Modeling Profit of Sliced 5G Networks for Advanced Network Resource Management and Slice Implementation

The core innovation in future 5G cellular networksnetwork slicing, aims at providing a flexible and efficient framework of network organization and resource management. The revolutionary network architecture based on slices, makes most of the current network cost models obsolete, as they estimate the expenditures in a static manner. In this paper, a novel methodology is proposed, in which a value chain in sliced networks is presented. Based on the proposed value chain, the profits generated by different slices are analyzed, and the task of network resource management is modeled as a multiobjective optimization problem. Setting strong assumptions, this optimization problem is analyzed starting from a simple ideal scenario. By removing the assumptions step-by-step, realistic but complex use cases are approached. Through this progressive analysis, technical challenges in slice implementation and network optimization are investigated under different scenarios. For each challenge, some potentially available solutions are suggested, and likely applications are also discussed

SymbioCity: Smart Cities for Smarter Networks

The "Smart City" (SC) concept revolves around the idea of embodying cutting-edge ICT solutions in the very fabric of future cities, in order to offer new and better services to citizens while lowering the city management costs, both in monetary, social, and environmental terms. In this framework, communication technologies are perceived as subservient to the SC services, providing the means to collect and process the data needed to make the services function. In this paper, we propose a new vision in which technology and SC services are designed to take advantage of each other in a symbiotic manner. According to this new paradigm, which we call "SymbioCity", SC services can indeed be exploited to improve the performance of the same communication systems that provide them with data. Suggestive examples of this symbiotic ecosystem are discussed in the paper. The dissertation is then substantiated in a proof-of-concept case study, where we show how the traffic monitoring service provided by the London Smart City initiative can be used to predict the density of users in a certain zone and optimize the cellular service in that area.Comment: 14 pages, submitted for publication to ETT Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologie

CN2F: A Cloud-Native Cellular Network Framework

Upcoming 5G and Beyond 5G (B5G) cellular networks aim to improve the efficiency and flexibility of mobile networks by incorporating various technologies, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), and Network Slicing (NS). In this paper, we share our findings, accompanied by a comprehensive online codebase, about the best practice of using different open-source projects in order to realize a flexible testbed for academia and industrial Research and Development (R&D) activities on the future generation of cellular networks. In particular, a Cloud-Native Cellular Network Framework (CN2F) is presented which uses OpenAirInterface's codebase to generate cellular Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) and deploys Kubernetes to disperse and manage them among some worker nodes. Moreover, CN2F leverages ONOS and Mininet to emulate the effect of the IP transport networks in the fronthaul and backhaul of real cellular networks. In this paper, we also showcase two use cases of CN2F to demonstrate the importance of Edge Computing (EC) and the capability of Radio Access Network (RAN) slicing