Cloud technologies for flexible 5G radio access networks

The evolution toward 5G mobile networks will be characterized by an increasing number of wireless devices, increasing device and service complexity, and the requirement to access mobile services ubiquitously. Two key enablers will allow the realization of the vision of 5G: very dense deployments and centralized processing. This article discusses the challenges and requirements in the design of 5G mobile networks based on these two key enablers. It discusses how cloud technologies and flexible functionality assignment in radio access networks enable network densification and centralized operation of the radio access network over heterogeneous backhaul networks. The article describes the fundamental concepts, shows how to evolve the 3GPP LTE architecture, and outlines the expected benefits.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement no. 317941-project iJOIN, http://www.ict-ijoin.eu.Publicad

Energy efficiency benefits of RAN-as-a-service concept for a cloud-based 5G mobile network infrastructure

This paper focuses on energy efficiency aspects and related benefits of radio-access-network-as-a-service (RANaaS) implementation (using commodity hardware) as architectural evolution of LTE-advanced networks toward 5G infrastructure. RANaaS is a novel concept introduced recently, which enables the partial centralization of RAN functionalities depending on the actual needs as well as on network characteristics. In the view of future definition of 5G systems, this cloud-based design is an important solution in terms of efficient usage of network resources. The aim of this paper is to give a vision of the advantages of the RANaaS, to present its benefits in terms of energy efficiency and to propose a consistent system-level power model as a reference for assessing innovative functionalities toward 5G systems. The incremental benefits through the years are also discussed in perspective, by considering technological evolution of IT platforms and the increasing matching between their capabilities and the need for progressive virtualization of RAN functionalities. The description is complemented by an exemplary evaluation in terms of energy efficiency, analyzing the achievable gains associated with the RANaaS paradigm

EVALITA Evaluation of NLP and Speech Tools for Italian - December 17th, 2020

Welcome to EVALITA 2020! EVALITA is the evaluation campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. EVALITA is an initiative of the Italian Association for Computational Linguistics (AILC, http://www.ai-lc.it) and it is endorsed by the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AIxIA, http://www.aixia.it) and the Italian Association for Speech Sciences (AISV, http://www.aisv.it)

Early trans-plasma membrane responses to Tobacco mosaic virus infection

Early trans-plasma membrane behavior after in vivo mechanical inoculation of Nicotiana tabacum with Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) was investigated and compared to virus quantification in leaf tissues. To identify early events related to virus/host interaction, the systemic virus TMV was used to infect lower leaves and tests were carried out on upper leaves which were not directly infected. Non-invasive microelectrodes were used to estimate trans-plasma membrane electron transport and membrane potential after artificial inoculum of virus, monitoring the plant for the following 15 days. Virus infection was assessed by ELISA and quantified by quantitative RT-PCR. Collected data showed that after 2-day post-inoculation (dpi), TMV was able to modify membrane parameters: transient hyperpolarization of trans-membrane potential was observed until 10 dpi, while redox activity in infected samples was higher compared to control until end of tests. Conversely, ELISA diagnostic test was not able to reveal the virus presence in tobacco leaves until 6 dpi, while leaf symptoms were manifested after 13 dpi

Energy Efficiency Benefits of RAN-as-a-Service Concept for a Cloud-Based 5G Mobile Network Infrastructure

This paper focuses on energy efficiency aspects and related benefits of radio-access-network-as-a-service (RANaaS) implementation (using commodity hardware) as architectural evolution of LTE-advanced networks toward 5G infrastructure. RANaaS is a novel concept introduced recently, which enables the partial centralization of RAN functionalities depending on the actual needs as well as on network characteristics. In the view of future definition of 5G systems, this cloud-based design is an important solution in terms of efficient usage of network resources. The aim of this paper is to give a vision of the advantages of the RANaaS, to present its benefits in terms of energy efficiency and to propose a consistent system-level power model as a reference for assessing innovative functionalities toward 5G systems. The incremental benefits through the years are also discussed in perspective, by considering technological evolution of IT platforms and the increasing matching between their capabilities and the need for progressive virtualization of RAN functionalities. The description is complemented by an exemplary evaluation in terms of energy efficiency, analyzing the achievable gains associated with the RANaaS paradigm

Combined Effect of Cadmium and Lead on Durum Wheat

Cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) are two toxic heavy metals (HMs) whose presence in soil is generally low. However, industrial and agricultural activities in recent years have significantly raised their levels, causing progressive accumulations in plant edible tissues, and stimulating research in this field. Studies on toxic metals are commonly focused on a single metal, but toxic metals occur simultaneously. The understanding of the mechanisms of interaction between HMs during uptake is important to design agronomic or genetic strategies to limit contamination of crops. To study the single and combined effect of Cd and Pb on durum wheat, a hydroponic experiment was established to examine the accumulation of the two HMs. Moreover, the molecular mechanisms activated in the roots were investigated paying attention to transcription factors (bHLH family), heavy metal transporters and genes involved in the biosynthesis of metal chelators (nicotianamine and mugineic acid). Cd and Pb are accumulated following different molecular strategies by durum wheat plants, even if the two metals interact with each other influencing their respective uptake and translocation. Finally, we demonstrated that some genes (bHLH 29, YSL2, ZIF1, ZIFL1, ZIFL2, NAS2 and NAAT) were induced in the durum wheat roots only in response to Cd

Designing the 5G network infrastructure: a flexible and reconfigurable architecture based on context and content information

Abstract 5G networks will have to offer extremely high volumes of content, compared to those of today’s. Moreover, they will have to support heterogeneous traffics, including machine-to-machine, generated by a massive volume of Internet-of-Things devices. Traffic demands will be variable in time and space. In this work, we argue that all this can be achieved in a cost-effective way if the network is flexible and reconfigurable. We present the Flex5Gware network architecture, designed to meet the above requirements. Moreover, we discuss the links between flexibility and reconfigurability, on the one side, and context awareness and content awareness, on the other; we show how two of the building blocks of the Flex5Gware architecture, namely on-the-fly MAC reconfiguration and dynamic multi-cell coordinated resource scheduling, can leverage context and content information to make reconfiguration decisions. Our evaluation, conducted by both prototyping and simulation, show that this brings significant benefits in terms of improved coexistence of heterogeneous access networks and reduced latency. We terminate our paper by discussing how the Flex5Gware architecture aims at influencing future system standardization and leveraging the benefits of some key 5G networking enablers described in the paper