Dynamic network slice resources reconfiguration in heterogeneous mobility environments

This paper proposes a framework that optimizes network slicing provisioning in over‐the‐top (OTT) scenarios, by reducing occupied resources of slices from where the User Equipment (UE) handovers from. To achieve this, the framework leverages an existing Software Defined Networking (SDN)‐based UE virtualization scheme, which allows to instantiate in the cloud a representation of the physical device and its current connectivity context. This scheme was extended with the ability to anchor the UE's datapath and mask the underlying slices in a single end‐to‐end slice, allowing handover mechanisms between slices to become transparent to involved endpoints. This framework was implemented and evaluated in an experimental testbed where the UE moves between Wi‐Fi and long‐term evolution (LTE) slices, with results showing that upstream and downstream throughput is dynamically adapted to the UE requirements prior to the handover.publishe

Fungicidal versus Fungistatic activity of five Iranian essences against fluconazole resistant Candida species

Introduction: Antifungal resistant is one of the causes of high mortality rates during invasive candidiasis. Since development of new antifungal agents is limited, researchers have focused on natural products including essential oils (EOs) with antifungal properties. In immunocompromised patients fungicidal activity is of benefit. This study was designed to evaluate chemical composition and fungicidal/fungistatic activities of five Iranian EOs and against fluconazole resistant Candida species. Methods: To determine chemical composition of EOs gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC/MS) was employed. Fluconazole resistant Candida species were chosen and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values of studied EOs were determined by broth microdilution method. Minimum fungicidal concentration (MFC) was determined as the lowest concentration with no fungal growth on solid media. Fungicidal activity was calculated by MFC/MIC ratio. Results: The results showed that C. albicans and C. tropialis isolates were susceptible to itraconazole (ITC) and voriconazole (VRC) while one species of C. glabrata and C. krusei each was resistant to itraconzaole; and itraconazole resistant C. glabrata isolate was resistance to voriconzaole as well. Among tested EOs, the ones from Cinnamomum cayennense, Origanum majorana var. majoranoides and Andropogon citratus had the highest anti-Candida activity. Artemisia aromatica A. Nelson had the highest MIC value against Candida isolates. All EOs in this study had fungicidal activity. Conclusion: In general, the tested natural compounds are suitable to be used as anti-Candida. However more studies are needed on each chemical compound to evaluate its antifungal activity alone or in combination with other agents

FlexDRAN: Flexible centralization in disaggregated radio access networks

Radio Access Network (RAN) disaggregation allows operators to mix-and-match multivendor components and bring RAN services from one end to the other. Despite this goal, issues of resource misuse or performance undershoot may arise because of inflexible RAN function deployment and uncoordinated decision-making across different network segments. To address these issues, this paper considers full flexibility in the synthesis of end-to-end RAN services from a set of disaggregated and uncoordinated components. In particular, five design factors are jointly considered to maximize the overall network spectral efficiency: (1) User association, (2) Remote radio unit clustering, (3) RAN functional split, (4) Fronthaul network routing, and (5) Baseband unit placement. To efficiently deal with the formulated problem, we propose a two-level turbo-based solution and compare its performance with several related works. The simulation results show that our proposed solution can not only achieve a 1.33-times spectral efficiency gain compared with state-of-the-art methods, but also provides 1.27 and 1.74 multiplexing benefits for computing and networking resources, respectively.This work is supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 5Growth (No. 856709), Affordable5G (No. 957317), DAEMON (No. 101017109), and 6GBrain (No. 101017226)

Multi-Objective Placement of Virtual Network Function Chains in 5G

International audienceIn this paper we propose a novel algorithm, namely Multi-Objective Placement (MOP), for the efficient placement of Virtualized Network Function (VNF) chains in future 5G systems. Real datasets are used to evaluate the performance of MOP in terms of acceptance ratio and embedding time when placing the time critical radio access network (RAN) functions as a chain. In addition, we rely on a realistic infrastructure topology to assess the performance of MOP with two main objectives: maximizing the number of base stations that could be embedded in the Cloud and load balancing. The results reveal that the acceptance ratio of embedding RAN functions is only 5% less than the one obtained with the optimal solution for the majority of considered scenarios, with a speedup factor of up to 2000 times

The path toward a cloud-aware mobile network protocol stack

We are currently observing the softwarization of communication networks, where network functions are translated from monolithic pieces of equipment to programs running over a shared pool of computational, storage, and communication resources. While it is clear that almost any softwarization improves flexibility (eg, the ability to instantiate more servers to cope with increasing traffic demand), in this paper, we advocate for a complete redesign of the communications protocol stack, instead of a mere translation of hardware functions into software. We discuss 2 drivers for this cloud-aware redesign: (1) relaxing the tight interactions between functions and (2) supporting a graceful degradation of the service when resources become scarce. The potential benefits of this redesign are illustrated with the numerical evaluation of one use case.This work has been partially performed within the 5G-MoNArch project, part of the Phase II of the 5th Generation Public Private Partnership (5G-PPP) program partially funded by the European Commission within the Horizon 2020 Framework Program. It has also been partly funded by the Madrid Regional Government through the TIGRE5-CM program (S2013/ICE-2919) and by the SpanishMinistry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of through the 5GCity project (TEC2016-76795-C6-3-R)

Fuzzy spatial association rule mining to analyze the effect of environmental variables on the risk of allergic asthma prevalence

The prevalence of allergic diseases has greatly increased in recent decades, likely due to contamination of the environment with allergy irritants. One common treatment is identifying that allergy irritant, and then avoiding exposure to it. This article studies the relation between the prevalence of allergic asthma and certain allergy irritants that are related to environmental variables. To that end, we use spatial association rule mining to determine the association between the spatial distribution of allergic asthma prevalence and air pollutants such as CO, SO2, NO2, PM10, PM2.5, and O3 (from data compiled by air pollution monitoring stations), as well as other factors, such as the distance of residence from parks and roads. In order to clear up the uncertainties inherent in the attributes linked to the spatial data, the dimensions in question have been defined as fuzzy sets. Results for the case study (i.e. Tehran metropolitan area) indicate that distance to parks and roads, as well as CO, NO2, PM10, and PM2.5 levels are related to allergic asthma prevalence, while SO2 and O3 are not. Finally, we use the extracted association rules in fuzzy inference system to produce the spatial risk map of allergic asthma prevalence, which shows how much is the risk of allergic asthma prevalence at each point of the city

FLEXCRAN: Cloud radio access network prototype using OpenAirInterface

In this demo, we describe the realization of cloud radio access network (C-RAN) prototype using OpenAirInterface (OAI) software and commodity hardware. The deployment of the centralized baseband processing on the remote cloud center (RCC), and the remote radio units (RRU), connected over Ethernet fronthaul is demonstrated. Further, the demo illustrates the flexibility in deploying several cellular radio access network protocol split architectures using OAI