Context-Awareness Enhances 5G Multi-Access Edge Computing Reliability

The fifth generation (5G) mobile telecommunication network is expected to support Multi- Access Edge Computing (MEC), which intends to distribute computation tasks and services from the central cloud to the edge clouds. Towards ultra-responsive, ultra-reliable and ultra-low-latency MEC services, the current mobile network security architecture should enable a more decentralized approach for authentication and authorization processes. This paper proposes a novel decentralized authentication architecture that supports flexible and low-cost local authentication with the awareness of context information of network elements such as user equipment and virtual network functions. Based on a Markov model for backhaul link quality, as well as a random walk mobility model with mixed mobility classes and traffic scenarios, numerical simulations have demonstrated that the proposed approach is able to achieve a flexible balance between the network operating cost and the MEC reliability.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Access on Feb. 02, 201

Network slicing with flexible mobility and QoS/QoE support for 5G networks

Proceeding of: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Communications. Workshops (ICC Workshops)Network slicing is an emerging area of research, featuring a logical arrangement of resources to operate as individual networks, thus allowing for massively customizable service and tenant requirements. The focus of this paper is to present the design of a flexible 5G architecture for network slicing, building on SDN and NFV technologies as enablers. More specifically, we place the emphasis on techniques that provide efficient utilization of substrate resources for network slicing, ultimately optimizing network performance. The key areas of consideration in our architecture revolve around flexible service-tailored mobility, service-aware QoS/QoE control as well as network-wide orchestrationThis research work has been performed in the framework of H2020-ICT-2014-2 project 5G NORMA

MOON: a New Overlay Network Architecture for Mobility and QoS Support

The continuously increasing diffusion of mobile devices such as laptops, PDAs and smartphones, all equipped with enhanced functionalities, has led to numerous studies about mobility and to the definition of new network architectures capable to support it. Problems related to mobility have been addressed mostly operating on the network or transport layers of the Internet protocol stack. As a result, most of these solutions generally require modifying the TCP and/or the IP protocol. Although this approach is well suited to handle mobility, it lacks in compatibility with the Internet Protocol Suite. This consideration led us to study a fully TCP compatible and flexible approach we dubbed MOON, for MObile Overlay Network. This network architecture is currently under design at LIPAR, the Internet, Protocols and Network Architecture Lab of Politecnico di Torino

SDN - Architectural Enabler for Reliable Communication over Millimeter-Wave 5G Networks

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency bands offer a new frontier for next-generation wireless networks, popularly known as 5G, to enable multi-gigabit communication; however, the availability and reliability of mmWave signals are significantly limited due to its unfavorable propagation characteristics. Thus, mmWave networks rely on directional narrow-beam transmissions to overcome severe path-loss. To mitigate the impact of transmission-reception directionality and provide uninterrupted network services, ensuring the availability of mmWave transmission links is important. In this paper, we proposed a new flexible network architecture to provide efficient resource coordination among serving basestations during user mobility. The key idea of this holistic architecture is to exploit the software-defined networking (SDN) technology with mmWave communication to provide a flexible and resilient network architecture. Besides, this paper presents an efficient and seamless uncoordinated network operation to support reliable communication in highly-dynamic environments characterized by high density and mobility of wireless devices. To warrant high-reliability and guard against the potential radio link failure, we introduce a new transmission framework to ensure that there is at least one basestation is connected to the UE at all times. We validate the proposed transmission scheme through simulations.Comment: This article has been accepted for publication at the IEEE GLOBECOM 2018 Workshops, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 9-13 December 201

Offloading personal security applications to the Network Edge: A mobile user case scenario

This paper discusses some challenges that user mobility imposes over the user-centric protection model against security threats. This model is based on the idea of offloading the security applications from the end user device, and placing them in a trusted network node at the network's edge. Our research perspective is particularly centered around three interrelated mobility challenges, i) the allocation of the security applications “close” to the user, i.e., on network nodes with enhanced processing capabilities, ii) seamless mobility with negligible disruption of ongoing network connections, and iii) dynamic orchestration and management with support of security applications migration. Based on our arguments, we expose the main requirements and trade-offs to be considered in the attempt to support mobility in such environment. We propose a flexible solution that leverages Software Defined Networking, Network Function Virtualization and Computing at the Network Edge to offer a seamless on-path security protection to mobile users. Our preliminary experiments' results considering a WiFi mobile user show that seamless security migration and mobility are feasible in a simple real scenario. Vertical mobility and more complex use cases scenarios are envisioned for future research. Peer Reviewed Document type: Conference objec

A Game Theoretic Optimization of RPL for Mobile Internet of Things Applications

The presence of mobile nodes in any wireless network can affect the performance of the network, leading to higher packet loss and increased energy consumption. However, many recent applications require the support of mobility and an efficient approach to handle mobile nodes is essential. In this paper, a game scenario is formulated where nodes compete for network resources in a selfish manner, to send their data packets to the sink node. Each node counts as a player in the noncooperative game. The optimal solution for the game is found using the unique Nash equilibrium (NE) where a node cannot improve its pay-off function while other players use their current strategy. The proposed solution aims to present a strategy to control different parameters of mobile nodes (or static nodes in a mobile environment) including transmission rate, timers and operation mode in order to optimize the performance of RPL under mobility in terms of packet delivery ratio (PDR), throughput, energy consumption and end-to-end-delay. The proposed solution monitors the mobility of nodes based on received signal strength indication (RSSI) readings, it also takes into account the priorities of different nodes and the current level of noise in order to select the preferred transmission rate. An optimized protocol called game-theory based mobile RPL (GTM-RPL) is implemented and tested in multiple scenarios with different network requirements for Internet of Things applications. Simulation results show that in the presence of mobility, GTM-RPL provides a flexible and adaptable solution that improves throughput whilst maintaining lower energy consumption showing more than 10% improvement compared to related work. For applications with high throughput requirements, GTM-RPL shows a significant advantage with more than 16% improvement in throughput and 20% improvement in energy consumption

Intelligent seamless handover in next generation networks

Providing high quality of service (QoS) to mobile end-users, and guaranteeing resilient connectivity for healthcare wearables and other mobile devices is a critical component of Industry 5.0. However, one of the biggest difficulties that network operators encounter is the issue of mobility handover, as it can be detrimental to end-users’ safety and experience. Although various handover mechanisms have been developed to meet high QoS, achieving optimum handover performance while maintaining sustainable network operation is still an unreached goal. In this paper, random linear codes (RLC) are used to achieve seamless handover, where handover traffic is encoded using RLC and then multicasted to handover destination(s) using a mobility prediction algorithm for destination selection. To overcome the limitations of current IP core networks, we make use of a revolutionary IP-over-Information-Centric Network architecture at the network core that supports highly flexible multicast switching. The combination of the RLC, flexible multicast, and mobility prediction, makes the communication resilient to packet loss and helps to avoid handover failures of existing solutions while reducing overall packet delivery cost, hence offering sustainable mobility support. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated using a realistic vehicular mobility dataset and cellular network infrastructure and compared with Fast Handover for Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PFMIPv6). The results show that our scheme efficiently supports seamless session continuity in high mobility environments, reducing the total traffic delivery cost by 44% compared to its counterpart PFMIPv6, while reducing handover delay by 26% and handover failure to less than 2% of total handovers

Wireless internet architecture and testbed for wineglass

One of the most challenging issues in the area of mobile communication is the deployment of IPbased wireless multimedia networks in public and business environments. The public branch may involve public mobile networks, like UMTS as 3G system, while the business branch introduces local radio access networks by means of W-LANs. Conventional mobile networks realise mobile specific functionality, e.g. mobility management or authentication and accounting, by implementing appropriate mechanisms in specific switching nodes (e.g. SGSN in GPRS). In order to exploit the full potential of IP networking solutions a replacement of these mechanisms by IP-based solutions might be appropriate. In addition current and innovative future services in mobile environments require at least soft-guaranteed, differentiated QoS. Therefore the WINE GLASS project investigates and implements enhanced IP-based techniques supporting mobility and QoS in a wireless Internet architecture. As a means to verify the applicability of the implemented solutions, location-aware services deploying both IP-mobility and QoS mechanisms will be implemented and demonstratedPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version