Kairos: Energy-Efficient Radio Unit Control for O-RAN via Advanced Sleep Modes

Abstract: The high energy footprint of 5G base stations, particularly the radio units (RUs), poses a significant environmental and economic challenge. We introduce Kairos, a novel approach to maximize the energy-saving potential of O-RAN's Advanced Sleep Modes (ASMs). Unlike state-of-the-art solutions, which often rely on complex ASM selection algorithms unsuitable for time-constrained base stations and fail to guarantee stringent QoS demands, Kairos offers a simple yet effective joint ASM selection and radio scheduling policy capable of real-time operation. This policy is then optimized using a data-driven algorithm within an xApp, which enables several key innovations: (i) a dimensionality-invariant encoder to handle variable input sizes (e.g., time-varying network slices), (ii) distributional critics to accurately model QoS metrics and ensure constraint satisfaction, and (iii) a single-actor-multiple-critic architecture to effectively manage multiple constraints. Through experimental analysis on a commercial RU and trace-driven simulations, we demonstrate Kairos's potential to achieve energy reductions ranging between 15% and 72% while meeting QoS requirements, offering a practical solution for cost- and energy-efficient 5G networks.