NFV Based Gateways for Virtualized Wireless Sensors Networks: A Case Study

Virtualization enables the sharing of a same wireless sensor network (WSN) by multiple applications. However, in heterogeneous environments, virtualized wireless sensor networks (VWSN) raises new challenges such as the need for on-the-fly, dynamic, elastic and scalable provisioning of gateways. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is an emerging paradigm that can certainly aid in tackling these new challenges. It leverages standard virtualization technology to consolidate special-purpose network elements on top of commodity hardware. This article presents a case study on NFV based gateways for VWSNs. In the study, a VWSN gateway provider, operates and manages an NFV based infrastructure. We use two different brands of wireless sensors. The NFV infrastructure makes possible the dynamic, elastic and scalable deployment of gateway modules in this heterogeneous VWSN environment. The prototype built with Openstack as platform is described

Modelling and managing service-level agreements in the context of 5G neutral hosting platforms

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research andinnovation programme under grant agreement No 761508 (5GCity project) and theSpanish national project 5GCity (TEC2016-76795-C6-1-R)This document contains the study and development of Service-Level Agreement (SLA) management mechanisms in the context of a 5G neutral host platform. The infrastructure involved in a neutral host platform is evaluated by an SLA Manager that handles the database of agreements for all the users, and verifies if the monitored data complies with the thresholds stated in the Service-Level Objectives (SLO) agreed in the SLAs. Neutral host is a platform that has different levels of virtualization over a 5G infrastructure. It starts from a sliced network infrastructure for logic separation between tenants, which in the next level of virtualization, can host 5G services with Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) techniques. This virtual platform runs on top of a physical infrastructure that not only covers data centres like in cloud platforms, but also includes access networks, edge computing and distributed cloud elements. Evaluating through all this infrastructure adds new levels of complexity for monitoring and obtaining an accurate value for any Key Performance Indicator, or high-level parameters for Quality of Service. This challenge is faced with a software module, called SLA Manager, which identifies the different involved infrastructure elements and creates monitoring jobs according to highlevel requirements described in each SLO to obtain low-level infrastructure data. This data is then computed to obtain a high-level value to compare latter with an SLO threshold and verify if there is a violation. Availability is the main KPI on which this study focuses. A generic SLA template body is presented for being stored in a NoSQL database solution, able to adapt to any new service deployed over new technologies that may be deployed by the neutral host, and to add flexibility and scalability to the solution. Results show that the accuracy and reliability of the high-level objectives stated in the SLOs obey the standards required for 5G applications. The system quickly detects any outage and gives feedback to the platform to recover and avoid any violation. Delay times for detection are observed in order to provide exact measurements for availability levels. The report ends with conclusions and future development lines, as well as ethical and sustainability considerations the study involves