A Framework for Handling Heterogeneous M2M Traffic

Sensors, actuators and devices that compose the Internet of Things (IoT) world are becoming more diverse every day in terms of capabilities and amount of generated traffic. Current Machine-to-Machine (M2 M) communication standardization efforts try to formalize the interfaces between M2 M nodes based on the perspective of exchanging uniform small data size with low sampling rate only. However, many devices will require support for more heterogeneous traffic patterns, with different network capacity. This paper introduces a communication concept for supporting gracefully a heterogeneous set of devices. This paper analyses the effect of traffic size in M2 M transactions and propose a concept to adapt gracefully to support heterogeneous traffic patterns in M2 M systems. To prove its feasibility, the concept is exemplified on top of oneM2 M architecture and implemented as part of the Fraunhofer FOKUS OpenMTC toolkit. Additionally, the concept was applied to a deployment in an E-Health pilot and practical measurements during functional evaluation are reported

Organic 6G Networks: Vision, Requirements, and Research Approaches

Building upon the significant number of already published 6G position papers, we are concentrating on the immediate next steps toward turning the research vision of software-centric networks into reality. This is accomplished, by summarizing and assessing the various requirements documents and providing a significant number of specific research directions and approaches in order to fulfill them. This article complements the existing body of work, by focusing on future core networks and their infrastructures, yet maintaining a system-level perspective and progressing in the direction of scoping key technology elements and providing high-potential research approaches for them. Additionally, we rigorously discuss the impact that different technological advancements have on the other parts of the system, to provide a coherent, end-to-end network understanding. This is in strong contrast to current approaches, where from the challenges, each research direction becomes independent and, thus, its advances are potentially cancelled out by the next technology in the chain. By maintaining this system perspective, the adoption of the different technologies becomes easier, as they are developed in unison. To address the requirements in a coherent, holistic, and unified way, we extend our high-level architecture concept named “Organic 6G Networks” towards a comprehensive end-to-end system. A holistic software-centric system, adapting the latest software development advancements from the IT industry. The Organic 6G network provides support for building a streamlined software network architecture and offers the next step on the path towards the development and specification of future mobile networks

Toward a fully cloudified mobile network infrastructure

Cloud computing enables the on-demand delivery of resources for a multitude of services and gives the opportunity for small agile companies to compete with large industries. In the telco world, cloud computing is currently mostly used by mobile network operators (MNO) for hosting non-critical support services and selling cloud services such as applications and data storage. MNOs are investigating the use of cloud computing to deliver key telecommunication services in the access and core networks. Without this, MNOs lose the opportunities of both combining this with over-the-top (OTT) and value-added services to their fundamental service offerings and leveraging cost-effective commodity hardware. Being able to leverage cloud computing technology effectively for the telco world is the focus of mobile cloud networking (MCN). This paper presents the key results of MCN integrated project that includes its architecture advancements, prototype implementation, and evaluation. Results show the efficiency and the simplicity that a MNO can deploy and manage the complete service lifecycle of fully cloudified, composed services that combine OTT/IT- and mobile-network-based services running on commodity hardware. The extensive performance evaluation of MCN using two key proof-of-concept scenarios that compose together many services to deliver novel converged elastic, on-demand mobile-based but innovative OTT services proves the feasibility of such fully virtualized deployments. Results show that it is beneficial to extend cloud computing to telco usage and run fully cloudified mobile-network-based systems with clear advantages and new service opportunities for MNOs and end-users

Towards continuously programmable networks

While programmability has been a feature of network devices for a long time, the past decade has seen significant enhancement of programming capability for network functions and nodes, spearheaded by the ongoing trend towards softwarization and cloudification. In his context, new design principles and technology enablers are introduced (Section 7.2) which reside at: (i) service/application provisioning level, (ii) network and resource management level, as well as (iii) network deployment and connectivity level

Selbstanpassungsfähige IP Steuerung bei Carrier-Grade Mobilfunknetzen

Der aktuelle Trend bei Mobilfunknetzen besteht im parallelen Einsatz einer großen Zahl von heterogenen Zugangsnetztechniken und Kernnetzfunktionen, um eine höhere Kapazität zu erreichen und so den Kommunikationsbedürfnissen einer großen Zahl von angeschlossenen Endgeräten gerecht zu werden. Allerdings ist das Mobilfunknetz darauf ausgerichtet, alle Teilnehmer in Bezug auf Mobilitätsbetreuung, Teilnehmerinformationen, Ressourcenzuteilung, sowie Rechnungslegung gleich zu behandeln. Die aktuelle, durch den großen Anstieg der angeschlossenen Geräte bestärkte Architektur, erfordert das Erreichen eines neuen Maßes an Skalierbarkeit, das nicht realisierbar ist. Die vorliegende Dissertation stellt einen Rahmen Namens SelfFit bereit, für eine teilnehmerorientierte, automatische Anpassung der Konnektivität aus der Perspektive des Kernnetzwerks zur Zugangsnetzauswahl, zur effizienten Nutzung der Kernnetzressourcen und der Datenpfadanpassung zur Verfügung, und geht damit auf das bestehende Skalierbarkeitsproblem ein. In diesen drei Richtungen wurde ein Satz von fünf innovativen Selbstanpassungskonzepten für dynamische Netzwerk-Infrastrukturen auf Betreiberniveau entwickelt. Die Konzepte wurden sofort beispielhaft als Ergänzung zur aktuellen 3GPP Evolved Packet Core (EPC)-Architektur eingesetzt, um sich in einer normalen, praxisnahen Einsatzarchitektur zu bewähren. Zusätzlich wurde die Funktionalität prototypisch auf dem Fraunhofer-FOKUS-Open-EPC-Instrumentarium aufgesetzt und auf vollständigen realistischen Prüfstandaufstellungen bewertet, wodurch sichtbar wurde, wie sie in der Praxis als Teil zukünftiger Kernnetzwerk-Produkte realisiert werden könnte. Für die Beurteilung der Grenzen der bestehenden Technologien sowie der vorgeschlagenen Lösungen wurde ein strenger generischer Bewertungsrahmen entwickelt, einschließlich der Anforderungsdefinition, eines vereinfachten Netzwerkmodells, qualitativer Kennzahlen zur Beurteilung heterogener Technologien, sowie vergleichender qualitativer Prüfstandmessungen. Der Bewertungsrahmen liefert dem Leser einen klaren Beweis des in der vorliegenden Dissertation enthaltenen Innovationswerts, von der innovativen Idee bis zur Konstruktion des Vorprodukt-Prototyps.The current trend in wireless operator networks is towards deploying in parallel a large number of heterogeneous access network technologies and core network functions in order to reach a higher capacity and thus accommodating the communication needs of a high number of connected devices. However, the wireless operator network is designed for handling uniformly all subscribers from the perspective of mobility management, subscription information, resource reservation and charging. The current architecture corroborated with a high increase of connected devices requires a new level of scalability to be attained which is not realizable. This dissertation provides a framework, named SelfFit, for subscriber oriented automatic adaptation of connectivity from core network perspective for access network selection, efficient usage of the core network resources and the data path adaptation, addressing the previous scalability challenge. In these three directions, a set of five innovative self-adaptation concepts for dynamic carrier grade network infrastructures was developed. The concepts were immediately exemplified as additions to the current 3GPP Evolved Packet Core (EPC) architecture, for proving their value in a standard, real-life deployed architecture. Additionally, the functionality was prototyped on top of the Fraunhofer FOKUS OpenEPC toolkit and evaluated on complete realistic testbed setups, providing a practical view on how it can be realized as part of future core network products. For assessing the limitations of existing technologies as well as of the proposed solutions, a rigorous generic evaluation framework was developed including the requirements definition, a simplified network model, qualitative metrics for assessing heterogeneous technologies, and comparative qualitative testbed measurements. The evaluation framework enables the reader to grasp a clear evidence of the innovation value included in this dissertation from innovative idea to pre-product prototyping

A Study of 5G Edge-Central Core Network Split Options

With the wide adoption of edge compute infrastructures, an opportunity has arisen to deploy part of the functionality at the edge of the network to enable a localized connectivity service. This development is also supported by the adoption of “on-premises” local 5G networks addressing the needs of different vertical industries and by new standardized infrastructure services such as Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). This article introduces a comprehensive set of deployment options for the 5G network and its network management, complementing MEC with the connectivity service and addressing different classes of use cases and applications. We have also practically implemented and tested the newly introduced options in the form of slices within a standard-based testbed. Our performed validation proved their feasibility and gave a realistic perspective on their impact. The qualitative assessment of the connectivity service gives a comprehensive overview on which solution would be viable to be deployed for each vertical market and for each large-scale operator situation, making a step forward towards automated distributed 5G deployments

A Study of 5G Edge-Central Core Network Split Options

With the wide adoption of edge compute infrastructures, an opportunity has arisen to deploy part of the functionality at the edge of the network to enable a localized connectivity service. This development is also supported by the adoption of “on-premises” local 5G networks addressing the needs of different vertical industries and by new standardized infrastructure services such as Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). This article introduces a comprehensive set of deployment options for the 5G network and its network management, complementing MEC with the connectivity service and addressing different classes of use cases and applications. We have also practically implemented and tested the newly introduced options in the form of slices within a standard-based testbed. Our performed validation proved their feasibility and gave a realistic perspective on their impact. The qualitative assessment of the connectivity service gives a comprehensive overview on which solution would be viable to be deployed for each vertical market and for each large-scale operator situation, making a step forward towards automated distributed 5G deployments