Earlier this year, at ICC 2017 in Paris, we have given the IEEE ComSoc YPs and WICE Abstract Presentation Award to Shreyasee Mukherjee, who is currently a 4th year PhD student at Rutgers University. We were inspired by her work, so we asked her a few questions about her research and also asked for some directions for young researchers. We hope you will enjoy reading her answers.

Shreyasee Mukherjee

ComSoc YP: Hi Shreyasee, could you please tell us about your educational background and professional working experience.

 

I am a 4th year PhD student at Rutgers University, NJ. I came to Rutgers after my Bachelors in 2011, finished my MS and continued as a PhD at WINLAB with my adviser Dr. Dipankar Raychaudhuri.

ComSoc YP: Could you describe what you have presented in max 150 words?

 

My presentation was on supporting millisecond latencies for cellular communication. My research looks into current inefficiencies of the cellular architecture and proposes a clean-slate solution to achieve 5-10X lower latency compared to legacy 4G. The goal of the work is to use MobilityFirst, which is an information-centric network (ICN) architecture as the basis for the mobile core network. We are proposing an architecture that bypasses all the gateways (P/S-Gateway) and related tunneling required for the data packets. This reduces the complexity of the system, as well as latency and overhead of both the control and the data planes.

ComSoc YP: Where do you see research can contribute to the wider 5G ecosystem in the next few years?

Achieving ultra-low latency is one of the key requirements for 5G. Our research goal is to provide one possible solution to achieve it. To this end, we are working in close collaboration with industries and standards bodies in an effort to standardize our ideas into the 5G ecosystem.

ComSoc YP: Could you identify the impact of your proposed work on the communications fields or humanity at large?

 

In parallel to our research efforts, we are actively working on prototyping our solution using Open Air Interface (OAI), which is an open source software and hardware development for 3GPP cellular networks and open source Click software routers. One of the reasons I am really excited about this is that this is closely tied to our ongoing efforts to provide a software mobile core package, using multiple access technologies, which can then be readily deployed with software defined radios and WiFi front-ends at a fraction of the cost of a commercial network. This could help in improving wireless coverage in developing countries or remote locations where the cost of deployment is a major inhibition.

ComSoc YP: You focus on latency improvements in 5G networks – could you tell us a few applications where low latency would be essential?

 

Low latency is essential for a variety of applications. For many wireless sensors, lower the latency and complexity of connection setup, the faster they can communicate their data and go back to sleep, thereby improving battery life. With the predicted exponential growth of Internet-of-Things, a low latency mobile core network will be crucial to handle connectivity of billions of smart sensors transmitting sporadic messages through the network. Low latency connectivity is also required when the connectivity span is limited. For example, in highly mobile vehicular scenarios, reducing the connection setup latency will improve the ‘on-time’ for a vehicle to communicate to the infrastructure. Our solution is also desirable for reducing the wireless communication latency for real-time applications such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), which have stringent latency bounds.

ComSoc YP: Can you tell us more about your plans for future research?

 

My future research plan is to continue working on providing low overhead solutions for the future internet. This involves both improving existing network protocols such as those used in cellular networks or inter-domain border gateway protocol (BGP), as well as working on network-services that are currently not supported by the legacy networks, such as, increasing throughput and reliability through heterogeneity (multi-homed access using multiple cellular and WiFi) and supporting seamless handovers during high mobility across access domains for vehicular connectivity.

ComSoc YP: Thank you for the answers! Best of luck for your future research!
Published on 25 September 2017.