Using AI in wireless communication system for resource management and optimisation

The existence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be seen in everyday scenarios. Nowadays, the produced data by both machine and human is overwhelming in which exceeded the ability of humans to understand and digest to make decisions depending on that data. Thus, a hand of help from AI is needed to overcome such challenges. The 5G LTE communication system is a promising solution to provide a high user experience in terms of the provided speed, amount of data, and cost. However, and due to its complexity, the technology of LTE needs some improvement in terms of resource management and optimization. With the aid of AI, these two challenges can be overcome. In this paper, the AI represented by improved Q-learning algorithm with the Self-Organizing Network (SON) concept in LTE will be used to manage and optimize Handover (HO) parameters and process in the system. The ns-3 simulator result shows that AI managed to improve and optimize the LTE system performance

SDN Testbed for Evaluation of Large Exo-Atmospheric EMP Attacks

Large-scale nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks and natural disasters can cause extensive network failures across wide geographic regions. Although operational networks are designed to handle most single or dual faults, recent efforts have also focused on more capable multi-failure disaster recovery schemes. Concurrently, advances in software-defined networking (SDN) technologies have delivered highly-adaptable frameworks for implementing new and improved service provisioning and recovery paradigms in real-world settings. Hence this study leverages these new innovations to develop a robust disaster recovery (counter-EMP) framework for large backbone networks. Detailed findings from an experimental testbed study are also presented

CDLB: A Cross-Domain Load Balancing Mechanism for Software Defined Networks in Cloud Data Center

Currently, cross-domain load balancing is one of the core issues for software defined networks (SDN) in cloud data centre, which can optimise resource allocation. In this paper, we propose a cross-domain load balancing mechanism, CDLB, based on Extensive Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for SDN in cloud data centre. Different from poll method, XMPP based push model is introduced in the proposed scheme, which can avoid wasting network and computing resources in large-scale distributed network environment. The proposed scheme enables all the controllers in the flat distributed control plane to share the same consistent global-view network information in real time through XMPP and XMPP publish/subscribe extension. Thus, the problem of non-real time information synchronisation can be resolved and cross-domain load balancing can be realised. The simulations show the efficiency of the proposed scheme

Economic Viability of Software Defined Networking (SDN)

Economical and operational facets of networks drive the necessity for significant changes towards fundamentals of networking architectures. Recently, the momentum of programmable networking attempts illustrates the significance of economic aspects of network technologies. Software Defined Networking (SDN) has got the attention of researchers from both academia and industry as a means to decrease network costs and generate revenue for service providers due to features it promises in networking. In this article, we investigate how programmable network architectures, i.e. SDN technology, affect the network economics compared to traditional network architectures, i.e. MPLS technology. We define two metrics, Unit Service Cost Scalability and Cost-to-Service, to evaluate how SDN architecture performs compared to MPLS architecture. Also, we present mathematical models to calculate certain cost parts of a network. In addition, we compare different popular SDN control plane models, Centralized Control Plane (CCP), Distributed Control Plane (DCP), and Hierarchical Control Plane (HCP), to understand the economic impact of them with regards to the defined metrics. We use video traffic with different patterns for the comparison. This work aims at being a useful primer to providing insights regarding which technology and control plane model are appropriate for a specific service, i.e. video, for network owners to plan their investments

Implementation of Blockchain-Assisted Source Routing for Traffic Management in Software-Defined Networks

The control and infrastructure layers are split into Software-Defined Networks (SDNs). With the control and infrastructure planes split, new network applications may be developed with more simplicity and greater independence. On the other hand, the disadvantages of SDN create a slew of questions. In large-scale networks, such as Wide Area Networks (WANs) covering huge areas, more propagation delays substantially contribute to network convergence time. In addition, traditional SDN restricts network design flexibility due to the influence of controller location on network performance in large-scale networks. SDN-based source routing (SR) has emerged as a viable solution to the issues above, where the packet header field is used to specify a packet's route. This study presents an SR-based End-to-End (E2E) traffic management framework called SoRBlock. In SoRBlock, inter-domain routing uses blockchain technology, while intra-domain routing relies on the SR technique in SDNs. The simulation results show that the proposed SR-based SoRBlock framework outperforms the traditional hierarchical routing approach, HRA, in SDN networks by lowering path setup time (PST) and the number of controller messages. While the same (i.e., identical origin and target) service requests were used for all runs in the simulations, the proposed SoRBlock architecture presents almost three times less total PST between 45ms and 65ms than the HRA method between 130ms and 200ms due to the HRA approach's increased node-controller and controller-controller latencies. On the other hand, SoRBlock shows two times less PST ([75ms – 90ms]) than HRA ([150ms – 175ms]) when different service requests (i.e., different origin and target) were used. Concerning Controller Messages Processed (CMP), the HRA deals nearly 50% more controller messages between 7 and 15 than the SoRBlock between 3 and 10 when the number of domains varies, while the CMP in the SoRBlock scheme ([10 - 17]) approaches that in the HRA framework ([15 - 20]) regarding the ratio while the count of nodes rises in domains

Multi-domain Software Defined Networking: Research status and challenges

A key focus of the transition to next generation computer networking is to improve management of network services thereby enhancing traffic control and flows while simplifying higher-level functionality. Software-defined networking (SDN) is an approach that is being developed to facilitate next generation computer networking by decoupling the traffic control system from the underlying traffic transmission system. SDN offers programmability in network services by separating the control plane from the data plane within network devices and providing programmability for network services. Enhanced connectivity services across the global digital network require a multi-domain capability. This paper presents a review of the current research status in SDN and multi-domain SDN, focusing on OpenFlow protocol, and its future related challenges

Low-latency Networking: Where Latency Lurks and How to Tame It

While the current generation of mobile and fixed communication networks has been standardized for mobile broadband services, the next generation is driven by the vision of the Internet of Things and mission critical communication services requiring latency in the order of milliseconds or sub-milliseconds. However, these new stringent requirements have a large technical impact on the design of all layers of the communication protocol stack. The cross layer interactions are complex due to the multiple design principles and technologies that contribute to the layers' design and fundamental performance limitations. We will be able to develop low-latency networks only if we address the problem of these complex interactions from the new point of view of sub-milliseconds latency. In this article, we propose a holistic analysis and classification of the main design principles and enabling technologies that will make it possible to deploy low-latency wireless communication networks. We argue that these design principles and enabling technologies must be carefully orchestrated to meet the stringent requirements and to manage the inherent trade-offs between low latency and traditional performance metrics. We also review currently ongoing standardization activities in prominent standards associations, and discuss open problems for future research

Architectural approaches to a science network software-defined exchange

To interconnect research facilities across wide geographic areas, network operators deploy science networks, also referred to as Research and Education (R&E) networks. These networks allow experimenters to establish dedicated circuits between research facilities for transferring large amounts of data, by using advanced reservation systems. Intercontinental dedicated circuits typically require coordination between multiple administrative domains, which need to reach an agreement on a suitable advance reservation. To enhance provisioning capabilities of multi-domain advance reservations, we propose an architecture for end-to-end service orchestration in multi-domain science networks that leverages software-defined networking (SDN) and software-defined exchanges (SDX) for providing multi-path, multi-domain advance reservations. Our simulations show our orchestration architecture increases the reservation success rate. We evaluate our solution using GridFTP, one of the most popular tools for data transfers in the scientific community. Additionally, we propose an interface that domain scientists can use to request science network services from our orchestration framework. Furthermore, we propose a federated auditing framework (FAS) that allows an SDX to verify whether the configurations requested by a user are correctly enforced by participating SDN domains, whether the configurations requested are correctly removed after their expiration time, and whether configurations exist that are performing non-requested actions. We also propose an architecture for advance reservation access control using SDN and tokens.Ph.D

Virtualized dynamic resource allocation algorithm for the internet Diffserv domains

The Differentiated Services (DiffServ) architecture has been proposed for providing different levels of service to the Internet Protocol (IP) traffic. Current discussions in the DiffServ networks are focused on managing resources dynamically according to the traffic conditions of the DiffServ router (Per Hop Behaviour). Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) technologies have recently emerged in the research agenda to support researchers in managing network domains and to achieve better use of domain resources. This thesis introduces a new scheduling algorithm called “Dynamic Resource Allocation Management - Network Function Virtualization (DRAM-NFV)” to allocate the service classes resources in the proportional delay DiffServ domains. DRAM-NFV algorithm manages the resources among service classes within the edge routers of the DiffServ domains dynamically according to their traffic conditions and manages these resources between the DiffServ domains in the event of congestion based on their traffic conditions at the egress routers of the upstream domain and ingress routers of the downstream domain. The NFV executes the DRAM-NFV algorithm on a virtualized - Network as a Service (NaaS) - cloud infrastructure to manage the SDN controllers for the edge routers of the DiffServ domains through monitoring the traffic conditions in the service classes at the edge routers and reallocating the out-link resources of the edge routers among service classes. A number of test scenarios were conducted in this research in order to test the performance of the DRAM-NFV algorithm. The performance of DRAM-NFV algorithm is compared with the performance of the DWFQ algorithm by comparing the average End to End Delay for service classes traffic and links utilization. The DWFQ algorithm cannot manage resources between DiffServ domains but can manage the resources locally and dynamically for each DiffServ domain separately. The network simulator NS3 has been used to implement these test scenarios and to test the performance of the DRAM-NFV algorithm. The results show that with the DRAM-NFV algorithm, better balance for DiffServ domains resources can be achieved through monitoring the bandwidth hungry service class at the downstream domain and managing its resources at the upstream domains. As a consequence of this, the utilizations of some service classes traffic are improved and the average End to End Delay for overall traffic are also reduced. An example of the improvement that was achieved by managing resources between (upstream and downstream) DiffServ domains dynamically, in test scenario 3- Case Study 2, the average utilization for the highest priority class (SC1) for whole period of simulation at the destination end is increased by 0.175% and the average End to End Delay for overall traffic is also reduced by 800 msec. As a result of reducing the average End to End Delay for overall traffic and improving the utilizations of service classes traffic, the QoS of applications traffic can be improved during the congestion periods in DiffServ domains