Introducing mobile edge computing capabilities through distributed 5G Cloud Enabled Small Cells

Current trends in broadband mobile networks are addressed towards the placement of different capabilities at the edge of the mobile network in a centralised way. On one hand, the split of the eNB between baseband processing units and remote radio headers makes it possible to process some of the protocols in centralised premises, likely with virtualised resources. On the other hand, mobile edge computing makes use of processing and storage capabilities close to the air interface in order to deploy optimised services with minimum delay. The confluence of both trends is a hot topic in the definition of future 5G networks. The full centralisation of both technologies in cloud data centres imposes stringent requirements to the fronthaul connections in terms of throughput and latency. Therefore, all those cells with limited network access would not be able to offer these types of services. This paper proposes a solution for these cases, based on the placement of processing and storage capabilities close to the remote units, which is especially well suited for the deployment of clusters of small cells. The proposed cloud-enabled small cells include a highly efficient microserver with a limited set of virtualised resources offered to the cluster of small cells. As a result, a light data centre is created and commonly used for deploying centralised eNB and mobile edge computing functionalities. The paper covers the proposed architecture, with special focus on the integration of both aspects, and possible scenarios of application.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

5G network end-to-end delay measurements for live video streaming

Abstract. Focus of this thesis is in the data transmission delay comparison between Edge server and Cloud server when utilizing either 4G or 5G connectivity. In previous mobile phone network generations for example a multimedia server had to be installed on a Cloud server in the internet. 5G mobile phone network introduces a new concept called Edge server. Edge server is located close to the base station and therefore it is assumed to shorten the data transmission delay between the 5G mobile/client and a server application. Edge server can be used both in 4G and 5G networks. In this thesis first the 5G network and the essential new 5G architecture main design principles are gone through. Next the 5G Test Network that is used as a test environment is described and 5G main modules like Multi-access Edge Computing are introduced. 5G performance is clarified and compared against 4G. Delay testing is done in the 5G Test Network using Hospital Use Case demo. There operating room personnel like doctors and nurses is wearing Augmented Reality glasses and they are streaming their view together with patient status related information to multimedia server residing in 5G Test Network Edge server or in internet cloud. From the multimedia server the video is streamed by for example students, medical experts or consultants in a remote location. As part of the thesis the test system is defined and built based on the Hospital Use Case demo. Test specification is created, and tests are executed according to it. Results are recorded and analysed. Data transmission delays between the video stream originator and multimedia server are measured using Qosium measurement system. Also delay between the multimedia server and the streaming client is measured. Measurements are done for configurations where multimedia server is located at the Edge server and the internet cloud server. Both 4G and 5G connectivity is used for both server locations. When delay measurement results were compared it became clear that Edge server has much shorter data transmission delays compared to the internet cloud server. With 5G connectivity the delay was measured to be around 10 milliseconds for both uplink and downlink. With internet cloud the delays varied between 31 and 45 milliseconds with 5G connection. It can be concluded that from today’s mobile phone networks, 5G network does offer the fastest connection to a server environment by utilizing Edge server.5G verkon viiveen mittaaminen videostriimille. Tiivistelmä. Tämä diplomityö keskittyy vertaamaan datatiedonsiirron eroja reunapalvelimen ja internetin pilvipalvelimen välillä 4G ja 5G matkapuhelinverkossa. Aiempien sukupolvien matkapuhelinverkoissa esimerkiksi multimediapalvelin oli asennettava internetin pilvipalvelimelle. Viidennen sukupolven matkapuhelinverkossa otetaan käyttöön reunapalvelin. Reunapalvelin sijaitsee tukiaseman läheisyydessä ja täten sen oletetaan lyhentävän 5G-päätelaitteen ja palvelimen sovelluksen välistä tiedonsiirtoviivettä. Reunapalvelinta voidaan käyttää sekä neljännen että viidennen sukupolven matkapuhelinverkoissa. Tässä diplomityössä käydään ensin läpi 5G-matkapuhelinverkko ja sen arkkitehtuurin pääsuunnittelukriteerit. Seuraavaksi kuvataan testaamisessa käytettävä 5G-testiverkko ja 5G-verkon tärkeimmät moduulit kuten Multi-access Edge Computing. 5G-verkon suorituskyky selitetään ja sitä verrataan edelliseen 4. sukupolven verkkoon. Viivemittaukset tehdään 5G testiverkossa käyttäen 5G lääketieteen käyttötapauksen demoympäristöä. Siinä operointihuoneen henkilöstöllä, kuten lääkäreillä ja hoitajilla, on yllään lisätyn todellisuuden lasit. Lasit lähettävät henkilön näkymän ja potilaaseen liittyvää tietoa 5G-testiverkon reunapalvelimella tai internetin pilvipalvelimella sijaitsevalle multimediapalvelimelle. Multimediapalvelimelta video striimataan esimerkiksi lääketieteen opiskelijoille, asiantuntijoille tai konsulteille, jotka ovat etäällä lähetyspaikasta. Osana diplomityötä määritellään ja rakennetaan lääketieteen käyttötapauksen demon perustuva testausjärjestelmä. Testispesifikaatio luodaan, testit suoritetaan sen perusteella. Testitulokset tallennetaan ja analysoidaan. Tiedonsiirtoviiveet videolähteen ja multimediapalvelimen välillä mitataan käyttäen Qosium mittausjärjestelmää. Myös multimediapalvelimen ja videostriimin vastaanottajan väliset viiveet mitataan. Mittaukset tehdään konfiguraatiolle, jossa multimediapalvelin on sijoitettu reunapalvelimelle ja konfiguraatiolle, jossa se on sijoitettu internetin pilvipalvelimelle. Sekä 4G että 5G-yhteyttä käytetään molemmille konfiguraatiolle. Kun mittaustuloksia verrataan, käy selväksi, että reunapalvelimella on huomattavasti lyhyempi tiedonsiirtoviive kuin internetin pilvipalvelimella. 5G-yhteydellä mitattu viive oli noin 10 ms sekä ylössyöttö- että alassyöttösuuntaan. Internetin pilvipalvelimella viiveet vaihtelivat 31 ja 45 millisekunnin välillä 5G-yhteydellä. Voidaankin todeta, että nykyisistä matkapuhelinverkoista 5G-verkko tarjoaa nopeimman yhteyden palvelinympäristöön reunapalvelimen avulla

Enabling Edge Computing Using Container Orchestration and Software Defined Networking

With software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN) being increasingly adopted, and Kubernetes becoming the de-facto container orchestration tool, the opportunities for deploying edge-computing applications running over a SD-WAN scenario are vast. In this context, a service discovery function will help developing a dynamic infrastructure where clients are able to seek and find particular services. Service discovery also enables a self-healing network capable of detecting the unavailable services. Most of the research in the service discovery field focuses in the discovery of cloud-based services over software-defined networks (SDN). A lack of research in containerized service discovery over SD-WAN is evident. In this thesis, an in-house service discovery solution that works alongside a container orchestrator for allowing an improved traffic handling and better user experience through containerized service discovery and service requests redirection is developed. First, a proof-of-concept SD-WAN topology was implemented alongside a Kubernetes cluster and the in-house service discovery solution. Next, the implementation's performance is tested based on the time required for discovering whether a service has been created, updated or removed. Finally, improvements in node distance computation, local breakout support and the usage of data plane programmability are discussed

Design, implementation and experimental evaluation of a network-slicing aware mobile protocol stack

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorWith the arrival of new generation mobile networks, we currently observe a paradigm shift, where monolithic network functions running on dedicated hardware are now implemented as software pieces that can be virtualized on general purpose hardware platforms. This paradigm shift stands on the softwarization of network functions and the adoption of virtualization techniques. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) comprises softwarization of network elements and virtualization of these components. It brings multiple advantages: (i) Flexibility, allowing an easy management of the virtual network functions (VNFs) (deploy, start, stop or update); (ii) efficiency, resources can be adequately consumed due to the increased flexibility of the network infrastructure; and (iii) reduced costs, due to the ability of sharing hardware resources. To this end, multiple challenges must be addressed to effectively leverage of all these benefits. Network Function Virtualization envisioned the concept of virtual network, resulting in a key enabler of 5G networks flexibility, Network Slicing. This new paradigm represents a new way to operate mobile networks where the underlying infrastructure is "sliced" into logically separated networks that can be customized to the specific needs of the tenant. This approach also enables the ability of instantiate VNFs at different locations of the infrastructure, choosing their optimal placement based on parameters such as the requirements of the service traversing the slice or the available resources. This decision process is called orchestration and involves all the VNFs withing the same network slice. The orchestrator is the entity in charge of managing network slices. Hands-on experiments on network slicing are essential to understand its benefits and limits, and to validate the design and deployment choices. While some network slicing prototypes have been built for Radio Access Networks (RANs), leveraging on the wide availability of radio hardware and open-source software, there is no currently open-source suite for end-to-end network slicing available to the research community. Similarly, orchestration mechanisms must be evaluated as well to properly validate theoretical solutions addressing diverse aspects such as resource assignment or service composition. This thesis contributes on the study of the mobile networks evolution regarding its softwarization and cloudification. We identify software patterns for network function virtualization, including the definition of a novel mobile architecture that squeezes the virtualization architecture by splitting functionality in atomic functions. Then, we effectively design, implement and evaluate of an open-source network slicing implementation. Our results show a per-slice customization without paying the price in terms of performance, also providing a slicing implementation to the research community. Moreover, we propose a framework to flexibly re-orchestrate a virtualized network, allowing on-the-fly re-orchestration without disrupting ongoing services. This framework can greatly improve performance under changing conditions. We evaluate the resulting performance in a realistic network slicing setup, showing the feasibility and advantages of flexible re-orchestration. Lastly and following the required re-design of network functions envisioned during the study of the evolution of mobile networks, we present a novel pipeline architecture specifically engineered for 4G/5G Physical Layers virtualized over clouds. The proposed design follows two objectives, resiliency upon unpredictable computing and parallelization to increase efficiency in multi-core clouds. To this end, we employ techniques such as tight deadline control, jitter-absorbing buffers, predictive Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request, and congestion control. Our experimental results show that our cloud-native approach attains > 95% of the theoretical spectrum efficiency in hostile environments where stateof- the-art architectures collapse.This work has been supported by IMDEA Networks InstitutePrograma de Doctorado en Ingeniería Telemática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Francisco Valera Pintor.- Secretario: Vincenzo Sciancalepore.- Vocal: Xenofon Fouka

Applying SDN/OpenFlow in Virtualized LTE to support Distributed Mobility Management (DMM)

Distributed Mobility Management (DMM) is a mobility management solution, where the mobility anchors are distributed instead of being centralized. The use of DMM can be applied in cloud-based (virtualized) Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile network environments to (1) provide session continuity to users across personal, local, and wide area networks without interruption and (2) support traffic redirection when a virtualized LTE entity like a virtualized Packet Data Network Gateway (P-GW) running on an virtualization platform is migrated to another virtualization platform and the on-going sessions supported by this P-GW need to be maintained. In this paper we argue that the enabling technology that can efficiently be used for supporting DMM in virtualized LTE systems is the Software Defined Networking (SDN)/OpenFlow technology

Link-Level Access Cloud Architecture Design Based on SDN for 5G Networks

The exponential growth of data traffic and connected devices, and the reduction of latency and costs, are considered major challenges for future mobile communication networks. The satisfaction of these challenges motivates revisiting the architecture of these networks. We propose an SDN-based design of a hierarchical architecture for the 5G packet core. In this article we focus on the design of its access cloud with the goal of providing low latency and scalable Ethernet-like support to terminals and MTC devices including mobility management. We examine and address its challenges in terms of network scalability and support for link-level mobility. We propose a link-level architecture that forwards frames from and to edge network elements (AP and routers) with a label that identifies the APs through which the terminal is reachable. An SDN local controller tracks and updates the users' location information at the edge network elements. Additionally, we propose to delegate in SDN local controllers the handling of non-scalable operations, such as broadcast and multicast messages, and network management procedures.This work is partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (project TIN2013-46223-P), and the Granada Excellence Network of Innovation Laboratories (projects GENIL-PYR-2014-20 and GENIL-PYR-2014-18)

A cloud-enabled small cell architecture in 5G networks for broadcast/multicast services

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The evolution of 5G suggests that communication networks become sufficiently flexible to handle a wide variety of network services from various domains. The virtualization of small cells as envisaged by 5G, allows enhanced mobile edge computing capabilities, thus enabling network service deployment and management near the end user. This paper presents a cloud-enabled small cell architecture for 5G networks developed within the 5G-ESSENCE project. This paper also presents the conformity of the proposed architecture to the evolving 5G radio resource management architecture. Furthermore, it examines the inclusion of an edge enabler to support a variety of virtual network functions in 5G networks. Next, the improvement of specific key performance indicators in a public safety use case is evaluated. Finally, the performance of a 5G enabled evolved multimedia broadcast multicast services service is evaluated.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Multi-access edge computing: A survey

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is a key solution that enables operators to open their networks to new services and IT ecosystems to leverage edge-cloud benefits in their networks and systems. Located in close proximity from the end users and connected devices, MEC provides extremely low latency and high bandwidth while always enabling applications to leverage cloud capabilities as necessary. In this article, we illustrate the integration of MEC into a current mobile networks' architecture as well as the transition mechanisms to migrate into a standard 5G network architecture.We also discuss SDN, NFV, SFC and network slicing as MEC enablers. Then, we provide a state-of-the-art study on the different approaches that optimize the MEC resources and its QoS parameters. In this regard, we classify these approaches based on the optimized resources and QoS parameters (i.e., processing, storage, memory, bandwidth, energy and latency). Finally, we propose an architectural framework for a MEC-NFV environment based on the standard SDN architecture