UAVProtocol: Sistema de encaminhamento entre UAVs

A manutenção de veículos aéreos não tripulados, em inglês Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) e também conhecidos como drones, depende em grande parte do controlo remoto. O alcance da operação é limitado pelo sucesso das comunicações via rádio entre o controlador e o UAV. De forma a expandir esse alcance, podem ser utilizadas redes ou enxames de UAVs de modo a definir uma mesh com o objetivo de se poder encaminhar comandos de controlo para unidades mais distantes. Devido aos obstáculos naturais e artificiais que existem no nosso meio ou então devido a interferências intencionais, a comunicação entre os drones é suscetível a interrupções e nesse sentido, é necessário criar soluções que consigam optimizar a comunicação evitando ao máximo as interrupções que possam ocorrer devido aos obstáculos de tal forma que é importante avaliar os diversos protocolos de encaminhamento sejam eles ao nível de Internet Protocol (IP) ou então mais baseados numa camada inferior, como o Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), tirando mais partido das redes de operador de telecomunicações. Ao longo desta tese é proposta uma especificação, desenvolvimento e teste de um protocolo de sobreposição para encaminhar instruções do controlador para comandar um UAV remoto numa base multi-hop, tendo em atenção as vantagens que oferecem os diferentes tipos de encaminhamento em cenários de conectividade de UAVs para trocas de volumes consideráveis de informação.The maintenance of unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly called UAV, depends on the remote control. The scope of operation is limited by the success of radio communications between the controller and the UAV. In order to expand this range the UAVs networks or swarms can be used in order to define a mesh so that control commands can be routed to more distant units. Due to the natural and artificial obstacles that exist in our environment or due to intentional interference, the communication between drones is susceptible to interruptions and in this sense, it is necessary to create solutions that can optimize the communication avoiding as much as possible the interruptions that may occur due to obstacles in such a way that it is important to evaluate the various routing protocols, be they at the IP level or more based on a lower layer, such as MPLS, taking more advantage of the telecommunications operator networks. Throughout this thesis a specification, development and testing of an overlay protocol for routing controller instructions to command a remote UAV on a multihop basis is proposed, taking into account the advantages offered by different types of routing in UAV connectivity scenarios for exchanges of considerable volumes of information

TOWARDS AUTOMATING POLICY- BASED MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The goal of distributed systems management is to provide reliable, secure and efficient utilization of the network, processors and devices that comprise those systems. The management system makes use of management agents to collect events and data from managed objects while policies provide information on how to modify the behaviour of a managed system. Systems as well as policies governing the behaviour of the system and its constituents can change dynamically. The aim of this work is to provide the services and algorithms needed to automatically identify and deploy management entities and be able to respond automatically to both changes to the system itself as well as to changes in the way the system is to be managed, i.e., changes to the set of management policies or sets of management agents. One significant challenge in the use of policy-based management systems is finding efficient mechanisms to address and simplify the gap between expressing and specifying policies and an actual configuration of a management system that realizes and makes use of policies. Little work has been done to define how the monitoring operations are to be configured and updated according to the policies. This Thesis proposes a general architecture for a policy-based management system for distributed systems which allows for expressing and automating the deployment of a wide range of management policies. The proposed solution is based on the matching between the management operations that are carried out by the management agents and the policies. The matching process relies on the attributes that the agents can monitor and the extracted attributes from the components of the policies. One major contribution of this Thesis is to build the policy model and services on existing management services found in commercial management systems. The work of this Thesis also focuses in finding87 strategies for selecting and configuring agents to be used to keep the time of a policy deployment low. The Thesis introduces the Policy-Management Agent Integrated Console (PMagic) prototype. The PMagic prototype has been implemented to provide a practical validation of the policy based management system model proposed. The approach, architecture and prototype have demonstrated that it is possible to create a more autonomic management system, particularly one that can instantiate agents to react to changes in sets of policies

Solution strategies of service fulfilment Operation Support Systems for Next Generation Networks

Suomalainen operatiivisten tukijärjestelmien toimittaja tarjoaa ratkaisuja palvelujen aktivointiin, verkkoresurssien hallintaan ja laskutustietojen keruuseen. Nämä ratkaisut ovat pääosin käytössä langattomissa verkoissa. Tässä tutkimuksessa arvioidaan kyseisten ratkaisujen soveltuvuutta palvelutoimitusprosessien automatisointiin tulevaisuuden verkkoympäristöissä. Tarkastelun kohteena ovat runko- ja pääsyverkkojen kiinteät teknologiat, joiden suosio saavuttaa huippunsa seuraavan 5-10 vuoden aikana. Näissä verkoissa palvelujen, kuten yritys-VPN:n tai kuluttajan laajakaistan, aktivointi vaatii monimutkaisen toimitusprosessin, jonka tueksi tarvitaan ensiluokkaista tukijärjestelmää. Teknologiakatsauksen jälkeen tutkimuksessa verrataan viitteellistä tuoteportfoliota saatavilla oleviin operatiivisten tukijärjestelmien arkkitehtuurisiin viitekehyksiin, ja analysoidaan sen soveltuvuus tulevaisuuden verkkoympäristöjen palvelutoimitusprosessin automatisointiin. Myös palvelutoimitusprosessien automatisointiin soveltuvien tukijärjestelmien markkinatilanne arvioidaan, ja tämän perusteella tutkitaan optimaalisinta sovellusstrategiaa. Lopulta voidaan päätellä, että tuoteportfoliolle parhaiten soveltuvin sovellusalue on kuluttajan laajakaistan, ja siihen liittyvien kehittyneempien IP-palveluiden palvelutoimitusprosessien automatisointi.A Finnish Operation Support Systems (OSS) vendor provides solutions for service activation, network inventory and event mediation. These solutions have mostly been deployed in mobile environments. In this thesis it will be studied how feasible it is to use similar solutions for service fulfilment in Next Generation Networks (NGN). NGN is a broad term that describes some key architectural evolutions in telecommunication core and access networks that will be deployed over the next 5 to 10 years. In these networks service, e.g. Triple Play or Virtual Private Network (VPN), activations require an extensive service fulfilment process that must be supported by first-class OSS. After introducing the NGN technologies, the research compares a reference product portfolio to available service fulfilment frameworks and evaluates the applicability. The study analyses the current state of service fulfilment OSS markets and evaluates various solution strategies. Eventually it will be concluded that the most interesting and adequate solution scenario is residential broadband, including value-added IP services

Developing a methodological generic framework through introducing autonomy and self-adaptation to information systems thinking

There is a requirement for systems methodologies and approaches that can cope with real life information systems that are subject to changing situations and therefore changing requirements. This has not been achieved previously and has seen a gap open up between information systems and information technology. it is recognised that information technology solutions can adapt to changing situations and subsequently changing requirements, however, this has not been possible for information systems thinking. This represents itself in the real world through information systems being used that no longer meet their original objectives and can provide a significant blockage to achieving effective work