Rust programming language as an alternative to C for RAN management applications

Abstract: Since the first official release of Rust 1.0 in 2015, the language has become one of the most well-liked programming languages among developers and has emerged as a competitor to other systems programming languages such as C and C++. Due to its unique ownership model, Rust is able to ensure memory safety, while also maintaining performance comparable to C and C++. An area that could potentially benefit from using Rust in its software is Radio Access Networks (RANs). The introduction of 5G mobile networks have lead to an increasing amount of base stations, making the network harder to manage. Therefore it is crucial that the software tasked with managing the network is of high quality. In this study, Rust will be compared to other systems programming languages and investigated as a potential alternative to C for use in RAN node management software. The two languages will be compared with regards to performance as well as safety. The results show that the execution speed of Rust applications are on par or better than their C counterpart, while the peak memory usage generally is higher in Rust. It was also shown that significant improvements in safety can be achieved, even in cases where the application is fairly straight forward.