A novel multipath-transmission supported software defined wireless network architecture

The inflexible management and operation of today\u27s wireless access networks cannot meet the increasingly growing specific requirements, such as high mobility and throughput, service differentiation, and high-level programmability. In this paper, we put forward a novel multipath-transmission supported software-defined wireless network architecture (MP-SDWN), with the aim of achieving seamless handover, throughput enhancement, and flow-level wireless transmission control as well as programmable interfaces. In particular, this research addresses the following issues: 1) for high mobility and throughput, multi-connection virtual access point is proposed to enable multiple transmission paths simultaneously over a set of access points for users and 2) wireless flow transmission rules and programmable interfaces are implemented into mac80211 subsystem to enable service differentiation and flow-level wireless transmission control. Moreover, the efficiency and flexibility of MP-SDWN are demonstrated in the performance evaluations conducted on a 802.11 based-testbed, and the experimental results show that compared to regular WiFi, our proposed MP-SDWN architecture achieves seamless handover and multifold throughput improvement, and supports flow-level wireless transmission control for different applications

Demo: 5G NR, Wi-Fi and LiFi multi-connectivity for Industry 4.0

The 5G-CLARITY project proposes a novel architecture for private 5G networks that converges Wi-Fi 6, 5G NR and LiFi under a common service platform for Industry 4.0. In this demonstration, we deploy the 5G-CLARITY system in a real factory setup and showcase its multi-connectivity framework, which allows to customize aggregation behavior for different devices. We demonstrate two different aggregation modes. First, a capacity aggregation mode that delivers between 200 Mbps and 600 Mbps to mobile devices throughout the factory floor. Second, a latency-sensitive aggregation mode that is used to replace Ethernet connectivity for a production line achieving endto-end delays below 10 ms

Towards versatile access networks (Chapter 3)

Compared to its previous generations, the 5th generation (5G) cellular network features an additional type of densification, i.e., a large number of active antennas per access point (AP) can be deployed. This technique is known as massive multipleinput multiple-output (mMIMO) [1]. Meanwhile, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) evolution, e.g., in channel state information (CSI) enhancement, and also on the study of a larger number of orthogonal demodulation reference signal (DMRS) ports for MU-MIMO, was one of the Release 18 of 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP Rel-18) work item. This release (3GPP Rel-18) package approval, in the fourth quarter of 2021, marked the start of the 5G Advanced evolution in 3GPP. The other items in 3GPP Rel-18 are to study and add functionality in the areas of network energy savings, coverage, mobility support, multicast broadcast services, and positionin

A Survey on Handover Management in Mobility Architectures

This work presents a comprehensive and structured taxonomy of available techniques for managing the handover process in mobility architectures. Representative works from the existing literature have been divided into appropriate categories, based on their ability to support horizontal handovers, vertical handovers and multihoming. We describe approaches designed to work on the current Internet (i.e. IPv4-based networks), as well as those that have been devised for the "future" Internet (e.g. IPv6-based networks and extensions). Quantitative measures and qualitative indicators are also presented and used to evaluate and compare the examined approaches. This critical review provides some valuable guidelines and suggestions for designing and developing mobility architectures, including some practical expedients (e.g. those required in the current Internet environment), aimed to cope with the presence of NAT/firewalls and to provide support to legacy systems and several communication protocols working at the application layer

QualitySDN: Improving Video Quality using MPTCP and Segment Routing in SDN/NFV

In this paper, we present a novel QoE-aware SDN/NFV system by utilizing and integrating Multi-path TCP (MPTCP) and Segment Routing (SR) paradigms. We propose a QoE-based Multipath Source Routing (QoEMuSoRo) algorithm that achieve an optimized end-to-end QoE for the end-user by forwarding MPTCP subflows using SR over SDN/NFV. We implement and validate the proposed scheme through DASH experiments using Mininet and POX controller. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal, we compare the performance of our QoE-aware MPTCP SDN/NFV SR-based proposal, the MPTCP and regular TCP in terms of system throughput and the end-user's QoE. Preliminary results shows that, our approach outperforms the other aforementioned methods

QoE-Centric Control and Management of Multimedia Services in Software Defined and Virtualized Networks

Multimedia services consumption has increased tremendously since the deployment of 4G/LTE networks. Mobile video services (e.g., YouTube and Mobile TV) on smart devices are expected to continue to grow with the emergence and evolution of future networks such as 5G. The end user’s demand for services with better quality from service providers has triggered a trend towards Quality of Experience (QoE) - centric network management through efficient utilization of network resources. However, existing network technologies are either unable to adapt to diverse changing network conditions or limited in available resources. This has posed challenges to service providers for provisioning of QoE-centric multimedia services. New networking solutions such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) can provide better solutions in terms of QoE control and management of multimedia services in emerging and future networks. The features of SDN, such as adaptability, programmability and cost-effectiveness make it suitable for bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications such as live video streaming, 3D/HD video and video gaming. However, the delivery of multimedia services over SDN/NFV networks to achieve optimized QoE, and the overall QoE-centric network resource management remain an open question especially in the advent development of future softwarized networks. The work in this thesis intends to investigate, design and develop novel approaches for QoE-centric control and management of multimedia services (with a focus on video streaming services) over software defined and virtualized networks. First, a video quality management scheme based on the traffic intensity under Dynamic Adaptive Video Streaming over HTTP (DASH) using SDN is developed. The proposed scheme can mitigate virtual port queue congestion which may cause buffering or stalling events during video streaming, thus, reducing the video quality. A QoE-driven resource allocation mechanism is designed and developed for improving the end user’s QoE for video streaming services. The aim of this approach is to find the best combination of network node functions that can provide an optimized QoE level to end-users through network node cooperation. Furthermore, a novel QoE-centric management scheme is proposed and developed, which utilizes Multipath TCP (MPTCP) and Segment Routing (SR) to enhance QoE for video streaming services over SDN/NFV-based networks. The goal of this strategy is to enable service providers to route network traffic through multiple disjointed bandwidth-satisfying paths and meet specific service QoE guarantees to the end-users. Extensive experiments demonstrated that the proposed schemes in this work improve the video quality significantly compared with the state-of-the- art approaches. The thesis further proposes the path protections and link failure-free MPTCP/SR-based architecture that increases survivability, resilience, availability and robustness of future networks. The proposed path protection and dynamic link recovery scheme achieves a minimum time to recover from a failed link and avoids link congestion in softwarized networks

QoEMultiSDN: Management of Multimedia Services using MPTCP/SR in Softwarized and Virtualized Networks

5G networks are set to empower new user experiences for multimedia streaming services by offering high data rates and low latency. The rapid growth of multimedia services, such as video streaming services over future softwarized 5G networks, poses great challenges for both service providers and network operators regarding service provisioning with high Quality of Experience (QoE). Network evolution towards Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) provides new opportunities to develop innovative ways to address the challenges. In this paper, we present a novel QoE-aware management scheme based on SDN/NFV by utilizing Multi-Path-TCP/Segment-Routing (MPTCP/SR) techniques and exploring information from both the network and client. The new scheme, entitled QoEMultiSDN, provides an optimized end-to-end QoE for multimedia service delivery. QoEMultiSDN employs two novel strategies to achieve this: (a) QoE-based multisource routing and QoE optimization, and (b) multipath protection and dynamic link-failure-free mechanisms. We implemented the proposed scheme over SDN through Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) experiments using Mininet, POX and OpenDaylight controllers, and compared its performance with MPTCP and regular TCP. Experimental results indicate that the QoEMultiSDN outperforms others in terms of system throughput, failure recovery time and the QoE of the end-user.Science Foundation IrelandInsight Research Centre2021-02-24 JG: broken PDF replacedUpdate citation details during checkdate report - A

Enhancing Networks via Virtualized Network Functions

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2019. Major: Computer Science. Advisor: Zhi-Li Zhang. 1 computer file (PDF); xii, 116 pages.In an era of ubiquitous connectivity, various new applications, network protocols, and online services (e.g., cloud services, distributed machine learning, cryptocurrency) have been constantly creating, underpinning many of our daily activities. Emerging demands for networks have led to growing traffic volume and complexity of modern networks, which heavily rely on a wide spectrum of specialized network functions (e.g., Firewall, Load Balancer) for performance, security, etc. Although (virtual) network functions (VNFs) are widely deployed in networks, they are instantiated in an uncoordinated manner failing to meet growing demands of evolving networks. In this dissertation, we argue that networks equipped with VNFs can be designed in a fashion similar to how computer software is today programmed. By following the blueprint of joint design over VNFs, networks can be made more effective and efficient. We begin by presenting Durga, a system fusing wide area network (WAN) virtualization on gateway with local area network (LAN) virtualization technology. It seamlessly aggregates multiple WAN links into a (virtual) big pipe for better utilizing WAN links and also provides fast fail-over thus minimizing application performance degradation under WAN link failures. Without the support from LAN virtualization technology, existing solutions fail to provide high reliability and performance required by today’s enterprise applications. We then study a newly standardized protocol, Multipath TCP (MPTCP), adopted in Durga, showing the challenge of associating MPTCP subflows in network for the purpose of boosting throughput and enhancing security. Instead of designing a customized solution in every VNF to conquer this common challenge (making VNFs aware of MPTCP), we implement an online service named SAMPO to be readily integrated into VNFs. Following the same principle, we make an attempt to take consensus as a service in software-defined networks. We illustrate new network failure scenarios that are not explicitly handled by existing consensus algorithms such as Raft, thereby severely affecting their correct or efficient operations. Finally, we re-consider VNFs deployed in a network from the perspective of network administrators. A global view of deployed VNFs brings new opportunities for performance optimization over the network, and thus we explore parallelism in service function chains composing a sequence of VNFs that are typically traversed in-order by data flows