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

Big Data Caching for Networking: Moving from Cloud to Edge

In order to cope with the relentless data tsunami in $5G$ wireless networks, current approaches such as acquiring new spectrum, deploying more base stations (BSs) and increasing nodes in mobile packet core networks are becoming ineffective in terms of scalability, cost and flexibility. In this regard, context-aware $5$G networks with edge/cloud computing and exploitation of \emph{big data} analytics can yield significant gains to mobile operators. In this article, proactive content caching in $5$G wireless networks is investigated in which a big data-enabled architecture is proposed. In this practical architecture, vast amount of data is harnessed for content popularity estimation and strategic contents are cached at the BSs to achieve higher users' satisfaction and backhaul offloading. To validate the proposed solution, we consider a real-world case study where several hours of mobile data traffic is collected from a major telecom operator in Turkey and a big data-enabled analysis is carried out leveraging tools from machine learning. Based on the available information and storage capacity, numerical studies show that several gains are achieved both in terms of users' satisfaction and backhaul offloading. For example, in the case of $16$ BSs with $30\%$ of content ratings and $13$ Gbyte of storage size ($78\%$ of total library size), proactive caching yields $100\%$ of users' satisfaction and offloads $98\%$ of the backhaul.Comment: accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Magazine, Special Issue on Communications, Caching, and Computing for Content-Centric Mobile Network

Will SDN be part of 5G?

For many, this is no longer a valid question and the case is considered settled with SDN/NFV (Software Defined Networking/Network Function Virtualization) providing the inevitable innovation enablers solving many outstanding management issues regarding 5G. However, given the monumental task of softwarization of radio access network (RAN) while 5G is just around the corner and some companies have started unveiling their 5G equipment already, the concern is very realistic that we may only see some point solutions involving SDN technology instead of a fully SDN-enabled RAN. This survey paper identifies all important obstacles in the way and looks at the state of the art of the relevant solutions. This survey is different from the previous surveys on SDN-based RAN as it focuses on the salient problems and discusses solutions proposed within and outside SDN literature. Our main focus is on fronthaul, backward compatibility, supposedly disruptive nature of SDN deployment, business cases and monetization of SDN related upgrades, latency of general purpose processors (GPP), and additional security vulnerabilities, softwarization brings along to the RAN. We have also provided a summary of the architectural developments in SDN-based RAN landscape as not all work can be covered under the focused issues. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on the state of the art of SDN-based RAN and clearly points out the gaps in the technology.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure

Evolution of Broadband Communication Networks: Architecture and Applications

With the rapid increase in users’ demand for flexibility and scalability of communication services, broadband communication networks are facing an ongoing challenge of providing various broadband services using a single communication architecture. This leads to the evolution of a challenging field of multiservice broadband network architectures. This chapter discusses the basic concepts associated with broadband communication network architectures with emphasis on provision of multiservice, and it also focuses on the evolution of broadband communication networks from the traditional architecture to the incorporation of virtualization services, that is, cloud computing. Another important aspect, which relates to the multiservice broadband network, is the “applications” which, as this chapter highlights, are a key-driving factor for the evolution of broadband communication networks. Moreover, this chapter also includes a discussion on New Zealand’s government initiatives to provide improved network coverage within the country

Report from the MPP Working Group to the NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science and Applications

NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA) gave a select group of scientists the opportunity to test and implement their computational algorithms on the Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) located at Goddard Space Flight Center, beginning in late 1985. One year later, the Working Group presented its report, which addressed the following: algorithms, programming languages, architecture, programming environments, the way theory relates, and performance measured. The findings point to a number of demonstrated computational techniques for which the MPP architecture is ideally suited. For example, besides executing much faster on the MPP than on conventional computers, systolic VLSI simulation (where distances are short), lattice simulation, neural network simulation, and image problems were found to be easier to program on the MPP's architecture than on a CYBER 205 or even a VAX. The report also makes technical recommendations covering all aspects of MPP use, and recommendations concerning the future of the MPP and machines based on similar architectures, expansion of the Working Group, and study of the role of future parallel processors for space station, EOS, and the Great Observatories era

Cellular automaton supercolliders

Gliders in one-dimensional cellular automata are compact groups of non-quiescent and non-ether patterns (ether represents a periodic background) translating along automaton lattice. They are cellular-automaton analogous of localizations or quasi-local collective excitations travelling in a spatially extended non-linear medium. They can be considered as binary strings or symbols travelling along a one-dimensional ring, interacting with each other and changing their states, or symbolic values, as a result of interactions. We analyse what types of interaction occur between gliders travelling on a cellular automaton `cyclotron' and build a catalog of the most common reactions. We demonstrate that collisions between gliders emulate the basic types of interaction that occur between localizations in non-linear media: fusion, elastic collision, and soliton-like collision. Computational outcomes of a swarm of gliders circling on a one-dimensional torus are analysed via implementation of cyclic tag systems