Optimal Virtualized Inter-Tenant Resource Sharing for Device-to-Device Communications in 5G Networks

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is expected to enable a number of new services and applications in future mobile networks and has attracted significant research interest over the last few years. Remarkably, little attention has been placed on the issue of D2D communication for users belonging to different operators. In this paper, we focus on this aspect for D2D users that belong to different tenants (virtual network operators), assuming virtualized and programmable future 5G wireless networks. Under the assumption of a cross-tenant orchestrator, we show that significant gains can be achieved in terms of network performance by optimizing resource sharing from the different tenants, i.e., slices of the substrate physical network topology. To this end, a sum-rate optimization framework is proposed for optimal sharing of the virtualized resources. Via a wide site of numerical investigations, we prove the efficacy of the proposed solution and the achievable gains compared to legacy approaches.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Networking Solutions for Integrated Heterogeneous Wireless Ecosystem

As wireless communications technology is steadily evolving to improve the offered connectivity levels, additional research on emerging network architectures is becoming timely to understand the applicability of both traditional and novel networking solutions. This chapter concentrates on the utilization of cloud computing techniques to construct feasible system prototypes and demonstrators within the rapidly maturing heterogeneous wireless ecosystem. Our first solution facilitates cooperative radio resource management in heterogeneous networks. The second solution enables assisted direct connectivity between proximate users. The contents of the chapter outline our corresponding research and development efforts as well as summarize the major experiences and lessons learned

An Open Internet of Things System Architecture Based on Software-Defined Device

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.The Internet of Things(IoT) connects more and more devices and supports an ever-growing diversity of applications. The heterogeneity of the cross-industry and cross-platform device resources is one of the main challenges to realize the unified management and information sharing, ultimately the large-scale uptake of the IoT. Inspired by software-defined networking(SDN), we propose the concept of software-defined device(SDD) and further elaborate its definition and operational mechanism from the perspective of cyber-physical mapping. Based on the device-as-a-software concept, we develop an open Internet of Things system architecture which decouples upper-level applications from the underlying physical devices through the SDD mechanism. A logically centralized controller is designed to conveniently manage physical devices and flexibly provide the device discovery service and the device control interfaces for various application requests. We also describe an application use scenario which illustrates that the SDD-based system architecture can implement the unified management, sharing, reusing, recombining and modular customization of device resources in multiple applications, and the ubiquitous IoT applications can be interconnected and intercommunicated on the shared physical devices

Defining and Surveying Wireless Link Virtualization and Wireless Network Virtualization

Virtualization is a topic of great interest in the area of mobile and wireless communication systems. However, the term virtualization is used in an inexact manner which makes it difficult to compare and contrast work that has been carried out to date. The purpose of this paper is twofold. In the first place, this paper develops a formal theory for defining virtualization. In the second instance, this theory is used as a way of surveying a body of work in the field of wireless link virtualization, a subspace of wireless network virtualization. The formal theory provides a means for distinguishing work that should be classed as resource allocation as distinct from virtualization. It also facilitates a further classification of the representation level at which the virtualization occurs, which makes comparison of work more meaningful. This paper provides a comprehensive survey and highlights gaps in the research that make for fruitful future work

Antenna allocation and pricing in virtualized massive MIMO networks via Stackelberg game

We study a resource allocation problem for the uplink of a virtualized massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, where the antennas at the base station are priced and virtualized among the service providers (SPs). The mobile network operator (MNO) who owns the infrastructure decides the price per antenna, and a Stackelberg game is formulated for the net profit maximization of the MNO, while minimum rate requirements of SPs are satisfied. To solve the bi-level optimization problem of the MNO, we first derive the closed-form best responses of the SPs with respect to the pricing strategies of the MNO, such that the problem of the MNO can be reduced to a single-level optimization. Then, via transformations and approximations, we cast the MNO’s problem with integer constraints into a signomial geometric program (SGP), and we propose an iterative algorithm based on the successive convex approximation (SCA) to solve the SGP. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has performance close to the global optimum. Moreover, the interactions between the MNO and SPs in different scenarios are explored via simulations

Software-defined device-to-device (D2D) communications in virtual wireless networks with imperfect network state information (NSI)

Software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) are a promising system architecture and control mechanism for future networks. Although some works have been done on wireless SDN and NFV, recent advancements in device-to-device (D2D) communications are largely ignored in this novel framework. In this paper, we study the integration of D2D communication in the framework of SDN and NFV. An inherent challenge in supporting software-defined D2D is the imperfectness of network state information, including channel state information (CSI) and queuing state information, in virtual wireless (QSI) networks. To address this challenge, we formulate the resource sharing problem in this framework as a discrete stochastic optimization problem and develop discrete stochastic approximation algorithms to solve this problem. Such algorithms can reduce the computational complexity compared with exhaustive search while achieving satisfactory performance. Both the static wireless channel and time-varying channels are considered. Extensive simulations show that users can benefit from both wireless network virtualization and software-defined D2D communications, and our proposed scheme can achieve considerable performance gains in both system throughput and user utility under practical n