A performance evaluation framework of a rate-controlled MPEG video transmission over UMTS networks

UMTS is designed to offer high bandwidth radio access with QoS assurances for multimedia communications. In particular, real-time video communications services are expected to become a successful experience under UMTS networks. In this context, a video transmission service can be designed over the basis that UMTS can provide either a constant bit rate data channel or a dynamic variable bit rate data channel adapted to load conditions. In this latter approach, which is more efficient for both the user and the service provider, multimedia sources have to be timely designed in order to adapt their output rate to the instantaneous allowed channel rate. The target of this paper is to define an analytical model of adaptive real-time video sources in a UMTS network where system resources are dynamically shared among active users. © 2007 IEEE

A First Look at Real Multipath TCP Traffic

Abstract. Multipath TCP is a new TCP extension that attracts a grow-ing interest from both researchers and industry. It enables hosts to send data over several interfaces or paths and has use cases on smartphones, datacenters or dual-stack hosts. We provide the first analysis of the oper-ation of Multipath TCP on a public Internet server based on a one-week long packet trace. We analyse the main new features of Multipath TCP, namely the utilisation of subflows, the address advertisement mechanism, the data transfers and the reinjections and the connection release mech-anisms. Our results confirm that Multipath TCP operates correctly over the real Internet, despite the presence of middleboxes and that it is used over very heterogeneous paths.

Greening the Airwaves with Collaborating Mobile Network Operators

Base station sharing is currently considered one of the most promising solutions for reducing the energy consumption costs of cellular networks. This paper presents a game theoretic framework for the study of such cooperative solutions where different mobile network operators (MNOs) decide to switch off subsets of their base stations during off-peak hours and roam their traffic to the remaining stations. The solution is based on a detailed optimization framework that determines exactly which base stations should remain active and how much traffic each one of them should serve, so as to maximize the aggregate energy savings. Accordingly, using the axiomatic Shapley value rule, it is determined how the benefits from the cooperation, i.e., the cost savings, should be dispersed among the cooperating MNOs. It is proved that this coalitional game with transferrable utilities has a nonempty core, and thus there exists a cooperation solution that incentivizes the participation of all operators. Moreover, using a thorough numerical analysis, it is shown that the benefits achieved with the implementation of the cooperation strategy depend mainly on the power consumption characteristics of the MNOs, which in turn are related to the number, type, and technology of their base stations. Overall, the energy savings are found to be most sensitive to the technology of the used base stations, and more precisely to the no-load base station energy consumption which defines the energy waste in a network. © 2002-2012 IEEE

An overview of energy-efficient base station management techniques

Cellular networks have been traditionally dimensioned to fulfill the desired quality of service (QoS) requirements at all times, and consequently their deployment has been planned to meet the expected peak of the user demand. However, with the user demand recently increasing at exponential pace, concerns about the cellular networks energy consumption have been raised. In response, energy-efficient resource management schemes have been proposed, which take into account energy consumption, and control how much of the network infrastructure is actually needed at different times, and how much can be temporarily powered off to cut energy consumption. Since most of the energy consumed in cellular networks is used by base stations (BSs), algorithms for managing BSs seem to be the most urgent development to achieve energy-efficient operation. This paper provides a quick overview of the BS management techniques that were recently proposed for cellular networks. In addition, an outlook on real implementation aspects, including current commercial products, and trends in the development of energy-efficient hardware is also given. © 2013 IEEE

Dynamic resource provisioning for energy efficiency in wireless access networks: A survey and an outlook

Traditionally, energy efficiency aspects have been included in the wireless access network design space only in the context of power control aimed at interference mitigation and for the increase of the terminal battery lifetime. Energy consumption of network components has also, for a long time, not been considered an issue, neither in equipment design nor in network planning and management. However, in recent years, with the user demand increasing at nearly exponential pace and margins rapidly shrinking, concerns about energy efficiency have been raised, with the objective of reducing network operational costs (not to mention the environmental issues). Installing more energy-efficient hardware does not seem to fully solve the problem, since wireless access networks are almost invariably (over)provisioned with respect to the peak user demand. This means that efficient resource management schemes, which are capable of controlling how much of the network infrastructure is actually needed and which parts can be temporarily powered off to save energy, can be extremely effective and provide quite large cost reductions. Considering that most of the energy in wireless access networks is consumed in the radio part, dynamic provisioning of wireless access network resources is crucial to achieving energy-efficient operation. The consensus on this approach in the research community has been wide in the last few years, and a large number of solutions have been proposed. In this paper, we survey the most important proposals, considering the two most common wireless access technologies, namely, cellular and WLAN. The main features of the proposed solutions are analyzed and compared, with an outlook on their applicability in typical network scenarios that also include cooperation between both access technologies. Moreover, we provide an overview of the practical implementation aspects that must be addressed to achieve truly energy-efficient wireless access networks, including current standardization work, and trends in the development of energy-efficient hardware. © 2014 IEEE