Telecommunications Network Planning and Maintenance

Telecommunications network operators are on a constant challenge to provide new services which require ubiquitous broadband access. In an attempt to do so, they are faced with many problems such as the network coverage or providing the guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). Network planning is a multi-objective optimization problem which involves clustering the area of interest by minimizing a cost function which includes relevant parameters, such as installation cost, distance between user and base station, supported traffic, quality of received signal, etc. On the other hand, service assurance deals with the disorders that occur in hardware or software of the managed network. This paper presents a large number of multicriteria techniques that have been developed to deal with different kinds of problems regarding network planning and service assurance. The state of the art presented will help the reader to develop a broader understanding of the problems in the domain

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Can open-source projects (re-) shape the SDN/NFV-driven telecommunication market?

Telecom network operators face rapidly changing business needs. Due to their dependence on long product cycles they lack the ability to quickly respond to changing user demands. To spur innovation and stay competitive, network operators are investigating technological solutions with a proven track record in other application domains such as open source software projects. Open source software enables parties to learn, use, or contribute to technology from which they were previously excluded. OSS has reshaped many application areas including the landscape of operating systems and consumer software. The paradigmshift in telecommunication systems towards Software-Defined Networking introduces possibilities to benefit from open source projects. Implementing the control part of networks in software enables speedier adaption and innovation, and less dependencies on legacy protocols or algorithms hard-coded in the control part of network devices. The recently proposed concept of Network Function Virtualization pushes the softwarization of telecommunication functionalities even further down to the data plane. Within the NFV paradigm, functionality which was previously reserved for dedicated hardware implementations can now be implemented in software and deployed on generic Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) hardware. This paper provides an overview of existing open source initiatives for SDN/NFV-based network architectures, involving infrastructure to orchestration-related functionality. It situates them in a business process context and identifies the pros and cons for the market in general, as well as for individual actors

A Big Data Analyzer for Large Trace Logs

Current generation of Internet-based services are typically hosted on large data centers that take the form of warehouse-size structures housing tens of thousands of servers. Continued availability of a modern data center is the result of a complex orchestration among many internal and external actors including computing hardware, multiple layers of intricate software, networking and storage devices, electrical power and cooling plants. During the course of their operation, many of these components produce large amounts of data in the form of event and error logs that are essential not only for identifying and resolving problems but also for improving data center efficiency and management. Most of these activities would benefit significantly from data analytics techniques to exploit hidden statistical patterns and correlations that may be present in the data. The sheer volume of data to be analyzed makes uncovering these correlations and patterns a challenging task. This paper presents BiDAl, a prototype Java tool for log-data analysis that incorporates several Big Data technologies in order to simplify the task of extracting information from data traces produced by large clusters and server farms. BiDAl provides the user with several analysis languages (SQL, R and Hadoop MapReduce) and storage backends (HDFS and SQLite) that can be freely mixed and matched so that a custom tool for a specific task can be easily constructed. BiDAl has a modular architecture so that it can be extended with other backends and analysis languages in the future. In this paper we present the design of BiDAl and describe our experience using it to analyze publicly-available traces from Google data clusters, with the goal of building a realistic model of a complex data center.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure

The Role of R&D in Industrial Policy: Rise and fall of a research driven strategy for industrialisation

R&D has played a central role in Norwegian public industrial policy for only a relatively short period. Before 1963, there was little interest in linking technological research policy to a wider national industrial strategy. During the mid 1960s, attempts were made to link public research more closely to industrial development, and the state became more engaged in funding industrial R&D. During the 1980s, governments increased public industrial R&D funding substantially, and for a short period of time research became a core element in national industrial policy. However, from the early 1990s the situation again changed. Public research policy lost its significance in wider national industrial strategies.

Studies on the bit rate requirements for a HDTV format with 1920 timestimes 1080 pixel resolution, progressive scanning at 50 Hz frame rate targeting large flat panel displays

This paper considers the potential for an HDTV delivery format with 1920 times 1080 pixels progressive scanning and 50 frames per second in broadcast applications. The paper discusses the difficulties in characterizing the display to be assumed for reception. It elaborates on the required bit rate of the 1080p/50 format when critical content is coded in MPEG-4 H.264 AVC Part 10 and subjectively viewed on a large, flat panel display with 1920 times 1080 pixel resolution. The paper describes the initial subjective quality evaluations that have been made in these conditions. The results of these initial tests suggest that the required bit-rate for a 1080p/50 HDTV signal in emission could be kept equal or lower than that of 2nd generation HDTV formats, to achieve equal or better image qualit

Digitalization and Innovation

Developments in digital technology offer new opportunities to design new products and services. However, creating such digitalized products and services often creates new problems and challenges to firms that are trying to innovate. In this essay, we analyze the impact of digitalization of products and services on innovations. In particular, we argue that digitalization of products will lead to an emergence of new layered product architecture. The layered architecture is characterized by its generative design rules that connect loosely coupled heterogeneous layers. It is pregnant with the potential of unbounded innovations. The new product architecture will require organizations to adopt a new organizing logic of innovation that we dubbed as doubly distributed innovation network. Based on this analysis, we propose five key issues that future researchers need to explore.innovation, innovation, product architecture, design rules

Technology for large space systems: A special bibliography with indexes (supplement 03)

A bibliography containing 217 abstracts addressing the technology for large space systems is presented. State of the art and advanced concepts concerning interactive analysis and design, structural concepts, control systems, electronics, advanced materials, assembly concepts, propulsion, solar power satellite systems, and flight experiments are represented

Security Evaluation of Cyber-Physical Systems in Society- Critical Internet of Things

In this paper, we present evaluation of security awareness of developers and users of cyber-physical systems. Our study includes interviews, workshops, surveys and one practical evaluation. We conducted 15 interviews and conducted survey with 55 respondents coming primarily from industry. Furthermore, we performed practical evaluation of current state of practice for a society-critical application, a commercial vehicle, and reconfirmed our findings discussing an attack vector for an off-line societycritical facility. More work is necessary to increase usage of security strategies, available methods, processes and standards. The security information, currently often insufficient, should be provided in the user manuals of products and services to protect system users. We confirmed it lately when we conducted an additional survey of users, with users feeling as left out in their quest for own security and privacy. Finally, hardware-related security questions begin to come up on the agenda, with a general increase of interest and awareness of hardware contribution to the overall cyber-physical security. At the end of this paper we discuss possible countermeasures for dealing with threats in infrastructures, highlighting the role of authorities in this quest