Leveraging Machine Learning Techniques towards Intelligent Networking Automation

In this thesis, we address some of the challenges that the Intelligent Networking Automation (INA) paradigm poses. Our goal is to design schemes leveraging Machine Learning (ML) techniques to cope with situations that involve hard decision-making actions. The proposed solutions are data-driven and consist of an agent that operates at network elements such as routers, switches, or network servers. The data are gathered from realistic scenarios, either actual network deployments or emulated environments. To evaluate the enhancements that the designed schemes provide, we compare our solutions to non-intelligent ones. Additionally, we assess the trade-off between the obtained improvements and the computational costs of implementing the proposed mechanisms. Accordingly, this thesis tackles the challenges that four specific research problems present. The first topic addresses the problem of balancing traffic in dense Internet of Things (IoT) network scenarios where the end devices and the Base Stations (BSs) form complex networks. By applying ML techniques to discover patterns in the association between the end devices and the BSs, the proposed scheme can balance the traffic load in a IoT network to increase the packet delivery ratio and reduce the energy cost of data delivery. The second research topic proposes an intelligent congestion control for internet connections at edge network elements. The design includes a congestion predictor based on an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and an Active Queue Management (AQM) parameter tuner. Similarly, the third research topic includes an intelligent solution to the inter-domain congestion. Different from second topic, this problem considers the preservation of the private network data by means of Federated Learning (FL), since network elements of several organizations participate in the intelligent process. Finally, the fourth research topic refers to a framework to efficiently gathering network telemetry (NT) data. The proposed solution considers a traffic-aware approach so that the NT is intelligently collected and transmitted by the network elements. All the proposed schemes are evaluated through use cases considering standardized networking mechanisms. Therefore, we envision that the solutions of these specific problems encompass a set of methods that can be utilized in real-world scenarios towards the realization of the INA paradigm

Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are penetrating our daily lives, and they are starting to be deployed even in an industrial environment. The research on such industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSNs) considers more stringent requirements of robustness, reliability, and timeliness in each network layer. This Special Issue presents the recent research result on industrial wireless sensor networks. Each paper in this Special Issue has unique contributions in the advancements of industrial wireless sensor network research and we expect each paper to promote the relevant research and the deployment of IWSNs

Internet of Things From Hype to Reality

The Internet of Things (IoT) has gained significant mindshare, let alone attention, in academia and the industry especially over the past few years. The reasons behind this interest are the potential capabilities that IoT promises to offer. On the personal level, it paints a picture of a future world where all the things in our ambient environment are connected to the Internet and seamlessly communicate with each other to operate intelligently. The ultimate goal is to enable objects around us to efficiently sense our surroundings, inexpensively communicate, and ultimately create a better environment for us: one where everyday objects act based on what we need and like without explicit instructions

Construction, Operation and Maintenance of Network System(Junior Level)

This open access book follows the development rules of network technical talents, simultaneously placing its focus on the transfer of network knowledge, the accumulation of network skills, and the improvement of professionalism. Through the complete process from the elaboration of the theories of network technology to the analysis of application scenarios then to the design and implementation of case projects, readers are enabled to accumulate project experience and eventually acquire knowledge and cultivate their ability so as to lay a solid foundation for adapting to their future positions. This book comprises six chapters, which include “General Operation Safety of Network System,” “Cabling Project,” “Hardware Installation of Network System,” “Basic Knowledge of Network System,” “Basic Operation of Network System,” and “Basic Operation and Maintenance of Network System.” This book can be used for teaching and training for the vocational skills certification of network system construction, operation, and maintenance in the pilot work of Huawei’s “1+X” Certification System, and it is also suitable as a textbook for application-oriented universities, vocational colleges, and technical colleges. In the meantime, it can also serve as a reference book for technicians engaged in network technology development, network management and maintenance, and network system integration. As the world’s leading ICT (information and communications technology) infrastructure and intelligent terminal provider, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. has covered many fields such as data communication, security, wireless, storage, cloud computing, intelligent computing, and artificial intelligence. Taking Huawei network equipment (routers, switches, wireless controllers, and wireless access points) as the platform, and based on network engineering projects, this book organizes all the contents according to the actual needs of the industry

Construction, Operation and Maintenance of Network System(Junior Level)

This open access book follows the development rules of network technical talents, simultaneously placing its focus on the transfer of network knowledge, the accumulation of network skills, and the improvement of professionalism. Through the complete process from the elaboration of the theories of network technology to the analysis of application scenarios then to the design and implementation of case projects, readers are enabled to accumulate project experience and eventually acquire knowledge and cultivate their ability so as to lay a solid foundation for adapting to their future positions. This book comprises six chapters, which include “General Operation Safety of Network System,” “Cabling Project,” “Hardware Installation of Network System,” “Basic Knowledge of Network System,” “Basic Operation of Network System,” and “Basic Operation and Maintenance of Network System.” This book can be used for teaching and training for the vocational skills certification of network system construction, operation, and maintenance in the pilot work of Huawei’s “1+X” Certification System, and it is also suitable as a textbook for application-oriented universities, vocational colleges, and technical colleges. In the meantime, it can also serve as a reference book for technicians engaged in network technology development, network management and maintenance, and network system integration. As the world’s leading ICT (information and communications technology) infrastructure and intelligent terminal provider, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. has covered many fields such as data communication, security, wireless, storage, cloud computing, intelligent computing, and artificial intelligence. Taking Huawei network equipment (routers, switches, wireless controllers, and wireless access points) as the platform, and based on network engineering projects, this book organizes all the contents according to the actual needs of the industry

Human-Centered Technologies and Procedures for Future Air Traffic Management

The use of various methodologies to predict the impact of future Air Traffic Management (ATM) concepts and technologies is explored. The emphasis has been on the importance of modeling coordination and cooperation among multiple agents within this system, and on understanding how the interactions among these agents will be influenced as new roles, responsibilities, procedures and technologies are introduced. To accomplish this, we have been collecting data on performance under the current air traffic management system, identifying critical problem areas and looking for examples suggestive of general approaches for solving such problems. Using the results of these field studies, we have developed a set of concrete scenarios centered around future designs, and have studied performance in these scenarios with a set of 40 controllers, dispatchers, pilots and traffic managers

The Once-Only Principle

This open access State-of-the-Art Survey describes and documents the developments and results of the Once-Only Principle Project (TOOP). The Once-Only Principle (OOP) is part of the seven underlying principles of the eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020. It aims to make the government more effective and to reduce administrative burdens by asking citizens and companies to provide certain standard information to the public authorities only once. The project was horizontal and policy-driven with the aim of showing that the implementation of OOP in a cross-border and cross-sector setting is feasible. The book summarizes the results of the project from policy, organizational, architectural, and technical points of view

A distributed middleware for IT/OT convergence in modern industrial environments

The modern industrial environment is populated by a myriad of intelligent devices that collaborate for the accomplishment of the numerous business processes in place at the production sites. The close collaboration between humans and work machines poses new interesting challenges that industry must overcome in order to implement the new digital policies demanded by the industrial transition. The Industry 5.0 movement is a companion revolution of the previous Industry 4.0, and it relies on three characteristics that any industrial sector should have and pursue: human centrality, resilience, and sustainability. The application of the fifth industrial revolution cannot be completed without moving from the implementation of Industry 4.0-enabled platforms. The common feature found in the development of this kind of platform is the need to integrate the Information and Operational layers. Our thesis work focuses on the implementation of a platform addressing all the digitization features foreseen by the fourth industrial revolution, making the IT/OT convergence inside production plants an improvement and not a risk. Furthermore, we added modular features to our platform enabling the Industry 5.0 vision. We favored the human centrality using the mobile crowdsensing techniques and the reliability and sustainability using pluggable cloud computing services, combined with data coming from the crowd support. We achieved important and encouraging results in all the domains in which we conducted our experiments. Our IT/OT convergence-enabled platform exhibits the right performance needed to satisfy the strict requirements of production sites. The multi-layer capability of the framework enables the exploitation of data not strictly coming from work machines, allowing a more strict interaction between the company, its employees, and customers

Virtual Machine Image Management for Elastic Resource Usage in Grid Computing

Grid Computing has evolved from an academic concept to a powerful paradigm in the area of high performance computing (HPC). Over the last few years, powerful Grid computing solutions were developed that allow the execution of computational tasks on distributed computing resources. Grid computing has recently attracted many commercial customers. To enable commercial customers to be able to execute sensitive data in the Grid, strong security mechanisms must be put in place to secure the customers' data. In contrast, the development of Cloud Computing, which entered the scene in 2006, was driven by industry: it was designed with respect to security from the beginning. Virtualization technology is used to separate the users e.g., by putting the different users of a system inside a virtual machine, which prevents them from accessing other users' data. The use of virtualization in the context of Grid computing has been examined early and was found to be a promising approach to counter the security threats that have appeared with commercial customers. One main part of the work presented in this thesis is the Image Creation Station (ICS), a component which allows users to administer their virtual execution environments (virtual machines) themselves and which is responsible for managing and distributing the virtual machines in the entire system. In contrast to Cloud computing, which was designed to allow even inexperienced users to execute their computational tasks in the Cloud easily, Grid computing is much more complex to use. The ICS makes it easier to use the Grid by overcoming traditional limitations like installing needed software on the compute nodes that users use to execute the computational tasks. This allows users to bring commercial software to the Grid for the first time, without the need for local administrators to install the software to computing nodes that are accessible by all users. Moreover, the administrative burden is shifted from the local Grid site's administrator to the users or experienced software providers that allow the provision of individually tailored virtual machines to each user. But the ICS is not only responsible for enabling users to manage their virtual machines themselves, it also ensures that the virtual machines are available on every site that is part of the distributed Grid system. A second aspect of the presented solution focuses on the elasticity of the system by automatically acquiring free external resources depending on the system's current workload. In contrast to existing systems, the presented approach allows the system's administrator to add or remove resource sets during runtime without needing to restart the entire system. Moreover, the presented solution allows users to not only use existing Grid resources but allows them to scale out to Cloud resources and use these resources on-demand. By ensuring that unused resources are shut down as soon as possible, the computational costs of a given task are minimized. In addition, the presented solution allows each user to specify which resources can be used to execute a particular job. This is useful when a job processes sensitive data e.g., that is not allowed to leave the company. To obtain a comparable function in today's systems, a user must submit her computational task to a particular resource set, losing the ability to automatically schedule if more than one set of resources can be used. In addition, the proposed solution prioritizes each set of resources by taking different metrics into account (e.g. the level of trust or computational costs) and tries to schedule the job to resources with the highest priority first. It is notable that the priority often mimics the physical distance from the resources to the user: a locally available Cluster usually has a higher priority due to the high level of trust and the computational costs, that are usually lower than the costs of using Cloud resources. Therefore, this scheduling strategy minimizes the costs of job execution by improving security at the same time since data is not necessarily transferred to remote resources and the probability of attacks by malicious external users is minimized. Bringing both components together results in a system that adapts automatically to the current workload by using external (e.g., Cloud) resources together with existing locally available resources or Grid sites and provides individually tailored virtual execution environments to the system's users

Global Trade Impacts: Addressing the Health, Social and Environmental Consequences of Moving International Freight Through Our Communities

Examines freight transportation industry trends; the impact of global trade on workers, the environment, and health in both exporting and importing countries; and organizing strategies and policy innovations for minimizing the damage and ensuring health