AI-RAN aims to unify artificial intelligence and radio access network workloads on a shared compute substrate. While this paradigm has so far been demonstrated primarily on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), it remains unclear whether Neural Processing Units (NPUs), which are AI accelerators optimized for inference, can also support wireless baseband processing. Here, we provide the first affirmative answer by resolving the fundamental mismatch between baseband workloads and NPU architecture. A computational isomorphism exists: matrix and vector engines NPUs dedicate to inference inherently cover physical-layer operations. Yet NPU architectures are natively shaped for dense-tensor AI inference, not baseband. This architectural mismatch surfaces as opposing optimization objectives: traditional baseband minimizes arithmetic operations, whereas NPU performance demands maximizing engine utilization. We close this gap by reconstructing communication algorithms onto AI compute primitives, prioritizing engine utilization over arithmetic count. We validate this with a complete OFDM transceiver on an Ascend 310B1 edge NPU, demonstrating end-to-end over-the-air transmission via USRP X300 at 3.0 GHz.
Sabrine Aroua, Alexis I. Aravanis, Ilias Chatzistefanidis +7cs.NI cs.AI
Future 6G networks will rely on highly distributed, AI-native Radio Access Networks (RANs), where communication and AI workloads share a common infrastructure. This evolution, combined with increasing deployment density and continuous AI processing, is expected to significantly increase RAN energy consumption. While Open RAN (O-RAN) introduces a programmable and modular control framework through the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) and Service Management and Orchestration (SMO), current approaches remain largely policy-driven, limiting adaptive energy-aware coordination across multiple applications. In parallel, AI-RAN promotes the convergence of AI and RAN infrastructures through AI-for-RAN, AI-on-RAN, and AI-and-RAN paradigms, yet efficient mechanisms to jointly orchestrate performance, latency, and energy remain an open challenge. This article proposes an agentic AI-native RAN architecture that bridges O-RAN's structured control with AI-RAN's unified vision. Leveraging semantic intent abstraction and Large Language Model (LLM)-driven coordination, the framework enables adaptive orchestration, conflict resolution, and energy-aware multi-objective optimization across heterogeneous workloads. Through representative AI-for-RAN and AI-on-RAN use cases, we show how such coordination can improve resource efficiency and reduce operational energy consumption, paving the way toward sustainable 6G networks.
Future AI-integrated Radio Access Networks (AI-RAN) will combine open programmability with learning-enabled xApps, rApps, and control functions that act on shared parameters and key performance indicators (KPIs). For conflict monitoring, it is not enough to know which applications are deployed; the system must also know whether the parameter--KPI dependencies assumed by runtime diagnosis remain valid under the current operating regime. This paper studies a lightweight monitoring primitive for that purpose: tracking an interpretable dependency representation from streaming telemetry events. We represent active dependencies by a Boolean matrix and use Boolean matrix multiplication to check whether recent parameter-activity and KPI-response events are consistent with the current estimate. We propose a sliding-window inference procedure that reuses the estimate when it remains consistent and recomputes it when recent observations indicate structural change. The tracker is intended as an explainable signal for conflict diagnosis and slow-loop model refresh, not as an autonomous mitigation mechanism. Experiments on controlled Boolean event streams show efficient and accurate tracking under dependency changes and Boolean observation noise.
Next-generation wireless networks are expected to rely on multiple concurrent AI-driven control functions that optimize different network objectives simultaneously, particularly in AI-integrated and open radio access network architectures such as AI Radio Access Network (AI-RAN) and Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN). When these functions interact, they can interfere with one another in ways that are difficult to detect from raw network data alone. A key missing piece for managing such interactions is a reliable, interpretable dependency structure that captures which control parameters are actively influencing which network performance outcomes at any given time. This paper focuses on the event-detection step needed to support such dependency learning by converting noisy continuous telemetry into binary indicators of parameter activity and KPI response. The central difficulty is that not every fluctuation in the data reflects a genuine control interaction, so the method must distinguish real parameter-outcome relationships from background variation. Because real AI-RAN traffic traces with known parameter-KPI ground truth are difficult to obtain, we introduce a synthetic closed-loop traffic generator with planted latent dependencies. We use this controlled telemetry to evaluate a machine-learning-based dependency recovery pipeline that formulates the conversion of continuous traces into binary event indicators as a significance-detection problem. Experimental evaluation shows that the proposed pipeline reliably recovers the latent dependency structure from noisy continuous traces when the signal is sufficiently separated from background variation, while highlighting threshold calibration as the key factor controlling event-detection quality. These results constitute a foundational step toward interpretable dependency learning for adaptive AI-RAN control systems.