the new standby. If some
data survived the failure, the new standby can ask for a refresh. Otherwise it asks
for a new copy of the primary database. Once it is back in sync, it announces
itself as the new standby, applications reconnect to it, and the system has healed
itself back in a fault-tolerant state.
If a standby fails, applications take no action other than dropping their useless
connection. When the standby is repaired, applications heal themselves by reestablishing their connection to it, restoring the fault-tolerant state of the system.
This functionality can be used to perform a live upgrade of the controller
software, by taking down the standby, upgrading it, and then restoring it. Once
it is back in sync, it can be switched to a primary role, allowing the other card to
be upgraded in the same way.
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Self-Test

1. An autonomic system must display the following characteristics:

a. Self-Healing
b. Self-Optimizing
c. Self-Protecting
d. All of the above
2. FCAPS includes all but one of the following:
a. Fault
b. Controller
c. Provisioning
d. Accounting
3. The ______ aggregates T1/E1 uplinks and forwards OC-3 optical data to the
RNC.
a. GPRS
b. Mobile Switching Center
c. Node B
d. CN Card

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4. The ____card provides the bandwidth to manage the Node B traffic from the
RAN line cards.
a. RTU
b. RNC
c. CN
d. Ethernet Switching Module
5. An autonomic data management system eliminates the task of managing the
complex control data flows in the RNC.
a. True
b. False
6. The RNC performs tasks in a ___ wireless network.
a. 2G
b. 3G
c. 2.5G
d. 1G
7. Software developers prize the RDBMS because it:
a. delivers flexible application architecture
b. controls multi-user access to data
c. provides full data recovery after node failure
d. All of the above
8. In the RNC, and in most other applications, data is managed in a _________
manner
a. architectural
b. self-configuring

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c. hierarchical
d. supportive

Correct Answers
1. An autonomic system must display the following characteristics:
a. Self-Healing
b. Self-Optimizing
c. Self-Protecting
d. All of the above
2. FCAPS includes all but one of the following:
a. Fault
b. Controller
c. Provisioning
d. Accounting
3. The ______ aggregates T1/E1 uplinks and forwards OC-3 optical data to the
RNC.
a. GPRS
b. Mobile Switching Center
c. Node B
d. CN Card

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4. The ____card provides the bandwidth to manage the Node B traffic from the
RAN line cards.
a. RTU
b. RNC
c. CN
d. Ethernet Switching Module
5. An autonomic data management system eliminates the task of managing the
complex control data flows in the RNC.
a. True
b. False
6. The RNC performs tasks in a ___ wireless network.
a. 2G
b. 3G
c. 2.5G
d. 1G
7. Software developers prize the RDBMS because it:
a. delivers flexible application architecture
b. controls multi-user access to data
c. provides full data recovery after node failure
d. All of the above

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8. In the RNC, and in most other applications, data is managed in a _________

manner
a. architectural
b. self-configuring
c. hierarchical
d. supportive

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