Adaptable and automated small UAV deployments via virtualization

In this paper, we present a practical solution to support the adaptable and automated deployment of applications of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SUAVs). Our solution is based on virtualization technologies, and considers SUAVs as programmable network platforms capable of executing virtual functions and services, which may be dynamically selected according to the requirements specified by the operator of the aerial vehicles. This way, SUAVs can be flexibly and rapidly adapted to different missions with heterogeneous objectives. The design of our solution is based on Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies, developed under the umbrella of the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G), as well as on existing Internet protocol standards, including flying ad hoc network routing protocols. We implemented a functional prototype of our solution using well-known open source technologies, and we demonstrated its practical feasibility with the execution of an IP telephony service. This service was implemented as a set of virtualized network functions, which were automatically deployed and interconnected over an infrastructure of SUAVs, being the telephony service tested with real voice-over-IP terminals.This article was partially supported by the European H2020 5GinFIRE project (grant agreement 732497), and by the 5GCity project (TEC2016-76795-C6-3-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

Investigating the deployability of VoIP services over wireless interconnected micro aerial vehicles

Emerging technological devices, such as Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAV) and Single Board Computers (SBC), are being increasingly employed in recent years, thanks to the advances in electronics and the wide variety of sensors that are endowed. This paper aims at analyzing the viability of deploying multimedia services, focusing on the voice scenario, over wireless interconnected Micro Air Vehicles (MAV), also known as drones. Toward this end, we assessed the performance both of the embedded wireless cards of current drones and also SBCs, which may be carried as payload in existing UAV solutions. Driven by the results obtained in these experiments, we then deployed an operational VoIP service over a network of commercial MAVs, to perform an experimental analysis on the resource capabilities of these devices and demonstrate that this type of service can certainly be used.This article has been partially supported by the European H2020 5GinFIRE project (grant agreement 732497) and the 5G‐City project (TEC2016‐76795‐C6‐3‐R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

Flexible services deployment using Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for emergency situations

Proceeding of: XXXIII Simposium Nacional de la Unión Científica Internacional de Radio (URSI 2018), 5-7 de septiembre de 2018, Granada, España.The notorious advances in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) research area is allowing small UAVs (SUAV) to have an increasing presence in different civil applications. In the context of the 5GCity Spanish coordinated project, this paper considers the use of SUAV networks to support emergency services in critical and disaster situations. To solve the set of challenges presented in UAV networks, we present a general use case with the deployment of an NFV and SDN based solution and the different key enabling technologies. The whole deployment will be split into three stages during the project lifetime, with an initial integration using the 5TONIC European Open Research 5G laboratory and then with the different 5GCity project partners.This article has been partially supported by the 5G-City project (TEC2016-76795-C6-3-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.No publicad

Reducing service creation time leveraging on network function virtualization

Fifth-generation (5G) networks are envisioned to simultaneously support several services with different connectivity requirements. In this respect, service creation time is a key performance indicator (KPI) for service providers when planning the migration to 5G. For example, the European 5G infrastructure public private partnership (5G-PPP) suggests to reduce this time from 90 hours to 90 minutes, in the different phases of the service creation time KPI identified by this organization. This reduction can be achieved by leveraging on 5G state-of-the-art technologies: network function virtualization, network slicing, software-defined networking, and cloud computing, among others. Although some authors and projects have already studied the service creation time KPI in 5G, there is no literature that comprehensively analyzes and presents results related to each phase of this KPI. In this article, we explore the potential of network function virtualization technologies to reduce service creation time. To this end, we investigate the various phases of the service creation time KPI by designing and implementing, a realistic as well as complex network service that leverages on network function virtualization and related technologies. For our use case, we chose a content delivery network service specifically designed to distribute video. This decision was based on an analysis where we considered several parameters, like the complexity in the phases of design, fulfillment, and service assurance. We dissected all phases of the service creation time KPI required to turn our service blueprint into a deployment by utilizing network function virtualization tools. Henceforth, we defined and conducted several experiments, which were oriented to analyzing the different phases of the service creation time KPI. After analyzing the obtained results, we can conclude that using these new tools permits a substantial reduction in the time taken by each phase of the service creation time KPI.publishe

A secure link-layer connectivity platform for multi-site NFV services

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is a key technology for network automation and has been instrumental to materialize the disruptive view of 5G and beyond mobile networks. In particular, 5G embraces NFV to support the automated and agile provision of telecommunication and vertical services as a composition of versatile virtualized components, referred to as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). It provides a high degree of flexibility in placing these components on distributed NFV infrastructures (e.g., at the network edge, close to end users). Still, this flexibility creates new challenges in terms of VNF connectivity. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel secure link-layer connectivity platform, L2S. Our solution can automatically be deployed and configured as a regular multi-site NFV service, providing the abstraction of a layer-2 switch that offers link-layer connectivity to VNFs deployed on remote NFV sites. Inter-site communications are effectively protected using existing security solutions and protocols, such as IP security (IPsec). We have developed a functional prototype of L2S using open-source software technologies. Our evaluation results indicate that this prototype can perform IP tunneling and cryptographic operations at Gb/s data rates. Finally, we have validated L2S using a multi-site NFV ecosystem at the Telefonica Open Network Innovation Centre (5TONIC), using our solution to support a multicast-based IP television service.This article has partially been supported by the European H2020 FISHY Project (grant agreement 952644), and the TRUE5G project funded by the Spanish National Research Agency (PID2019-108713RB-C52/AEI/10.13039/501100011033)

An NFV system to support service provisioning on UAV networks

In this presentation, we will first describe the design and implementation of an NFV system capable of deploying moderately complex network services over a wireless ad-hoc network of resource-constrained compute nodes. The system design targets aerial networks built by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and it relies on container virtualization to support the execution of network functions within constrained environments, as well as on mobile ad-hoc networking to support the underlying end-to-end network communications [1]. The presentation will also cover the implementation experience from developing this NFV system, which is based on relevant and widely-adopted open-source technologies in the NFV arena such as ETSI Open-Source MANO (OSM) and OpenStack. In addition, we will present the details concerning the integration of this system into a distributed NFV testbed spanning three different remote sites in Spain, i.e., Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (UPC), and Universidad del País Vasco (UPV-EHU). The goal of this testbed is to explore synergies among NFV, UAVs, and 5G vertical services, following a practical approach primarily governed by experimentation. To showcase the potential of this testbed to support vertical services, we will present three different use cases that have been realized as part of our prior research work: i) the automated deployment of an IP telephony service on a delimited geographic area, using a network of interconnected UAVs [2] (noteworthily, this work was awarded by ETSI as the best proof-of-concept demonstration with OSM during the OSM Release Eight cycle [3]); ii) the realization of a smart farming vertical service [4]; and iii) a public-safety vertical use case, which uses aerial and vehicular NFV infrastructures to monitor traffic conditions and handle emergency situations [5]. This latter involves an international collaboration with the Instituto de Telecomunicações of Aveiro, which operates a vehicular NFV infrastructure. Finally, the presentation will tackle the standardization challenges related with the future view of a decentralized and flexible MANO framework, capable of supporting the operation of cost-effective, reliable services beyond the edge of the telecommunication operator infrastructures. In this view, multiple stakeholders would collaboratively provide a wide range of heterogeneous compute-connect devices (e.g., end-user terminals, CPEs, or UAV swarms). These devices might exist and be opportunistically used, or they could otherwise be deployed on-demand by those stakeholders, contributing to the availability of a potentially unlimited pool of network, computing, and storage resources beyond the network edge. This view introduces several standardization challenges to the NFV MANO framework in terms of interoperation, flexibility, robustness, and security. These challenges have been presented at the NFV Evolution1 event organized by ETSI, and will build the basis of our future work in this research line.This work has been partially supported by the European H2020 LABYRINTH project (grant agreement H2020-MG-2019-TwoStages-861696), and by the TRUE5G project (PID2019-108713RB-C52PID2019-108713RBC52/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) funded by the Spanish National Research Agency

A NFV system to support configurable and automated multi-UAV service deployments

Proceeding of: DroNet 2018, 4th ACM Workshop on Micro Aerial Vehicle Networks, Systems, and Applications (Co-located with ACM MobiSys 2018)In this paper, we explore the strong potential of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies to enable multi-mission small unmanned aircraft systems. In this context, we analyze the main challenges of using NFV technologies in this emergent field, and we present the design of an NFV system that supports the flexible, automated and cost-effective deployment of network services over small unmanned aerial vehicles. To validate our design, we implemented its most relevant components with open-source technologies, using this first prototype of the system to carry out a set of preliminary experiments that showcase its feasibility and functionality.This article has been partially supported by the European H2020 5GinFIRE project (grant agreement 732497), and by the 5GCity project (TEC2016-76795- C6-3-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

Using Aerial and Vehicular NFV Infrastructures to Agilely Create Vertical Services

5G communications have become an enabler for the creation of new and more complex networking scenarios, bringing together different vertical ecosystems. Such behavior has been fostered by the network function virtualization (NFV) concept, where the orchestration and virtualization capabilities allow the possibility of dynamically supplying network resources according to its needs. Nevertheless, the integration and performance of heterogeneous network environments, each one supported by a different provider, and with specific characteristics and requirements, in a single NFV framework is not straightforward. In this work we propose an NFV-based framework capable of supporting the flexible, cost-effective deployment of vertical services, through the integration of two distinguished mobile environments and their networks: small sized unmanned aerial vehicles (SUAVs), supporting a flying ad hoc network (FANET) and vehicles, promoting a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET). In this context, a use case involving the public safety vertical will be used as an illustrative example to showcase the potential of this framework. This work also includes the technical implementation details of the framework proposed, allowing to analyse and discuss the delays on the network services deployment process. The results show that the deployment times can be significantly reduced through a distributed VNF configuration function based on the publish&-subscribe model.This article has been partially supported by the European H2020 5GinFIRE project (grant agreement 732497). The work of the Universidad Carlos III team members was partially supported by the European H2020 LABYRINTH project (grant agreement H2020-MG-2019-TwoStages-861696), and by the TRUE5G project (PID2019-108713RB-C52PID2019-108713RB-C52/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) funded by the Spanish National Research Agency; and the work of the Instituto de Telecomunicações team members, by the Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Programme (COMPETE 2020) of the Portugal 2020 framework Mobilizer Project 5G with Nr. 024539 (POCI-01-0247-FEDER-024539)

A Multi-Site NFV Testbed for Experimentation With SUAV-Based 5G Vertical Services

[EN] With the advent of 5G technologies, vertical markets have been placed at the forefront, as fundamental drivers and adopters of technical developments and new business models. Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SUAVs) are gaining traction in multiple vertical sectors, as key assets to generate, process, and distribute relevant information for the provision of value-added services. However, the enormous potential of SUAVs to support a exible, rapid, and cost-effective deployment of vertical applications is still to be exploited. In this paper, we leverage our prior work on Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and SUAVs to design and build a multi-site experimentation testbed based on open-source technologies. The goal of this testbed is to explore synergies among NFV, SUAVs, and vertical services, following a practical approach primarily governed by experimentation. To verify our testbed design, we realized a reference use case where a number of SUAVs, cloud infrastructures, and communication protocols are used to provide a multi-site vertical service. Our experimentation results suggest the potential of NFV and SUAVs to exibly support vertical services. The lessons learned have served to identify missing elements in our NFV platform, as well as challenging aspects for potential improvement. These include the development of speci c mechanisms to limit processing load and delays of service deployment operations.This work was supported in part by the European Commission under the European Union's Horizon 2020 program (5GRANGE Project, grant agreement number 777137), and in part by the 5GCity Project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant TEC2016-76795-C6-1R, Grant TEC2016-76795-C6-3R, and Grant TEC2016-76795-C6-5R

NFV orchestration on intermittently available SUAV platforms: challenges and hurdles

Proceeding of: IEEE INFOCOM 2019 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS MiSARN 2019: Mission-Oriented Wireless Sensor, UAV and Robot Networking), 29 April-2 May 2019 Paris, FranceIn this paper, we analyze the main challenges and issues related with the orchestration of Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) on Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SUAVs). Our analysis considers a reference scenario where a number of SUAVs are deployed over a delimited geographic area and provide a mobile cloud environment that supports the deployment of functionalities using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) technologies. The orchestration of services in this reference scenario presents different challenges, due to the constrained capacity and limited lifetime of battery-powered SUAVs, the intermittent availability of network communications, and the need to consider enhanced policies for the allocation of virtual functions to SUAVs. Finally, we perform a first exploratory evaluation of the identified challenges and issues, using a well-known and widely adopted virtualized infrastructure manager, i.e., OpenStack.This article has been partially supported by the European H2020 5GRANGE project (grant agreement 777137), and by the 5GCity project (TEC2016-76795- C6-3-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness