Flexible handover solution for vehicular ad-hoc networks based on software defined networking and fog computing

Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANET) suffer from dynamic network environment and topological instability that caused by high mobility feature and varying vehicles density. Emerging 5G mobile technologies offer new opportunities to design improved VANET architecture for future intelligent transportation system. However, current software defined networking (SDN) based handover schemes face poor handover performance in VANET environment with notable issues in connection establishment and ongoing communication sessions. These poor connectivity and inflexibility challenges appear at high vehicles speed and high data rate services. Therefore, this paper proposes a flexible handover solution for VANET networks by integrating SDN and fog computing (FC) technologies. The SDN provides global knowledge, programmability and intelligence functions for simplified and efficient network operation and management. FC, on the other hand, alleviates the core network pressure by providing real time computation and transmission functionalities at edge network to maintain the demands of delay sensitive applications. The proposed solution overcomes frequent handover challenges and reduces the processing overhead at core network. Moreover, the simulation evaluation shows significant handover performance improvement of the proposed solution compared to current SDN based schemes, especially in terms of handover latency and packet loss ratio under various simulation environments

Service Provisioning in Edge-Cloud Continuum Emerging Applications for Mobile Devices

Disruptive applications for mobile devices can be enhanced by Edge computing facilities. In this context, Edge Computing (EC) is a proposed architecture to meet the mobility requirements imposed by these applications in a wide range of domains, such as the Internet of Things, Immersive Media, and Connected and Autonomous Vehicles. EC architecture aims to introduce computing capabilities in the path between the user and the Cloud to execute tasks closer to where they are consumed, thus mitigating issues related to latency, context awareness, and mobility support. In this survey, we describe which are the leading technologies to support the deployment of EC infrastructure. Thereafter, we discuss the applications that can take advantage of EC and how they were proposed in the literature. Finally, after examining enabling technologies and related applications, we identify some open challenges to fully achieve the potential of EC, and also research opportunities on upcoming paradigms for service provisioning. This survey is a guide to comprehend the recent advances on the provisioning of mobile applications, as well as foresee the expected next stages of evolution for these applications

Optimized communication in 5G-driven vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs)

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Next generation Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks will be dominated by heterogeneous data and additional massive diffusion of Internet of Things (IoT) traffic. To meet these objectives, a radical rethink of current VANET architecture is essentially required by turning it into a more flexible and programmable fabric. This research endeavours to provide next generation 5G-driven VANET architecture, with solutions for efficient and optimized communication. This thesis first introduces an innovative 5G-driven VANET architecture to provide flexible network management, control and high resource utilization, leveraging the concepts of SDN, C-RAN and Fog Computing. A new Fog Computing (FC) framework (comprising of zones and clusters) is proposed at the edge of the network to support vehicles and end users with prompt responses, and to avoid frequent handovers between vehicles and RSUs. The key results are improved throughput, reduced transmission delay and minimized control overhead on the controller. Furthermore, a novel Evolutionary Game Theoretic (EGT) framework is presented to achieve stable and optimized clustering in the Fog Computing Framework. The solution of the game is presented to be an evolutionary equilibrium. The equilibrium point is also proven analytically and the existence of an evolutionary equilibrium is also verified using the Lyapunov function. The results are analysed for different number of clusters for different populations and speeds. An optimal cost is suggested that defines an optimum clustering thus reducing an overhead of frequent cluster reformation. In addition, this thesis provides a Hybrid-Fuzzy Logic guided Genetic Algorithm (H-FLGA) approach for the SDN controller, to support diversified quality of service (QoS) demands and dynamic resource requirements of mobile users in 5G-driven VANET architecture. The proposed Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) is used to optimize weights of multi-objectives, depending on the Type of Service (ToS) requirements of customers. The results proved that the proposed hybrid H-FLGA performs better than GA. The results improve spectral efficiency and optimizes connections while minimizing E2E delay and further facilitates the service providers to implement a more flexible customer-centric network infrastructure. Furthermore, an end-to-end (E2E) network slicing framework is proposed to support customized services by managing the cooperation of both the RAN and Core Network (CN), using SDN, NFV and Edge Computing technologies. A dynamic radio resource slice optimization scheme is proposed to slice the overall bandwidth resources for mission critical and non-mission critical demands. The results meet ultra reliability and E2E latency of mission-critical services

A City-Scale ITS-G5 Network for Next-Generation Intelligent Transportation Systems: Design Insights and Challenges

As we move towards autonomous vehicles, a reliable Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication framework becomes of paramount importance. In this paper we present the development and the performance evaluation of a real-world vehicular networking testbed. Our testbed, deployed in the heart of the City of Bristol, UK, is able to exchange sensor data in a V2X manner. We will describe the testbed architecture and its operational modes. Then, we will provide some insight pertaining the firmware operating on the network devices. The system performance has been evaluated under a series of large-scale field trials, which have proven how our solution represents a low-cost high-quality framework for V2X communications. Our system managed to achieve high packet delivery ratios under different scenarios (urban, rural, highway) and for different locations around the city. We have also identified the instability of the packet transmission rate while using single-core devices, and we present some future directions that will address that.Comment: Accepted for publication to AdHoc-Now 201