State management in coreless mobile networks

The number of mobile Internet users has skyrocketed and with the advent of the Internet of things we are reaching the limits of the current telecommunications standard 4G. The improvements and goals set for the next standard, 5G, are not trivial and research is in progress to reach them. Improvements across all involved technology fields is needed. In this thesis we present a novel mobile network architecture-coreless mobile networks- and develop state management concepts, which we base on the analysis of the current 4G/LTE architecture. The coreless mobile network focuses on the redesign of the state management in mobile networks, more precisely, removal of state from 4G core network entities into an eternal ubiquitous data store. The architecture follows trends in current research, particularly network function virtualisation, software defined networking and mobile edge computing. The new network architecture requires a data storage solution that is capable of functioning as the state store in the mobile network environment. Thus, we present an overview of promising data stores and evaluate their suitability. Further in this thesis we present the results of benchmarking the Apache Geode data store, as an example of a state management solution that could be leveraged in realising the coreless mobile network architecture. We discovered that the Apache Geode data store is, depending on configuration, capable of delivering the data model, consistency, high availability, scaling, throughput and latency that are required in our proposed architecture. ACM Computing Classification System (CCS): - Information systems ~ Distributed storage - Information systems ~ Hierarchical storage management - Networks ~ Middle boxes / network appliances - Networks ~ Mobile network

MIGRATE: mobile device virtualisation through state transfer

Delegation of processing tasks to the network has moved from cloud-based schemes to edge computing solutions where nearby servers process requests in a timely manner. Virtualisation technologies have recently given data cloud and network providers the required flexibility to offer such on-demand resources. However, the maintenance of close computing resources presents a challenge when the served devices are on the move. In this case, if processing continuity is desired, a transference of processing resources and task state should be committed to maintain the service to end devices. The solution here presented, MIGRATE, proposes the concept of virtual mobile devices (vMDs) implemented as Virtual Functions (VxF) and acting as virtual representatives of physical processing devices. vMDs are instantiated at the edge of the access network, following a Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) approach, and move across different virtualisation domains. MIGRATE provides seamless and efficient transference of these software entities to follow the real location of mobile devices and continue supporting their physical counterparts. Software Defined Networks and Management and Operation functions are exploited to “migrate” vMDs to new virtualisation domains by forwarding data flows to the former domain until the new one is prepared, while a distributed data base avoids the transference of data. The solution has been deployed in a reference vehicular scenario at the Institute of Telecommunications Aveiro premises within the 5GINFIRE European project. In particular, the system has been evaluated under different virtualisation domains to study the operation of the migration approach in a vehicular monitoring scenario. The results validate the system from the application viewpoint with a Web monitoring tool, and the migration of the digital twin provided as VxF is analysed attending to the modification of data flows, indicating a seamless transition between virtualisation domains in a timely manner.publishe

Enhancing Job Scheduling of an Atmospheric Intensive Data Application

Nowadays, e-Science applications involve great deal of data to have more accurate analysis. One of its application domains is the Radio Occultation which manages satellite data. Grid Processing Management is a physical infrastructure geographically distributed based on Grid Computing, that is implemented for the overall processing Radio Occultation analysis. After a brief description of algorithms adopted to characterize atmospheric profiles, the paper presents an improvement of job scheduling in order to decrease processing time and optimize resource utilization. Extension of grid computing capacity is implemented by virtual machines in existing physical Grid in order to satisfy temporary job requests. Also scheduling plays an important role in the infrastructure that is handled by a couple of schedulers which are developed to manage data automaticall

Delivering knowledge in the field: A telecommunications service provision and maintenance case

This paper proposes a novel approach to providing knowledge management services in a business process wherein field engineers are the main process actors, providing and maintaining telecommunications services. Cooperating multi-agents play a central role for the provision of knowledge management services by integrating heterogeneous systems to collect related knowledge for the execution of mobile tasks. The proposed system is expected to increase both the performance of the mobile workforce and customer satisfaction by supporting and encouraging knowledge sharing

Protocols versus objects: can models for telecommunications and distributed processing coexist?

This paper identifies two paradigms that influence the design of telematics systems nowadays: the protocol-centred and the object-centred paradigms. Both paradigms have been introduced to cope with interoperability, each in their own way. The coexistence of these paradigms can have an enormous impact on the design of telematics systems. This paper identifies some combined uses of both paradigms and some fundamental research problems related to the coexistence of these paradigm