Mobility-aware QoS assurance in software-defined radio access networks: an analytical study

Software-defined networking (SDN) has gained a tremendous attention in the recent years, both in academia and industry. This revolutionary networking paradigm is an attempt to bring the advances in computer science and software engineering into the information and communications technology (ICT) domain. The aim of these efforts is to pave the way for completely programmable networks and control-data plane separation. Recent studies on feasibility and applicability of SDN concepts in cellular networks show very promising results and this trend will most likely continue in near future. In this work, we study the benefits of SDN on the radio resource management (RRM) of future-generation cellular networks. Our considered cellular network architecture is in line with the recently proposed Long-Term Evolution (LTE) Release 12 concepts, such as user/control plane split, heterogeneous networks (HetNets) environment, and network densification through deployment of small cells. In particular, the aim of our RRM scheme is to enable the macro base station (BS) to efficiently allocate radio resources for small cell BSs in order to assure quality-of-service (QoS) of moving users/vehicles during handovers. We develop an approximate, but very time- and space-efficient algorithm for radio resource allocation within a HetNet. Experiments on commodity hardware show algorithm running times in the order of a few seconds, thus making it suitable even in cases of fast moving users/vehicles. We also confirm a good accuracy of our proposed algorithm by means of computer simulations

Wireless Communications in the Era of Big Data

The rapidly growing wave of wireless data service is pushing against the boundary of our communication network's processing power. The pervasive and exponentially increasing data traffic present imminent challenges to all the aspects of the wireless system design, such as spectrum efficiency, computing capabilities and fronthaul/backhaul link capacity. In this article, we discuss the challenges and opportunities in the design of scalable wireless systems to embrace such a "bigdata" era. On one hand, we review the state-of-the-art networking architectures and signal processing techniques adaptable for managing the bigdata traffic in wireless networks. On the other hand, instead of viewing mobile bigdata as a unwanted burden, we introduce methods to capitalize from the vast data traffic, for building a bigdata-aware wireless network with better wireless service quality and new mobile applications. We highlight several promising future research directions for wireless communications in the mobile bigdata era.Comment: This article is accepted and to appear in IEEE Communications Magazin

An analytical approach for performance analysis of handoffs in the next generation integrated cellular networks and WLANs

The main feature of the next generation wireless communication systems is the ability to establish ubiquitous and seamless access to various radio access technologies (RATs) and standards. For this reason the integration of cellular and wireless local area networks (WLANs) and performance evaluation of the interaction between these technologies is now an important research area. Modelling such systems for performance evaluation is essential to improve the architecture according to the quality ofbservice (QoS) requirements and performance characteristics. In this paper, an analytical model for performance evaluation of an integrated cellular network and a WLAN is considered. WLAN is deployed inside of the cellular network to support handoffs between cellular networks with higher bandwidth. Such an integrated system can be modelled as a two stage open network. An analytical model is proposed together with an exact solution technique in order to evaluate the performance of an integrated system consisting of a cellular network and a WLAN. A two stage queuing system is considered for this purpose. Numerical results are presented for mean queue length values of cellular system as well as the WLAN

An Optimum Vertical Handoff Decision Algorithm for UMTS-WLAN

The integration of diverse but complementary cellular and wireless technologies in the next generation of wireless communication systems requires the design of intelligent vertical handoff decision algorithms to enable mobile users to seamlessly switch network access and experience uninterrupted service continuity anywhere and anytime. This paper provides an adaptive multiple attribute vertical handoff decision algorithm that enables wireless access network selection at a mobile terminal using fuzzy logic concepts and a genetic algorithm. A performance study using the integration of wireless wide area networks (WWANs) and wireless metropolitan area networks (WMANs) as an example shows that our proposed vertical handoff decision algorithm is able to determine when a handoff is required, and selects the best access network that is optimized to network conditions, quality of service requirements, mobile terminal conditions, user preferences, and service cost

Context-aware multi-attribute decision multi - attribute decision making for radio access technology selection in ultra dense network

Ultra Dense Network (UDN) is the extreme densification of heterogeneous Radio Access Technology (RAT) that is deployed closely in coordinated or uncoordinated manner. The densification of RAT forms an overlapping zone of signal coverage leading to the frequent service handovers among the RAT, thus degrading overall system performance. The current RAT selection approach is biased towards network-centric criteria pertaining to signal strength. However, the paradigm shift from network-centric to user-centric approach necessitates a multi-criteria selection process, with methodology relating to both network and user preferences in the context of future generation networks. Hence, an effective selection approach is required to avoid unnecessary handovers in RAT. The main aim of this study is to propose the Context-aware Multiattribute decision making for RAT (CMRAT) selection for investigating the need to choose a new RAT and further determine the best amongst the available methods. The CMRAT consists of two mechanisms, namely the Context-aware Analytical Hierarchy Process (CAHP) and Context-aware Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (CTOPSIS). The CAHP mechanism measures the need to switch from the current RAT, while CTOPSIS aids in decision making to choose the best target RAT. A series of experimental studies were conducted to validate the effectiveness of CMRAT for achieving improved system performance. The investigation utilises shopping mall and urban dense network scenarios to evaluate the performance of RAT selection through simulation. The findings demonstrated that the CMRAT approach reduces delay and the number of handovers leading to an improvement of throughput and packet delivery ratio when compared to that of the commonly used A2A4-RSRQ approach. The CMRAT approach is effective in the RAT selection within UDN environment, thus supporting heterogeneous RAT deployment in future 5G networks. With context-aware selection, the user-centric feature is also emphasized

Efficient radio resource management in next generation wireless networks

The current decade has witnessed a phenomenal growth in mobile wireless communication networks and subscribers. In 2015, mobile wireless devices and connections were reported to have grown to about 7.9 billion, exceeding human population. The explosive growth in mobile wireless communication network subscribers has created a huge demand for wireless network capacity, ubiquitous wireless network coverage, and enhanced Quality of Service (QoS). These demands have led to several challenging problems for wireless communication networks operators and designers. The Next Generation Wireless Networks (NGWNs) will support high mobility communications, such as communication in high-speed rails. Mobile users in such high mobility environment demand reliable QoS, however, such users are plagued with a poor signal-tonoise ratio, due to the high vehicular penetration loss, increased transmission outage and handover information overhead, leading to poor QoS provisioning for the networks' mobile users. Providing a reliable QoS for high mobility users remains one of the unique challenges for NGWNs. The increased wireless network capacity and coverage of NGWNs means that mobile communication users at the cell-edge should have enhanced network performance. However, due to path loss (path attenuation), interference, and radio background noise, mobile communication users at the cell-edge can experience relatively poor transmission channel qualities and subsequently forced to transmit at a low bit transmission rate, even when the wireless communication networks can support high bit transmission rate. Furthermore, the NGWNs are envisioned to be Heterogeneous Wireless Networks (HWNs). The NGWNs are going to be the integration platform of diverse homogeneous wireless communication networks for a convergent wireless communication network. The HWNs support single and multiple calls (group calls), simultaneously. Decision making is an integral core of radio resource management. One crucial decision making in HWNs is network selection. Network selection addresses the problem of how to select the best available access network for a given network user connection. For the integrated platform of HWNs to be truly seamless and efficient, a robust and stable wireless access network selection algorithm is needed. To meet these challenges for the different mobile wireless communication network users, the NGWNs will have to provide a great leap in wireless network capacity, coverage, QoS, and radio resource utilization. Moving wireless communication networks (mobile hotspots) have been proposed as a solution to providing reliable QoS to high mobility users. In this thesis, an Adaptive Thinning Mobility Aware (ATMA) Call Admission Control (CAC) algorithm for improving the QoS and radio resource utilization of the mobile hotspot networks, which are of critical importance for communicating nodes in moving wireless networks is proposed. The performance of proposed ATMA CAC scheme is investigated and compare it with the traditional CAC scheme. The ATMA scheme exploits the mobility events in the highspeed mobility communication environment and the calls (new and handoff calls) generation pattern to enhance the QoS (new call blocking and handoff call dropping probabilities) of the mobile users. The numbers of new and handoff calls in wireless communication networks are dynamic random processes that can be effectively modeled by the Continuous Furthermore, the NGWNs are envisioned to be Heterogeneous Wireless Networks (HWNs). The NGWNs are going to be the integration platform of diverse homogeneous wireless communication networks for a convergent wireless communication network. The HWNs support single and multiple calls (group calls), simultaneously. Decision making is an integral core of radio resource management. One crucial decision making in HWNs is network selection. Network selection addresses the problem of how to select the best available access network for a given network user connection. For the integrated platform of HWNs to be truly seamless and efficient, a robust and stable wireless access network selection algorithm is needed. To meet these challenges for the different mobile wireless communication network users, the NGWNs will have to provide a great leap in wireless network capacity, coverage, QoS, and radio resource utilization. Moving wireless communication networks (mobile hotspots) have been proposed as a solution to providing reliable QoS to high mobility users. In this thesis, an Adaptive Thinning Mobility Aware (ATMA) Call Admission Control (CAC) algorithm for improving the QoS and radio resource utilization of the mobile hotspot networks, which are of critical importance for communicating nodes in moving wireless networks is proposed

An Overview of Vertical Handoff Decision Algorithms in NGWNs and a new Scheme for Providing Optimized Performance in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Because the increasingly development and use of wireless networks and mobile technologies, was implemented the idea that users of mobile terminals must have access in different wireless networks simultaneously. Therefore one of the main interest points of Next Generation Wireless Networks (NGWNs), refers to the ability to support wireless network access equipment to ensure a high rate of services between different wireless networks. To solve these problems it was necessary to have decision algorithms to decide for each user of mobile terminal, which is the best network at some point, for a service or a specific application that the user needs. Therefore to make these things, different algorithms use the vertical handoff technique. Below are presented a series of algorithms based on vertical handoff technique with a classification of the different existing vertical handoff decision strategies, which tries to solve these issues of wireless network selection at a given time for a specific application of an user. Based on our synthesis on vertical handoff decision strategies given below, we build our strategy based on solutions presented below, taking the most interesting aspect of each one.Vertical Handoff, Genetic Algorithms, Fuzzy Logic, Neural Networks, AHP