End-to-end performance evaluation of MEC deployments in 5G scenarios

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) promises to deliver localized computing power and storage. Coupled with low-latency 5G radio access, this enables the creation of high added-value services for mobile users, such as in-vehicle infotainment or remote driving. The performance of these services as well as their scalability will however depend on how MEC will be deployed in 5G systems. This paper evaluates different MEC deployment options, coherent with the respective 5G migration phases, using an accurate and comprehensive end-to-end (E2E) system simulation model (exploiting Simu5G for radio access, and Intel CoFluent for core network and MEC), taking into account user-related metrics such as response time or MEC latency. Our results show that 4G radio access is going to be a bottleneck, preventing MEC services from scaling up. On the other hand, the introduction of 5G will allow a considerable higher penetration of MEC services

Comunicaciones Móviles de Misión Crítica sobre Redes LTE

Mission Critical Communications (MCC) have been typically provided by proprietary radio technologies, but, in the last years, the interest to use commercial-off-the-shelf mobile technologies has increased. In this thesis, we explore the use of LTE to support MCC. We analyse the feasibility of LTE networks employing an experimental platform, PerformNetworks. To do so, we extend the testbed to increase the number of possible scenarios and the tooling available. After exploring the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of LTE, we propose different architectures to support the performance and functional requirements demanded by MCC. We have identified latency as one of the KPI to improve, so we have done several proposals to reduce it. These proposals follow the Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) paradigm, locating the services in what we called the fog, close to the base station to avoid the backhaul and transport networks. Our first proposal is the Fog Gateway, which is a MEC solution fully compatible with standard LTE networks that analyses the traffic coming from the base station to decide whether it has to be routed to the fog of processed normally by the SGW. Our second proposal is its natural evolution, the GTP Gateway that requires modifications on the base station. With this proposal, the base station will only transport over GTP the traffic not going to the fog. Both proposals have been validated by providing emulated scenarios, and, in the case of the Fog Gateway, also with the implementation of different prototypes, proving its compatibility with standard LTE network and its performance. The gateways can reduce drastically the end-to-end latency, as they avoid the time consumed by the backhaul and transport networks, with a very low trade-off

Building the Future Internet through FIRE

The Internet as we know it today is the result of a continuous activity for improving network communications, end user services, computational processes and also information technology infrastructures. The Internet has become a critical infrastructure for the human-being by offering complex networking services and end-user applications that all together have transformed all aspects, mainly economical, of our lives. Recently, with the advent of new paradigms and the progress in wireless technology, sensor networks and information systems and also the inexorable shift towards everything connected paradigm, first as known as the Internet of Things and lately envisioning into the Internet of Everything, a data-driven society has been created. In a data-driven society, productivity, knowledge, and experience are dependent on increasingly open, dynamic, interdependent and complex Internet services. The challenge for the Internet of the Future design is to build robust enabling technologies, implement and deploy adaptive systems, to create business opportunities considering increasing uncertainties and emergent systemic behaviors where humans and machines seamlessly cooperate

Building the Future Internet through FIRE

The Internet as we know it today is the result of a continuous activity for improving network communications, end user services, computational processes and also information technology infrastructures. The Internet has become a critical infrastructure for the human-being by offering complex networking services and end-user applications that all together have transformed all aspects, mainly economical, of our lives. Recently, with the advent of new paradigms and the progress in wireless technology, sensor networks and information systems and also the inexorable shift towards everything connected paradigm, first as known as the Internet of Things and lately envisioning into the Internet of Everything, a data-driven society has been created. In a data-driven society, productivity, knowledge, and experience are dependent on increasingly open, dynamic, interdependent and complex Internet services. The challenge for the Internet of the Future design is to build robust enabling technologies, implement and deploy adaptive systems, to create business opportunities considering increasing uncertainties and emergent systemic behaviors where humans and machines seamlessly cooperate

Enabling LTE emulation by integrating CORE emulator and LTE-EPC Network (LENA) Simulator

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a strong candidate for the next generation of Mission-Critical Networks (MCNs) for public safety and military use. However, extensive investigation on different operating scenarios has to be done before adopting LTE. Emulating LTE networks is the best solution to provide the needed insights to the regulators so that they can make informed decisions. In this paper, we integrate LTE-EPC Network simulator (LENA) module with the Common Open Research Emulator (CORE) in order to enable the emulation of large-scale LTE networks. The developed tool bridges the real and the simulated worlds by allowing us to connect real devices to simulated devices and passing traffic to the simulated world from the real world and vice versa. Using this tool, mission-critical scenarios could be investigated in a cost effective way

End-to-end network service orchestration in heterogeneous domains for next-generation mobile networks

5G marks the beginning of a deep revolution in the mobile network ecosystem, transitioning to a network of services to satisfy the demands of new players, the vertical industries. This revolution implies a redesign of the overall mobile network architecture where complexity, heterogeneity, dynamicity, and flexibility will be the rule. Under such context, automation and programmability are essential to support this vision and overcome current rigid network operation processes. Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Network slicing are key enabling techniques to provide such capabilities. They are complementary, but they are still in its infancy and the synergies between them must be exploited to realise the mentioned vision. The aim of this thesis is to further contribute to its development and integration in next generation mobile networks by designing an end-to-end (E2E) network service orchestration (NSO) architecture, which aligned with some guidelines and specifications provided by main standardization bodies, goes beyond current management and orchestration (MANO) platforms to fulfil network service lifetime requirements in heterogeneous multi-technology/administrative network infrastructures shared by concurrent instances of diverse network services. Following a bottom-up approach, we start studying some SDN aspects related to the management of wireless network elements and its integration into hierarchical control architectures orchestrating networking resources in a multi-technology (wireless, optical, packet) infrastructure. Then, this work is integrated in an infrastructure manager module executing the joint resource abstraction and allocation of network and compute resources in distributed points of presence (PoPs) connected by a transport network, aspect which is not (or lightly) handled by current MANO platforms. This is the module where the integration between NFV and SDN techniques is executed. This integration is commanded by a Service Orchestrator module, in charge of automating the E2E lifecycle management of network services implementing network slices (NS) based on the vertical requirements, the available infrastructure resources, and, while fulfilling service level agreement (SLA) also during run-time operation. This architecture, focused on single administrative domain (AD) scenarios, constitutes the first group of contributions of this thesis. The second group of contributions evolves this initial architecture to deal with the orchestration and sharing of NS and its network slice subnet instances (NSSIs) involving multiple ADs. The main differential aspect with current state-of-the-art solutions is the consideration of resource orchestration aspects during the whole orchestration process. This is fundamental to achieve the interconnection of NSSIs, hence making the E2E multi-domain orchestration and network slicing a reality in practice. Additionally, this work also considers SLA management aspects by means of scaling actions during run-time operation in such complex scenarios. The third group of contributions demonstrate the validity and applicability of the resulting architectures, workflows, and interfaces by implementing and evaluating them in real experimental infrastructures featuring multiple ADs and transport technologies interconnecting distributed computing PoPs. The performed experimentation considers network service definitions close to real vertical use cases, namely automotive and eHealth, which help bridging the gap between network providers and vertical industries stakeholders. Experimental results show that network service creation and scaling times in the order of minutes can be achieved for single and multi-AD scenarios, in line with 5G network targets. Moreover, these measurements serve as a reference for benchmarking the different operations involved during the network service deployment. Such analysis are limited in current literature.5G marca el inicio de una gran revolución en las redes móviles, convirtiéndose en redes orientadas a servicios para satisfacer las demandas de nuevos actores, las industrias verticales. Esta revolución supone un rediseño total de la arquitectura de red donde la complejidad, heterogeneidad, dinamicidad y flexibilidad serán la norma. En este contexto, la automatización y programabilidad serán esenciales para superar los rígidos procesos actuales de operación de red. Las redes definidas por software (SDN), la virtualización de funciones de red (NFV) y el particionamiento de redes son técnicas clave para proporcionar dichas capacidades. Éstas son complementarias, pero aún recientes y sus sinergias se deben explotar para realizar la nueva visión. El objetivo de esta tesis es contribuir a su desarrollo e integración en la nuevas generaciones de redes móviles mediante el diseño de una arquitectura de orquestación de servicios de red (NSO) extremo a extremo (E2E), que alineada con algunas pautas y especificaciones de los principales organismos de estandarización, va más allá de los actuales sistemas de gestión y orquestación (MANO) para instanciar y garantizar los requisitos de los diversos servicios de red desplegados concurrentemente en infraestructuras heterogéneas compartidas que combinan múltiples tecnologías y dominios administrativos (AD). Siguiendo un enfoque ascendente, comenzamos a estudiar aspectos de SDN relacionados con la gestión de elementos de red inalámbricos y su integración en arquitecturas jerárquicas de orquestación de recursos de red en infraestructuras multi tecnología (inalámbrica, óptica, paquetes). Luego, este trabajo se integra en un módulo de administración de infraestructura que ejecuta de forma conjunta la abstracción y la asignación de recursos de red y computación en múltiples puntos de presencia (PoP) distribuidos conectados por una red de transporte, aspecto que no está (o ligeramente) considerado por los actuales sistemas MANO. Este módulo ejecuta la integración de las técnicas NFV y SDN. Esta integración está dirigida por el módulo Orquestador de Servicios, que automatiza la gestión E2E del ciclo de vida de los servicios de red implementando las diferentes particiones de red en base a los requisitos de los verticales, los recursos de infraestructura disponibles y mientras cumple los acuerdos de nivel de servicio (SLA) durante la operación del servicio. Esta arquitectura, centrada en escenarios con un único AD, forma el primer grupo de contribuciones de esta tesis. El segundo grupo de contribuciones evoluciona esta arquitectura abordando la orquestación y compartición de particiones de red y sus componentes (NSSIs) en escenarios con múltiples AD. La consideración detallada de aspectos de orquestación de recursos es el principal aspecto diferencial con la literatura. Esto es fundamental para la interconexión de NSSIs, haciendo realidad la orquestación E2E y el particionamiento de red en escenarios con múltiples AD. Además, se considera la gestión de SLA mediante acciones de escalado durante la operación del servicio en los escenarios mencionados. El tercer grupo de contribuciones valida las arquitecturas, procedimientos e interfaces resultantes pues se han implementado y evaluado sobre infraestructuras experimentales reales que presentan múltiples AD y tecnologías de transporte interconectando PoP distribuidos. Esta experimentación considera definiciones de servicios de red cercanos a casos de uso de verticales reales, como automoción y eHealth, ayudando a cubrir la brecha entre los proveedores de red y los verticales. Los resultados experimentales muestran que la creación y el escalado de servicios de red se pueden realizar en pocos minutos en escenarios con un único o múltiples ADs, en línea con los indicadores de red objetivos de 5G. Estas medidas, escasas en la literatura actual, sirven como referencia para caracterizar las diferentes operaciones involucradas durante el despliegue de servicios.Postprint (published version

XIII Jornadas de ingeniería telemática (JITEL 2017)

Las Jornadas de Ingeniería Telemática (JITEL), organizadas por la Asociación de Telemática (ATEL), constituyen un foro propicio de reunión, debate y divulgación para los grupos que imparten docencia e investigan en temas relacionados con las redes y los servicios telemáticos. Con la organización de este evento se pretende fomentar, por un lado el intercambio de experiencias y resultados, además de la comunicación y cooperación entre los grupos de investigación que trabajan en temas relacionados con la telemática. En paralelo a las tradicionales sesiones que caracterizan los congresos científicos, se desea potenciar actividades más abiertas, que estimulen el intercambio de ideas entre los investigadores experimentados y los noveles, así como la creación de vínculos y puntos de encuentro entre los diferentes grupos o equipos de investigación. Para ello, además de invitar a personas relevantes en los campos correspondientes, se van a incluir sesiones de presentación y debate de las líneas y proyectos activos de los mencionados equiposLloret Mauri, J.; Casares Giner, V. (2018). XIII Jornadas de ingeniería telemática (JITEL 2017). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/97612EDITORIA

Quality aspects of Internet telephony

Internet telephony has had a tremendous impact on how people communicate. Many now maintain contact using some form of Internet telephony. Therefore the motivation for this work has been to address the quality aspects of real-world Internet telephony for both fixed and wireless telecommunication. The focus has been on the quality aspects of voice communication, since poor quality leads often to user dissatisfaction. The scope of the work has been broad in order to address the main factors within IP-based voice communication. The first four chapters of this dissertation constitute the background material. The first chapter outlines where Internet telephony is deployed today. It also motivates the topics and techniques used in this research. The second chapter provides the background on Internet telephony including signalling, speech coding and voice Internetworking. The third chapter focuses solely on quality measures for packetised voice systems and finally the fourth chapter is devoted to the history of voice research. The appendix of this dissertation constitutes the research contributions. It includes an examination of the access network, focusing on how calls are multiplexed in wired and wireless systems. Subsequently in the wireless case, we consider how to handover calls from 802.11 networks to the cellular infrastructure. We then consider the Internet backbone where most of our work is devoted to measurements specifically for Internet telephony. The applications of these measurements have been estimating telephony arrival processes, measuring call quality, and quantifying the trend in Internet telephony quality over several years. We also consider the end systems, since they are responsible for reconstructing a voice stream given loss and delay constraints. Finally we estimate voice quality using the ITU proposal PESQ and the packet loss process. The main contribution of this work is a systematic examination of Internet telephony. We describe several methods to enable adaptable solutions for maintaining consistent voice quality. We have also found that relatively small technical changes can lead to substantial user quality improvements. A second contribution of this work is a suite of software tools designed to ascertain voice quality in IP networks. Some of these tools are in use within commercial systems today

MS FT-2-2 7 Orthogonal polynomials and quadrature: Theory, computation, and applications

Quadrature rules find many applications in science and engineering. Their analysis is a classical area of applied mathematics and continues to attract considerable attention. This seminar brings together speakers with expertise in a large variety of quadrature rules. It is the aim of the seminar to provide an overview of recent developments in the analysis of quadrature rules. The computation of error estimates and novel applications also are described