A Survey of Mobility Management as a Service in Real-time Inter/Intra Slice Control

In-network softwarization, Network Slicing provides scalability and flexibility through various services such as Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) to cover the network demands. For the QoS, a set of policies must be considered in real-time, accompanied by a group of functions and services to guarantee the end-user needs based on network demand. On the other hand, for the QoE, the service's performance needs to be improved to bring an efficient service to cover the demands of the end-user. The 3G Partnership Project (3GPP) defined the slice as a component of resources used to process a set of packets. These resources need to be flexible, which means the resources can be scaled up or down based on the demand. This survey discusses softwarization and virtualization techniques, considering how to implement the slices for future networks. Specifically, we discuss current advances concerning the functionality and architecture of the 5G network. Therefore, the paper critically evaluates recent research and systems related to mobility management as a service in real-time inter/intra slice control by considering the strengths and limitations of these contributions to identify the research gaps and possible research directions for emerging research and development opportunities. Moreover, we extend our review by considering the slice types and their numbers based on the 3GPP Technical Specification (3GPP TS). The study presented in this paper identifies open issues and research directions that reveal that mobility management at a service level with inter/intra slice management techniques has strong potential in future networks and requires further investigation from the research community to exploit its benefits fully

5G Network Slicing: Περιγραφή και Προκλήσεις

Τα ασύρματα και κινητά δίκτυα έχουν περάσει μέσα από πολλές αλλαγές τα τελευταία χρόνια προκειμένου να εξυπηρετήσουν τις όλο και αυξανόμενες ανάγκες των χρηστών τους. Η απαίτηση για ταχύτητα και αξιοπιστία υπηρεσιών τείνει να μεγαλώνει με την πάροδο του χρόνου καθώς οι εφαρμογές που χρησιμοποιούνται γίνονται όλο και πιο απαιτητικές σε εύρος ζώνης. Έτσι, το νέο δίκτυο κινητών επικοινωνιών πέμπτης γενιάς (5G) υπόσχεται ότι θα μπορέσει να ανταποκριθεί σε αυτές τις απαιτήσεις και ότι θα αλλάξει ριζικά τον τρόπο δικτύωσης μεταξύ συσκευών. Ένα από τα βασικά χαρακτηριστικά του νέου δικτύου που έχει συγκεντρώσει αρκετή προσοχή πάνω του είναι το Network Slicing το οποίο παρέχει στους χρήστες δικτυακές υπηρεσίες που ανταποκρίνονται ακριβώς στις απαιτήσεις τους, αντί να παρέχει το μέχρι τώρα γνωστό “one size fits all” παράδειγμα τηλεπικοινωνιακών υπηρεσιών. Η παρούσα Πτυχιακή Εργασία έχει στόχο να παρουσιάσει τα τεχνολογικά χαρακτηριστικά της αρχιτεκτονικής του δικτύου 5G και να εστιάσει σε ορισμένες από τις τεχνολογικές προκλήσεις που ανακύπτουν. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, επιχειρείται μία εκτενής παρουσίαση και ανάλυση όλων των χαρακτηριστικών του δικτύου 5G, της αρχιτεκτονικής του καθώς και όλων αυτών των στοιχείων που το κάνουν να διαφοροποιείται από τα μέχρι τώρα γνωστά μας δίκτυα. Στη συνέχεια αναλύεται το Network Slicing: τι είναι, ποιοι είναι οι στόχοι του, ποια οφέλη μας παρέχει καθώς και πώς επιτυγχάνεται. Τέλος γίνεται αναφορά στις προκλήσεις που έχουμε να αντιμετωπίσουμε αναφορικά με το Network Slicing, καθώς πρόκειται για μία τεχνολογία που βρίσκεται ακόμα σε πειραματικό στάδιο.Wireless and mobile networks have gone through many changes over the past few years to meet the ever increasing needs of their users. The demand for service speed and reliability tends to grow over time, as the applications that are being used demand more bandwidth. Thus, the new fifth generation mobile communications network (5G) promises that it will be able to meet these requirements, and radically change networking as we know it. One of the key features of the new network that has received a lot of attention is Network Slicing, which provides users with networking services that meet their requirements, rather than providing the so-called "one size fits all" telecommunication service paradigm. This thesis aims to present the technological characteristics of the 5G network architecture and to focus on certain technology challenges that arise. More specifically, an extensive presentation and analysis is provided, which attempts to capture all of the main features of the 5G network and its architecture, as well as the elements that make it different from our previously known networks. Next we analyze Network Slicing: what it is, what its goals are, what benefits it provides, and how it is realized. Finally, we report on the challenges we are faced with regarding Network Slicing, as it is a technology that is still in the experimental phase

Closed-loop Orchestration for Cloud-native Mobile IPv6

With the advent of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN), every network service type faces significant challenges induced by novel requirements. Mobile IPv6, the well-known IETF standard for network-level mobility management, is not an exemption. Cloud-native Mobile IPv6 has acquired several new capabilities due to the technological advancements of NFV/SDN evolution. This paper presents how automatic failover and scaling can be envisioned in the context of cloud-native Mobile IPv6 with closed-loop orchestration on the top of the Open Network Automation Platform. Numerical results are also presented to indicate the usefulness of the new operational features (failover, scaling) driven by the cloud-native approach and highlight the advantages of network automation in virtualized and softwarized environments

SLICING-BASED RESOURCE ALLOCATION AND MOBILITY MANAGEMENT FOR EMERGING WIRELESS NETWORKS

The proliferation of smart mobile devices and user applications has continued to contribute to the tremendous volume of data traffic in cellular networks. Moreover, with the feature of heterogeneous connectivity interfaces of these smart devices, it becomes more complex for managing the traffic volume in the context of mobility. To surmount this challenge, service and resource providers are looking for alternative mechanisms that can successfully facilitate managing network resources and mobility in a more dynamic, predictive and distributed manner. New concepts of network architectures such as Software-Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) have paved the way to move from static to flexible networks. They make networks more flexible (i.e., network providers capable of on-demand provisioning), easily customizable and cost effective. In this regard, network slicing is emerging as a new technology built on the concepts of SDN and NFV. It splits a network infrastructure into isolated virtual networks and allows them to manage network resources based on their requirements and characteristics. Most of the existing solutions for network slicing are facing challenges in terms of resource and mobility management. Regarding resource management, it creates challenges in terms of provisioning network throughput, end-to-end delay, and fairness resources allocation for each slice, whereas, in the case of mobility management, due to the rapid change of user mobility the network slice operator would like to hold the mobility controlling over its clients across different access networks, rather than the network operator, to ensure better services and user experience. In this thesis, we propose two novel architectural solutions to solve the challenges identified above. The first proposed solution introduces a Network Slicing Resource Management (NSRM) mechanism that assigns the required resources for each slice, taking into consideration resource isolation between different slices. The second proposed v solution provides a Mobility Management architecture-based Network Slicing (MMNS) where each slice manages its users across heterogeneous radio access technologies such as WiFi, LTE and 5G networks. In MMNS architecture, each slice has different mobility demands (e.g,. latency, speed and interference) and these demands are governed by a network slice configuration and service characteristics. In addition, NSRM ensures isolating, customizing and fair sharing of distributed bandwidths between various network slices and users belonging to the same slice depending on different requirements of each one. Whereas, MMNS is a logical platform that unifies different Radio Access Technologies (RATs) and allows all slices to share them in order to satisfy different slice mobility demands. We considered two software simulations, namely OPNET Modeler and OMNET++, to validate the performance evaluation of the thesis contributions. The simulation results for both proposed architectures show that, in case of NSRM, the resource blocking is approximately 35% less compared to the legacy LTE network, which it allows to accommodate more users. The NSRM also successfully maintains the isolation for both the inter and intra network slices. Moreover, the results show that the NSRM is able to run different scheduling mechanisms where each network slice guarantee perform its own scheduling mechanism and simultaneously with other slices. Regarding the MMNS, the results show the advantages of the proposed architecture that are the reduction of the tunnelling overhead and the minimization of the handover latency. The MMNS results show the packets delivery cost is optimal by reducing the number of hops that the packets transit between a source node and destination. Additionally, seamless session continues of a user IP-flow between different access networks interfaces has been successfully achieved

Mobile Edge Cloud: Intelligent deployment and services for 5G Indoor Network

This thesis was submitted for the award of doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonFifth-Generation (5G) mobile networks are expected to perform according to the stringent performance targets assigned by standardization committees. Therefore, significant changes are proposed to the network infrastructure to achieve the expected performance levels. Network Function Virtualization, cloud computing and Software Defined Networks are some of the main technologies being utilised to ensure flexible network design, with optimum performance and efficient resource utilization. The aforementioned technologies are shifting the network architecture into service-based rather device-based architecture. In this regard, this thesis provides experimental investigation, design, implementation and evaluation of various multimedia services along with integration design and caching solution for 5G indoor network. The multimedia services are targeting the enhancement of UEs’ Quality of Experience, by exploiting the intelligence offered by the synergy between SDN and NFV technologies, to design and develop new multimedia solutions with improved QoE. The caching solution is designed to achieve a good trade-off between latency reduction and resource utilization that satisfies efficient network performance and resource utilization. The proposed network integration design targets deploying IoRL gNB with its innovative intelligent services. It have successfully achieved lower overhead signalling compared to the traditional network architectures. Whilst all of the proposed solutions have proven to provide enhancement to the system performance, the testing results for the multimedia services showed high QoS performance parameters in the form of zero packet loss due to route switching, very high throughput and 0.03 ms jitter. The caching solution test results provided up to 300% server utilization improvement (based on the deployed scenario) with negligible extra delay cost (0.5ms). As for the proposed integration design, the quantification of the performance enhancement is represented by the amount of the reduced overhead signalling. In the case of Intra-secondary gNB handover within the same Main eNB, the back-haul signalling for the AMF was reduced 100% while the overall overhead signalling is reduced by 50% compared to traditional deployment architecture.European Union’s Horizon 2020 research progra

Automotive Cognitive Access: Towards customized vehicular communication system

The evolution of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Virtualization of mobile Network Functions (NFV) have enabled the new ways of managing mobile access systems and are seen as a major technological foundation of the Fifth Generation (5G) of mobile networks. With the appearance of 5G specifications, the mobile system architecture has the transition from a network of entities to a network of functions. This paradigm shift led to new possibilities and challenges. Existing mobile communication systems rely on closed and inflexible hardware-based architectures both at the access and core network. It implies significant challenges in implementing new techniques to maximize the network capacity, scalability and increasing performance for diverse data services. This work focuses preliminary on the architectural evolutions needed to solve challenges perceived for the next generation of mobile networks. I consider Software defined plus Virtualization featured Mobile Network (S+ MN) architecture as a baseline reference model, aiming at the further improvements to support the access requirements for diverse user groups. I consider an important class of things, vehicles, which needs efficient mobile internet access at both the system and application levels. I identify and describe key requirements of emerging vehicular communications and assess existing standards to determine their limitations. To provide optimized wireless communications for the specific user group, the 5G systems come up with network slicing as a potential solution to create customized networks. Network slicing has the capability to facilitates dynamic and efficient allocation of network resources and support diverse service scenarios and services. A network slice can be broadly defined as an end-to-end logically isolated network that includes end devices as well as access and core network functions. To this effect, I describe the enhanced behaviour of S+ MN architecture for the collection of network resources and details the potential functional grouping provided by S+ MN architecture that paves the way to support automotive slicing. The proposed enhancements support seamless connection mobility addressing the automotive access use case highly mobile environment. I follow the distribution of gateway functions to solve the problem of unnecessary long routes and delays. Exploiting the open SDN capabilities, the proposed S+ NC is able to parallelize the execution of certain control plane messages thus enabling the signalling optimisation. Furthermore, it enables the (Re)selection of efficient data plane paths with implied upper-layer service continuity mechanisms that remove the chains of IP address preservation for session continuity during IP anchor relocation. An implementation setup validates the proposed evolutions, including its core functionalities implemented using the ns-3 network simulator. The proposed slicing scheme has been evaluated through a number of scenarios such as numbers of signalling messages processed by control entities for an intersystem handover procedure relative to current mobile network architecture. I also perform the performance improvement analysis based on simulation results. Furthermore, I experimentally prove the feasibility of using Multipath TCP for connection mobility in intersystem handover scenario. The experiments run over the Linux Kernel implementation of Multipath TCP developed over the last years. I extend the Multipath TCP path management to delegates the management of the data paths according to the application needs. The implementation results have shown that the proposed S+ MN slicing architecture and enhancements achieve benefits in multiple areas, for example improving the mobility control and management, maintaining QoS, smooth handover, session continuity and efficient slice management and orchestration