5G and Net Neutrality

Industry observers have raised the possibility that European network neutrality regulations may obstruct the deployment of 5G. To assess those claims, this Chapter describes the key technologies likely to be incorporated into 5G, including millimeter wave band radios, massive multiple input/multiple output (MIMO), ultra-densification, multiple radio access technologies (multi-RAT), and support for device-to-device (D2D) and machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity. It then reviews the business models likely to be associated with 5G, including network management through biasing and blanking, an emphasis on business-to-business (B2B) communications, and network function virtualization/network slicing. It then lays out the network neutrality regulations created by the EU in 2015 as well as the nonbinding interpretive guidelines issued by the Body of Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communication (BEREC) in 2016 and assesses how they will be applied to 5G. Network neutrality’s impact on 5G will likely to be determined by the way that the exceptions for reasonable traffic management and specialised services are interpreted. A broad interpretation should accommodate network slicing and other new business models needed to support the deployment of 5G, while a narrow interpretation could restrict innovation and investment

Resource Allocation Methods in Vanets: A Systemic Literature Review

Autonomous vehicles take on a more prominent part of our everyday life activities. As the number of vehicles grows, so does the need for resources to ensure safe and consistent operations of these vehicles. Today’s networks and power grid are already used heavily just supplying resources for our day-to-day lives and leisure. The continuous increase in demand for such resources drives the need for more advanced resource management tools and techniques and more precise resource allocation schemes. This paper is a systematic literature review on the current methods and research trends for resource allocation in vehicular networks. The purpose of this review is to understand current research trends and motivations. Our hope is to provide a comparative analysis of resource allocation solutions, research trends and challenges in vehicular networks

IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting Special Issue on: 5G for Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting

[EN] The upcoming fifth-generation ( 5G ) of wireless communications technologies is expected to revolutionize society digital transformation thanks to its unprecedented wireless performance capabilities, providing speeds of several Gbps, very low latencies well below 5 ms, ultra-reliable transmissions with up to 99.999% success probability, while being able to handle a huge number of devices simultaneously connected to the network. The first version of the 3GPP specification (i.e., Release 15) has been recently completed and many 5G trials are under plan or carrying out worldwide, with the first commercial deployments happening in 2019."© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permissíon from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertisíng or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works."Gomez-Barquero, D.; Li, W.; Fuentes, M.; Xiong, J.; Araniti, G.; Akamine, C.; Wang, J. (2019). IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting Special Issue on: 5G for Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 65(2):351-355. https://doi.org/10.1109/TBC.2019.2914866S35135565

Efficient Resource Allocation of Latency Aware Slices for 5G Networks

It’s noticed that 5G mobile networks are considered to be an emerging technology that serve multiple users with varying types of applications having different quality of service (QoS) needs. Network slicing enables us to accommodate diverse services on the same infrastructure by using multiple virtual networks on the same physical infrastructure of the network. In this paper, a resource allocation framework to fairly share the network resources among different slices subject to delay sensitive requirements based on the priority factor of each slice to use the available radio resources efficiently is proposed. This priority factor depends on the weight of each slice and considering the quality of service of each one. The proposed framework ensures that each slice can share the high limits of allowable resources to achieve the least allowable latency as it is the most significant feature in 5G cellular networks. Packet loss and packet scheduling delay are used as performance metrics when comparing with other existing resource allocation algorithms. The simulation validated that our framework could serve the delay sensitive slices with the least allowable delay and a guaranteed throughput

Enabling Technology and Proof-of-Concept Evaluation for RAN Architectural Migration toward 5G and Beyond Mobile Systems

In this paper, we address two major issues regarding architectural migration of radio access network (RAN). Firstly, an overview and explicit interpretation of how different enabling technologies over generations are brought up and coordinated for migration from a distributed, to a centralized, and then to a virtualized RAN for 5G and beyond cellular; and secondly, the proof-of-concept (PoC) evaluation to understand the feasibility of these enabling technologies, are addressed. In doing so, we first give an overview of major enabling technologies and discuss their impact on RAN migration. We then evaluate the PoC of major enabling technologies proposed mainly for 5G CRAN, namely functional split options, TDM-PON systems, and virtualization techniques using a mobile CORD based prototype in LTE systems with ideal fronthauls. PoC experimental results with split options 2 and 5 are presented and compared using TCP and UDP traffic. Experimentally, it is shown that the throughput improvement is significant for TCP as compared to UDP with virtualized BBUs, which are about 30%-40% and 40%-45% higher in mean throughputs respectively in downlink and uplink with split 5 than that with split 2. Finally, we point out the major experimental limitations of PoC and future research directions

NB-IoT: A Network slice for Massive IoT

Network virtualisation is a concept that has been around for some time now, but the concept of network slicing is more recent and only started to be mentioned in the context of 5G. In essence, network slicing is a specific form of network virtualisation that enables sharing of physical resources by multiple logical network slices used to serve different applications and use cases. One such a use case would be to allocate network resources to small things, e.g. sensors and very low power consumption objects. To allow these small objects access to network resources or to a slice of such resource, a new technology known as NB-IoT is being developed by different industry players. This paper provides an overview of NB-IoT technology and Network Slicing concept and how this concept is applied to allocate network resources to very tiny objects and things. Finally, this paper will analyse the overall performance of NB-IoT in terms of power saving and battery life using eDRX saving mechanism

Chained Orchestrator Algorithm for RAN-Slicing Resource Management: A Contribution to Ultra-Reliable 6G Communications

The exponentially growing trend of Internet-connected devices and the development of new applications have led to an increase in demands and data rates flowing over cellular networks. If this continues to have the same tendency, the classification of 5G services must evolve to encompass emerging communications. The advent of the 6G Communications concept takes this into account and raises a new classification of services. In addition, an increase in network specifications was established. To meet these new requirements, enabling technologies are used to augment and manage Radio Access Network (RAN) resources. One of the most important mechanisms is the logical segmentation of the RAN, i.e. RAN-Slicing. In this study, we explored the problem of resource allocation in a RAN-Slicing environment for 6G ecosystems in depth, with a focus on network reliability. We also propose a chained orchestrator algorithm for dynamic resource management that includes estimation techniques, inter-slice resource sharing and intra-slice resource assignment. These mechanisms are applied to new types of services in the future generation of cellular networks to improve the network latency, capacity and reliability. The numerical results show a reduction in blocked connections of 38.46% for eURLLC type services, 21.87% for feMBB services, 12.5% for umMTC, 11.86% for ELDP and 11.76% for LDHMC.Spanish National Program of Research, Development, Innovation, under Grant RTI2018-102002-A-I00Junta de Extremadura under Project IB18003 and Grant GR2109

Security for networked smart healthcare systems: A systematic review

Background and Objectives Smart healthcare systems use technologies such as wearable devices, Internet of Medical Things and mobile internet technologies to dynamically access health information, connect patients to health professionals and health institutions, and to actively manage and respond intelligently to the medical ecosystem's needs. However, smart healthcare systems are affected by many challenges in their implementation and maintenance. Key among these are ensuring the security and privacy of patient health information. To address this challenge, several mitigation measures have been proposed and some have been implemented. Techniques that have been used include data encryption and biometric access. In addition, blockchain is an emerging security technology that is expected to address the security issues due to its distributed and decentralized architecture which is similar to that of smart healthcare systems. This study reviewed articles that identified security requirements and risks, proposed potential solutions, and explained the effectiveness of these solutions in addressing security problems in smart healthcare systems. Methods This review adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines and was framed using the Problem, Intervention, Comparator, and Outcome (PICO) approach to investigate and analyse the concepts of interest. However, the comparator is not applicable because this review focuses on the security measures available and in this case no comparable solutions were considered since the concept of smart healthcare systems is an emerging one and there are therefore, no existing security solutions that have been used before. The search strategy involved the identification of studies from several databases including the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAL), Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, Medline, Excerpta Medical database (EMBASE), Ebscohost and the Cochrane Library for articles that focused on the security for smart healthcare systems. The selection process involved removing duplicate studies, and excluding studies after reading the titles, abstracts, and full texts. Studies whose records could not be retrieved using a predefined selection criterion for inclusion and exclusion were excluded. The remaining articles were then screened for eligibility. A data extraction form was used to capture details of the screened studies after reading the full text. Of the searched databases, only three yielded results when the search strategy was applied, i.e., Scopus, Web of science and Medline, giving a total of 1742 articles. 436 duplicate studies were removed. Of the remaining articles, 801 were excluded after reading the title, after which 342 after were excluded after reading the abstract, leaving 163, of which 4 studies could not be retrieved. 159 articles were therefore screened for eligibility after reading the full text. Of these, 14 studies were included for detailed review using the formulated research questions and the PICO framework. Each of the 14 included articles presented a description of a smart healthcare system and identified the security requirements, risks and solutions to mitigate the risks. Each article also summarized the effectiveness of the proposed security solution. Results The key security requirements reported were data confidentiality, integrity and availability of data within the system, with authorisation and authentication used to support these key security requirements. The identified security risks include loss of data confidentiality due to eavesdropping in wireless communication mediums, authentication vulnerabilities in user devices and storage servers, data fabrication and message modification attacks during transmission as well as while the data is at rest in databases and other storage devices. The proposed mitigation measures included the use of biometric accessing devices; data encryption for protecting the confidentiality and integrity of data; blockchain technology to address confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data; network slicing techniques to provide isolation of patient health data in 5G mobile systems; and multi-factor authentication when accessing IoT devices, servers, and other components of the smart healthcare systems. The effectiveness of the proposed solutions was demonstrated through their ability to provide a high level of data security in smart healthcare systems. For example, proposed encryption algorithms demonstrated better energy efficiency, and improved operational speed; reduced computational overhead, better scalability, efficiency in data processing, and better ease of deployment. Conclusion This systematic review has shown that the use of blockchain technology, biometrics (fingerprints), data encryption techniques, multifactor authentication and network slicing in the case of 5G smart healthcare systems has the potential to alleviate possible security risks in smart healthcare systems. The benefits of these solutions include a high level of security and privacy for Electronic Health Records (EHRs) systems; improved speed of data transaction without the need for a decentralized third party, enabled by the use of blockchain. However, the proposed solutions do not address data protection in cases where an intruder has already accessed the system. This may be potential avenues for further research and inquiry