4,937 research outputs found
SDN/NFV-enabled satellite communications networks: opportunities, scenarios and challenges
In the context of next generation 5G networks, the satellite industry is clearly committed to revisit and revamp the role of satellite communications. As major drivers in the evolution of (terrestrial) fixed and mobile networks, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) technologies are also being positioned as central technology enablers towards improved and more flexible integration of satellite and terrestrial segments, providing satellite network further service innovation and business agility by advanced network resources management techniques. Through the analysis of scenarios and use cases, this paper provides a description of the benefits that SDN/NFV technologies can bring into satellite communications towards 5G. Three scenarios are presented and analysed to delineate different potential improvement areas pursued through the introduction of SDN/NFV technologies in the satellite ground segment domain. Within each scenario, a number of use cases are developed to gain further insight into specific capabilities and to identify the technical challenges stemming from them.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Introducing mobile edge computing capabilities through distributed 5G Cloud Enabled Small Cells
Current trends in broadband mobile networks are addressed towards the placement of different capabilities at the edge of the mobile network in a centralised way. On one hand, the split of the eNB between baseband processing units and remote radio headers makes it possible to process some of the protocols in centralised premises, likely with virtualised resources. On the other hand, mobile edge computing makes use of processing and storage capabilities close to the air interface in order to deploy optimised services with minimum delay. The confluence of both trends is a hot topic in the definition of future 5G networks. The full centralisation of both technologies in cloud data centres imposes stringent requirements to the fronthaul connections in terms of throughput and latency. Therefore, all those cells with limited network access would not be able to offer these types of services. This paper proposes a solution for these cases, based on the placement of processing and storage capabilities close to the remote units, which is especially well suited for the deployment of clusters of small cells. The proposed cloud-enabled small cells include a highly efficient microserver with a limited set of virtualised resources offered to the cluster of small cells. As a result, a light data centre is created and commonly used for deploying centralised eNB and mobile edge computing functionalities. The paper covers the proposed architecture, with special focus on the integration of both aspects, and possible scenarios of application.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Understanding the Computational Requirements of Virtualized Baseband Units using a Programmable Cloud Radio Access Network Testbed
Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) is emerging as a transformative
architecture for the next generation of mobile cellular networks. In C-RAN, the
Baseband Unit (BBU) is decoupled from the Base Station (BS) and consolidated in
a centralized processing center. While the potential benefits of C-RAN have
been studied extensively from the theoretical perspective, there are only a few
works that address the system implementation issues and characterize the
computational requirements of the virtualized BBU. In this paper, a
programmable C-RAN testbed is presented where the BBU is virtualized using the
OpenAirInterface (OAI) software platform, and the eNodeB and User Equipment
(UEs) are implemented using USRP boards. Extensive experiments have been
performed in a FDD downlink LTE emulation system to characterize the
performance and computing resource consumption of the BBU under various
conditions. It is shown that the processing time and CPU utilization of the BBU
increase with the channel resources and with the Modulation and Coding Scheme
(MCS) index, and that the CPU utilization percentage can be well approximated
as a linear increasing function of the maximum downlink data rate. These
results provide real-world insights into the characteristics of the BBU in
terms of computing resource and power consumption, which may serve as inputs
for the design of efficient resource-provisioning and allocation strategies in
C-RAN systems.Comment: In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Autonomic
Computing (ICAC), July 201
Towards delay-aware container-based Service Function Chaining in Fog Computing
Recently, the fifth-generation mobile network (5G) is getting significant attention. Empowered by Network Function Virtualization (NFV), 5G networks aim to support diverse services coming from different business verticals (e.g. Smart Cities, Automotive, etc). To fully leverage on NFV, services must be connected in a specific order forming a Service Function Chain (SFC). SFCs allow mobile operators to benefit from the high flexibility and low operational costs introduced by network softwarization. Additionally, Cloud computing is evolving towards a distributed paradigm called Fog Computing, which aims to provide a distributed cloud infrastructure by placing computational resources close to end-users. However, most SFC research only focuses on Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) use cases where mobile operators aim to deploy services close to end-users. Bi-directional communication between Edges and Cloud are not considered in MEC, which in contrast is highly important in a Fog environment as in distributed anomaly detection services. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an SFC controller to optimize the placement of service chains in Fog environments, specifically tailored for Smart City use cases. Our approach has been validated on the Kubernetes platform, an open-source orchestrator for the automatic deployment of micro-services. Our SFC controller has been implemented as an extension to the scheduling features available in Kubernetes, enabling the efficient provisioning of container-based SFCs while optimizing resource allocation and reducing the end-to-end (E2E) latency. Results show that the proposed approach can lower the network latency up to 18% for the studied use case while conserving bandwidth when compared to the default scheduling mechanism
- …