A software-defined networking solution for interconnecting network functions in service-based architectures

Mobile core networks handle critical control functions for delivering services in modern cellular networks. Traditional point-to-point architectures, where network functions are directly connected through standardized interfaces, are being substituted by service-based architectures (SBAs), where core functionalities are finer-grained microservices decoupled from the underlying infrastructure. In this way, network functions and services can be distributed, with scaling and fail-over mechanisms, and can be dynamically deployed, updated, or removed to support slicing. A myriad of network functions can be deployed or removed according to traffic flows, thereby increasing the complexity of connection management. In this context, 3GPP Release 16 defines the service communication proxy (SCP) as a unified communication interface for a set of network functions. In this paper, we propose a novel software-defined networking (SDN)-based solution with the same role for a service mesh architecture where network functions can be deployed anywhere in the infrastructure. We demonstrated its efficiency in comparison with alternative architectures.La Caixa Foundation | Ref. LCF/BQ/ES18/11670020Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PID2020-116329GB-C21Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PDC2021-121335-C2

Is the edge really necessary for drone computing offloading? An experimental assessment in carrier‐grade 5G operator networks

In this article, we evaluate the first experience of computation offloading from drones to real fifth-generation (5G) operator systems, including commercial and private carrier-grade 5G networks. A follow-me drone service was implemented as a representative testbed of remote video analytics. In this application, an image of a person from a drone camera is processed at the edge, and image tracking displacements are translated into positioning commands that are sent back to the drone, so that the drone keeps the camera focused on the person at all times. The application is characterised to identify the processing and communication contributions to service delay. Then, we evaluate the latency of the application in a real non standalone 5G operator network, a standalone carrier-grade 5G private network, and, to compare these results with previous research, a Wi-Fi wireless local area network. We considered both multi-access edge computing (MEC) and cloud offloading scenarios. Onboard computing was also evaluated to assess the trade-offs with task offloading. The results determine the network configurations that are feasible for the follow-me application use case depending on the mobility of the end user, and to what extent MEC is advantageous over a state-of-the-art cloud service.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación | Ref. PDC2021‐121335‐C21Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación | Ref. PRE2021‐098290Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PID2020-116329GB-C2

Resource allocation for dataflow applications in FANETs using anypath routing

Management of network resources in advanced IoT applications is a challenging topic due to their distributed nature from the Edge to the Cloud, and the heavy demand of real-time data from many sources to take action in the deployment. FANETs (Flying Ad-hoc Networks) are a clear example of heterogeneous multi-modal use cases, which require strict quality in the network communications, as well as the coordination of the computing capabilities, in order to operate correctly the final service. In this paper, we present a Virtual Network Embedding (VNE) framework designed for the allocation of dataflow applications, composed of nano-services that produce or consume data, in a wireless infrastructure, such as an airborne network. To address the problem, an anypath-based heuristic algorithm that considers the quality demand of the communication between nano-services is proposed, coined as Quality-Revenue Paired Anypath Dataflow VNE (QRPAD-VNE). We also provide a simulation environment for the evaluation of its performance according to the virtual network (VN) request load in the system. Finally, we show the suitability of a multi-parameter framework in conjunction with anypath routing in order to have better performance results that guarantee minimum quality in the wireless communications.Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED431C 2022/04 T254Ministerio de Universidades | Ref. FPU19/01284Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PCI2020-112174Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PID2020-113795RB-C33Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PID2020-116329GB-C21Universidade de Vigo/CISU

Slice allocation and pricing framework for virtualized millimeter wave cellular networks

Traditionally, the cellular spectrum is allocated to operators (OPs) through auctions, as ideal mechanisms to discover market prices and allocate scarce resources. Even though spectrum is indeed scarce in sub-6 GHz bands, it becomes abundant in millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands. Interestingly, in that context, it is base station (BS) density which is limiting, and thus a critical factor, due to the outage phenomena in urban environments. Facing BS scarcity is one of the main reasons to foster virtualization techniques aimed at improving utilization and lowering costs. We consider a scenario with an infrastructure provider (InP) owner of a number of BSs and a set of OPs with their users (UEs). We propose a three-phase framework to price network infrastructure slices (NISs) and allocate them to OPs and to efficiently associate UEs with those NISs. The framework stages are: 1) an initial association, 2) a distributed auction mechanism across the BSs to allocate resources to Ops, and 3) a re-association process where the OPs can optimize the NISs they are awarded. The auction incentivizes OPs to bid truthfully and the outcome yields both socially optimal NISs and Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) prices. For the re-association phase, we propose deterministic and stochastic exchange-matching algorithms and demonstrate their convergence to stable matching and stable-optimal matching, respectively.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad | Ref. TEC2016-76465-C2-2-RXunta de Galicia | Ref. GRC 2018/5

AUTOCITS – Regulation study for interoperability in the adoption of autonomous driving in European urban nodes

International audienceThe technological advances of autonomous and connected road vehicles have been shown an accelerating pace in the recent years. On the other hand, the regulations for autonomous, or driverless, road vehicles across Europe still deserve much attention and discussion. In this paper, we introduce the AUTOCITS project which has the main goals of conducting studies on the regulations for the adoption of autonomous cars in Europe, and also to carry out C-ITS Pilots in Madrid, Paris and Lisbon. AUTOCITS aims to contribute, directly or indirectly, to European related policy and reference documents on vehicle automation, regulations, connected and automated driving, and related road infrastructure issues due to the trend towards higher levels of connectivity and automation, where information provided via C-ITS can be truly catalyst for connected and autonomous driving. The project will specially focus on the communication links performance and connectivity between automated vehicles using C-ITS applications connectivity and automation ;, in particular, applications increase surrounding environment awareness in relation to infrastructure and ensure both road and driver safety requirements issues and using the regulation framework. AUTOCITS is an innovation project (CEF Program) that aims to facilitate the deployment of autonomous vehicles in urban nodes by developing intelligent transport services based on cooperative systems (C-ITS) that will enable vehicles, users and infrastructures to communicate, exchange, and share information

JMAC protocol: a cross-layer multi-hop protocol for LoRa

The emergence of Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) technologies allowed the development of revolutionary Internet Of Things (IoT) applications covering large areas with thousands of devices. However, connectivity may be a challenge for non-line-of-sight indoor operation or for areas without good coverage. Technologies such as LoRa and Sigfox allow connectivity for up to 50,000 devices per cell, several devices that may be exceeded in many scenarios. To deal with these problems, this paper introduces a new multi-hop protocol, called JMAC, designed for improving long range wireless communication networks that may support monitoring in scenarios such smart cities or Industry 4.0. JMAC uses the LoRa radio technology to keep low consumption and extend coverage area, and exploits the potential mesh behaviour of wireless networks to improve coverage and increase the number of supported devices per cell. JMAC is based on predictive wake-up to reach long lifetime on sensor devices. Our proposal was validated using the OMNeT++ simulator to analyze how it performs under different conditions with promising results.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. TEC2017-84197-C4-2-RMinisterio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades | Ref. FPU, FPU19 / 0128

Quarantining malicious IoT devices in intelligent sliced mobile networks

The unstoppable adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) is driven by the deployment of new services that require continuous capture of information from huge populations of sensors, or actuating over a myriad of “smart” objects. Accordingly, next generation networks are being designed to support such massive numbers of devices and connections. For example, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is designing the different 5G releases specifically with IoT in mind. Nevertheless, from a security perspective this scenario is a potential nightmare: the attack surface becomes wider and many IoT nodes do not have enough resources to support advanced security protocols. In fact, security is rarely a priority in their design. Thus, including network-level mechanisms for preventing attacks from malware-infected IoT devices is mandatory to avert further damage. In this paper, we propose a novel Software-Defined Networking (SDN)-based architecture to identify suspicious nodes in 4G or 5G networks and redirect their traffic to a secondary network slice where traffic is analyzed in depth before allowing it reaching its destination. The architecture can be easily integrated in any existing deployment due to its interoperability. By following this approach, we can detect potential threats at an early stage and limit the damage by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks originated in IoT devices.Fundación “la Caixa" | Ref. (LCF/BQ/ES18/11670020)Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad | Ref. (TEC2016-76465-C2-2-R)Xunta de Galicia | Ref. (GRC2018/053,ED341D-R2016/012

Reliable link level routing algorithm in pipeline monitoring using implicit acknowledgements

End-to-end reliability for Wireless Sensor Network communications is usually provided by upper stack layers. Furthermore, most of the studies have been related to star, mesh, and tree topologies. However, they rarely consider the requirements of the multi-hop linear wireless sensor networks, with thousands of nodes, which are universally used for monitoring applications. Therefore, they are characterized by long delays and high energy consumption. In this paper, we propose an energy efficient link level routing algorithm that provides end-to-end reliability into multi-hop wireless sensor networks with a linear structure. The algorithm uses implicit acknowledgement to provide reliability and connectivity with energy efficiency, low latency, and fault tolerance in linear wireless sensor networks. The proposal is validated through tests with real hardware. The energy consumption and the delay are also mathematically modeled and analyzed. The test results show that our algorithm decreases the energy consumption and minimizes the delays when compared with other proposals that also apply the explicit knowledge technique and routing protocols with explicit confirmations, maintaining the same characteristics in terms of reliability and connectivity.Xunta de Galicia | Ref. GRC2018/053Escuela Politécnica Nacional (Ecuador) | Ref. PIS-17-0

Wireless sensor network with linear topology without network layer

Un caso particular de redes inalámbricas de sensores son aquellas que tienen una topología lineal. Estas redes son utilizadas en el monitoreo de infraestructuras lineales a gran escala que se caracterizan por tener miles de nodos sensores, cientos de saltos y grandes longitudes. Los requisitos para realizar el enrutamiento en topologías lineales son mínimos en relación a los requerimientos de otras topologías. Existen en la actualidad varias arquitecturas de red y protocolos de enrutamiento para las redes inalámbricas de sensores, las cuales se han creado en función de la aplicación que se ejecutará en los nodos. Los protocolos de enrutamiento diseñados para topología tipo malla, árbol y estrella son muy complejos si se les aplica a topologías lineales multisalto dando como resultado grandes retardos por procesamiento. En este artículo se define la pertinencia de la existencia del nivel de red en la arquitectura de la red con topología lineal para lo cual se analiza las funciones de los protocolos de red que son aplicables a las topologías lineales. Finalmente, se justifica que el nivel de red no es necesario en redes inalámbricas de sensores con topología lineal, y como consecuencia se propone los niveles de red que debe tener la nueva arquitectura de red

Latency reduction in vehicular sensing applications by dynamic 5G user plane function allocation with session continuity

Vehicle automation is driving the integration of advanced sensors and new applications that demand high-quality information, such as collaborative sensing for enhanced situational awareness. In this work, we considered a vehicular sensing scenario supported by 5G communications, in which vehicle sensor data need to be sent to edge computing resources with stringent latency constraints. To ensure low latency with the resources available, we propose an optimization framework that deploys User Plane Functions (UPFs) dynamically at the edge to minimize the number of network hops between the vehicles and them. The proposed framework relies on a practical Software-Defined-Networking (SDN)-based mechanism that allows seamless re-assignment of vehicles to UPFs while maintaining session and service continuity. We propose and evaluate different UPF allocation algorithms that reduce communications latency compared to static, random, and centralized deployment baselines. Our results demonstrated that the dynamic allocation of UPFs can support latency-critical applications that would be unfeasible otherwise.Xunta de Galicia | Ref. GRC2018/05Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED341D-R2016/012Fundación “la Caixa” | Ref. ID 100010434Fundación “la Caixa” | Ref. LCF / BQ / ES18 / 11670020Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación | Ref. PID2020-116329GB-C21Xunta de Galicia | Ref. IN854A 2020/0