31 research outputs found
Software Defined Radio for NB-IoT
The next generation of mobile radio systems is expected to providing wireless connectivity for a wide range of new applications and services involving not only people but also machines and objects. Within few years, billions of low-cost and low-complexity devices and sensors will be connected to the Internet, forming a converged ecosystem called Internet of Things
(IoT). As a result, in 2016, 3GPP standardizes NB-IoT, the new narrowband radio technology developed for the IoT market. Massive connectivity, reduced UE complexity, coverage
extension and deployment flexibility are the targets for this new radio interface, which also ensures harmonious coexistence with current GSM, GPRS and LTE systems. In parallel, the rise of open-source software combined with Software Defined Radio (SDR) solutions has completely changed radio systems engineering in the late years. This thesis focuses on developing the NB-IoT’s protocol stack on the EURECOM’s open-source software platform OpenAirInterface (OAI). First part of this work aims to implement NB-IoT’s Radio Resource Control functionalities on OAI. After an introduction to the platform architecture, a new RRC layer code structure and related interfaces are defined, along with a new approach for Signalling Radio Bearers management. A deep analysis on System Information scheduling is conducted and a subframe-based transmission scheme is then proposed. The last part of this thesis addresses the implementation of a multi-vendor platform interface based on Small Cell Forum’s Functional Application Platform Interface (FAPI) standard. A configurable and dynamically loadable Interface Module (IF-Module) is designed between OAI’s MAC and PHY layers. Primitives and related code structures are presented as well as corresponding Data
and Configuration’s procedures. Finally, the convergence of both NB-IoT and FAPI requirements lead to re-design PHY layer mechanisms for which a downlink transmission scheme is
proposed
Terminal LTE flexível
Mstrado em Engenharia Eletrónica e TelecomunicaçõesAs redes móveis estão em constante evolução. A geração atual (4G) de
redes celulares de banda larga e representada pelo standard Long Term
Evolution (LTE), definido pela 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
Existe uma elevada procura/uso da rede LTE, com um aumento exponencial
do número de dispositivos móveis a requerer uma ligação à Internet de alto
débito. Isto pode conduzir à sobrelotação do espetro, levando a que o sinal
tenha que ser reforçado e a cobertura melhorada em locais específicos, tal
como em grandes conferências, festivais e eventos desportivos. Por outro
lado, seria uma vantagem importante se os utilizadores pudessem continuar
a usar os seus equipamentos e terminais em situações onde o acesso a redes
4G é inexistente, tais como a bordo de um navio, eventos esporádicos em
localizações remotas ou em cenários de catástrofe, em que as infraestruturas
que permitem as telecomunicações foram danificadas e a cobertura
temporária de rede pode ser decisiva em processos de salvamento. Assim
sendo, existe uma motivação clara por trás do desenvolvimento de uma
infraestrutura celular totalmente reconfigurável e que preencha as características mencionadas anteriormente.
Uma possível abordagem consiste numa plataforma de rádio definido por
software (SDR), de código aberto, que implementa o standard LTE e corre
em processadores de uso geral (GPPs), tornando possível construir uma rede
completa investindo somente em hardware - computadores e front-ends de
radiofrequência (RF). Após comparação e análise de várias plataformas LTE
de código aberto foi selecionado o OpenAirInterface (OAI) da EURECOM,
que disponibiliza uma implementação compatível com a Release 8.6 da
3GPP (com parte das funcionalidades da Release 10).
O principal objectivo desta dissertação é a implementação de um User
Equipment (UE) flexível, usando plataformas SDR de código aberto que corram
num computador de placa única (SBC) compacto e de baixa potência,
integrado com um front-end de RF - Universal Software Radio Peripheral
(USRP). A transmissão de dados em tempo real usando os modos de duplexagem
Time Division Duplex (TDD) e Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) é suportada e a reconfiguração de certos parâmetros é permitida, nomeadamente
a frequência portadora, a largura de banda e o número de Resource
Blocks (RBs) usados. Além disso, é possível partilhar os dados móveis LTE
com utilizadores que estejam próximos, semelhante ao que acontece com
um hotspot de Wi-Fi. O processo de implementação é descrito, incluindo
todos os passos necessários para o seu desenvolvimento, englobando o port
do UE de um computador para um SBC. Finalmente, a performance da rede
é analisada, discutindo os valores de débitos obtidos.Mobile networks are constantly evolving. 4G is the current generation of
broadband cellular network technology and is represented by the Long Term
Evolution (LTE) standard, de ned by 3rd Generation Partnership Project
(3GPP). There's a high demand for LTE at the moment, with the number
of mobile devices requiring an high-speed Internet connection increasing exponentially.
This may overcrowd the spectrum on the existing deployments
and the signal needs to be reinforced and coverage improved in speci c sites,
such as large conferences, festivals and sport events. On the other hand,
it would be an important advantage if users could continue to use their
equipment and terminals in situations where cellular networks aren't usually
available, such as on board of a cruise ship, sporadic events in remote
locations, or in catastrophe scenarios in which the telecommunication infrastructure
was damaged and the rapid deployment of a temporary network
can save lives. In all of these situations, the availability of
exible and easily
deployable cellular base stations and user terminals operating on standard
or custom bands would be very desirable. Thus, there is a clear motivation
for the development of a fully recon gurable cellular infrastructure solution
that ful lls these requirements.
A possible approach is an open-source, low-cost and low maintenance
Software-De ned Radio (SDR) software platform that implements the LTE
standard and runs on General Purpose Processors (GPPs), making it possible
to build an entire network while only spending money on the hardware
itself - computers and Radio-Frequency (RF) front-ends. After comparison
and analysis of several open-source LTE SDR platforms, the EURECOM's
OpenAirInterface (OAI) was chosen, providing a 3GPP standard-compliant
implementation of Release 8.6 (with a subset of Release 10 functionalities).
The main goal of this dissertation is the implementation of a
exible opensource
LTE User Equipment (UE) software radio platform on a compact
and low-power Single Board Computer (SBC) device, integrated with an
RF hardware front-end - Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). It
supports real-time Time Division Duplex (TDD) and Frequency Division
Duplex (FDD) LTE modes and the recon guration of several parameters,
namely the carrier frequency, bandwidth and the number of LTE Resource
Blocks (RB) used. It can also share its LTE mobile data with nearby users,
similarly to a Wi-Fi hotspot. The implementation is described through
its several developing steps, including the porting of the UE from a regular
computer to a SBC. The performance of the network is then analysed based
on measured results of throughput
Cellular access multi-tenancy through small-cell virtualization and common RF front-end sharing
Mobile traffic demand is expected to grow as much as eight-fold in the coming next five years, putting strain in current wireless infrastructures. Meanwhile the
diversity of traffic and standards may explode as well. One of the most common means for matching these mounting requirements is through network densification,
essentially increasing the density of deployment of operators’ base stations in many small cells and handling timing critical traffic at the edge. In this paper we
take a step in that direction by implementing a virtualized small cell base station consisting of multiple, isolated LTE PHY stacks running concurrently on top of a
hypervisor deployed on a cheap, off-the-shelf x86 server and a shared radio head. In particular, we show that it is possible to run multiple virtualized base stations
while achieving throughput equal or close to the theoretical maximum. In contrast to C-RAN (Cloud/Centralized Radio Access Network), our virtualized small cell
base station has full stack at the edge so that a low latency high throughput front-haul, which is necessary in C-RAN architecture, is not needed. This approach brings
all the flexibility and configurability (from network management point of view) that a software based implementation provides while the transparent architecture
enables the possibility of multiple standards sharing the same radio infrastructure.The projects leading to this paper has received funding from the
European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
under grant agreement no. 67156 (Flex5Gware), no. 732174 (ORCA
project) and no. 761536 (5G-Transformer)
Design, implementation and experimental evaluation of a network-slicing aware mobile protocol stack
Mención Internacional en el título de doctorWith the arrival of new generation mobile networks, we currently observe a paradigm
shift, where monolithic network functions running on dedicated hardware are now
implemented as software pieces that can be virtualized on general purpose hardware
platforms. This paradigm shift stands on the softwarization of network functions and
the adoption of virtualization techniques. Network Function Virtualization (NFV)
comprises softwarization of network elements and virtualization of these components.
It brings multiple advantages: (i) Flexibility, allowing an easy management of the virtual
network functions (VNFs) (deploy, start, stop or update); (ii) efficiency, resources can be
adequately consumed due to the increased flexibility of the network infrastructure; and
(iii) reduced costs, due to the ability of sharing hardware resources. To this end, multiple
challenges must be addressed to effectively leverage of all these benefits.
Network Function Virtualization envisioned the concept of virtual network, resulting in
a key enabler of 5G networks flexibility, Network Slicing. This new paradigm represents
a new way to operate mobile networks where the underlying infrastructure is "sliced"
into logically separated networks that can be customized to the specific needs of the
tenant. This approach also enables the ability of instantiate VNFs at different locations
of the infrastructure, choosing their optimal placement based on parameters such as the
requirements of the service traversing the slice or the available resources. This decision
process is called orchestration and involves all the VNFs withing the same network slice.
The orchestrator is the entity in charge of managing network slices. Hands-on experiments
on network slicing are essential to understand its benefits and limits, and to validate the
design and deployment choices. While some network slicing prototypes have been built
for Radio Access Networks (RANs), leveraging on the wide availability of radio hardware
and open-source software, there is no currently open-source suite for end-to-end network
slicing available to the research community. Similarly, orchestration mechanisms must
be evaluated as well to properly validate theoretical solutions addressing diverse aspects
such as resource assignment or service composition.
This thesis contributes on the study of the mobile networks evolution regarding its
softwarization and cloudification. We identify software patterns for network function
virtualization, including the definition of a novel mobile architecture that squeezes the virtualization architecture by splitting functionality in atomic functions.
Then, we effectively design, implement and evaluate of an open-source network
slicing implementation. Our results show a per-slice customization without paying the
price in terms of performance, also providing a slicing implementation to the research
community. Moreover, we propose a framework to flexibly re-orchestrate a virtualized
network, allowing on-the-fly re-orchestration without disrupting ongoing services. This
framework can greatly improve performance under changing conditions. We evaluate
the resulting performance in a realistic network slicing setup, showing the feasibility and
advantages of flexible re-orchestration.
Lastly and following the required re-design of network functions envisioned during
the study of the evolution of mobile networks, we present a novel pipeline architecture
specifically engineered for 4G/5G Physical Layers virtualized over clouds. The proposed
design follows two objectives, resiliency upon unpredictable computing and parallelization
to increase efficiency in multi-core clouds. To this end, we employ techniques such as tight
deadline control, jitter-absorbing buffers, predictive Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request,
and congestion control. Our experimental results show that our cloud-native approach
attains > 95% of the theoretical spectrum efficiency in hostile environments where stateof-
the-art architectures collapse.This work has been supported by IMDEA Networks InstitutePrograma de Doctorado en Ingeniería Telemática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Francisco Valera Pintor.- Secretario: Vincenzo Sciancalepore.- Vocal: Xenofon Fouka
Nuberu : Reliable RAN Virtualization in Shared Platforms
RAN virtualization will become a key technology for the last mile of next-generation mobile networks driven by initiatives such as the O-RAN alliance. However, due to the computing fluctuations inherent to wireless dynamics and resource contention in shared computing infrastructure, the price to migrate from dedicated to shared platforms may be too high. Indeed, we show in this paper that the baseline architecture of a base station¿s distributed unit (DU) collapses upon moments of deficit in computing capacity. Recent solutions to accelerate some signal processing tasks certainly help but do not tackle the core problem: a DU pipeline that requires predictable computing to provide carrier-grade reliability. We present Nuberu, a novel pipeline architecture for 4G/5G DUs specifically engineered for non-deterministic computing platforms. Our design has one key objective to attain reliability: to guarantee a minimum set of signals that preserve synchronization between the DU and its users during computing capacity shortages and, provided this, maximize network throughput. To this end, we use techniques such as tight deadline control, jitter-absorbing buffers, predictive HARQ, and congestion control. Using an experimental prototype, we show that Nuberu attains 95% of the theoretical spectrum efficiency in hostile environments, where state-of-art approaches lose connectivity, and at least 80% resource savingsWe would like to thank our shepherd and reviewers for their valuable comments and feedback. This work has been supported by the European Commission through Grant No. 101017109 (DAEMON project) and Grant No. 101015956 (Hexa-X project), and the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya
Development and Performance Evaluation of Network Function Virtualization Services in 5G Multi-Access Edge Computing
L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen