5GAuRA. D3.3: RAN Analytics Mechanisms and Performance Benchmarking of Video, Time Critical, and Social Applications

5GAuRA deliverable D3.3.This is the final deliverable of Work Package 3 (WP3) of the 5GAuRA project, providing a report on the project’s developments on the topics of Radio Access Network (RAN) analytics and application performance benchmarking. The focus of this deliverable is to extend and deepen the methods and results provided in the 5GAuRA deliverable D3.2 in the context of specific use scenarios of video, time critical, and social applications. In this respect, four major topics of WP3 of 5GAuRA – namely edge-cloud enhanced RAN architecture, machine learning assisted Random Access Channel (RACH) approach, Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) content caching, and active queue management – are put forward. Specifically, this document provides a detailed discussion on the service level agreement between tenant and service provider in the context of network slicing in Fifth Generation (5G) communication networks. Network slicing is considered as a key enabler to 5G communication system. Legacy telecommunication networks have been providing various services to all kinds of customers through a single network infrastructure. In contrast, by deploying network slicing, operators are now able to partition one network into individual slices, each with its own configuration and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. There are many applications across industry that open new business opportunities with new business models. Every application instance requires an independent slice with its own network functions and features, whereby every single slice needs an individual Service Level Agreement (SLA). In D3.3, we propose a comprehensive end-to-end structure of SLA between the tenant and the service provider of sliced 5G network, which balances the interests of both sides. The proposed SLA defines reliability, availability, and performance of delivered telecommunication services in order to ensure that right information is delivered to the right destination at right time, safely and securely. We also discuss the metrics of slicebased network SLA such as throughput, penalty, cost, revenue, profit, and QoS related metrics, which are, in the view of 5GAuRA, critical features of the agreement.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

QoE-Centric Control and Management of Multimedia Services in Software Defined and Virtualized Networks

Multimedia services consumption has increased tremendously since the deployment of 4G/LTE networks. Mobile video services (e.g., YouTube and Mobile TV) on smart devices are expected to continue to grow with the emergence and evolution of future networks such as 5G. The end user’s demand for services with better quality from service providers has triggered a trend towards Quality of Experience (QoE) - centric network management through efficient utilization of network resources. However, existing network technologies are either unable to adapt to diverse changing network conditions or limited in available resources. This has posed challenges to service providers for provisioning of QoE-centric multimedia services. New networking solutions such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) can provide better solutions in terms of QoE control and management of multimedia services in emerging and future networks. The features of SDN, such as adaptability, programmability and cost-effectiveness make it suitable for bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications such as live video streaming, 3D/HD video and video gaming. However, the delivery of multimedia services over SDN/NFV networks to achieve optimized QoE, and the overall QoE-centric network resource management remain an open question especially in the advent development of future softwarized networks. The work in this thesis intends to investigate, design and develop novel approaches for QoE-centric control and management of multimedia services (with a focus on video streaming services) over software defined and virtualized networks. First, a video quality management scheme based on the traffic intensity under Dynamic Adaptive Video Streaming over HTTP (DASH) using SDN is developed. The proposed scheme can mitigate virtual port queue congestion which may cause buffering or stalling events during video streaming, thus, reducing the video quality. A QoE-driven resource allocation mechanism is designed and developed for improving the end user’s QoE for video streaming services. The aim of this approach is to find the best combination of network node functions that can provide an optimized QoE level to end-users through network node cooperation. Furthermore, a novel QoE-centric management scheme is proposed and developed, which utilizes Multipath TCP (MPTCP) and Segment Routing (SR) to enhance QoE for video streaming services over SDN/NFV-based networks. The goal of this strategy is to enable service providers to route network traffic through multiple disjointed bandwidth-satisfying paths and meet specific service QoE guarantees to the end-users. Extensive experiments demonstrated that the proposed schemes in this work improve the video quality significantly compared with the state-of-the- art approaches. The thesis further proposes the path protections and link failure-free MPTCP/SR-based architecture that increases survivability, resilience, availability and robustness of future networks. The proposed path protection and dynamic link recovery scheme achieves a minimum time to recover from a failed link and avoids link congestion in softwarized networks