Internet video streaming applications have been demanding more bandwidth and higher video quality, especially with the advent of virtual reality and augmented reality appli-cations. While adaptive strea ming protocols like MPEG-DASH (dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP) allows video quality to be flexibly adapted, e.g., degraded when mobile network condition deteriorates, this is not an option if the application itself requires guaranteed 4K quality at all time. On the other hand, conventional end-to-end transmission control protocol (TCP) has been struggling in supporting 4K video delivery across long-distance Internet paths containing both fixed and mobile network segments with heterogeneous characteristics. In this paper, we present a novel and practically feasible system architecture named MVP (mobile edge virtualization with adaptive prefetching), which enables content providers to embed their content intelligence as a virtual network function into the mobile network operator's infrastructure edge. Based on this architecture, we present a context-aware adaptive video prefetching scheme in order to achieve quality of experience (QoE)-assured 4K video on demand (VoD) delivery across the global Internet. Through experiments based on a real LTE-A network infrastructure, we demonstrate that our proposed scheme is able to achieve QoE-assured 4K VoD streaming, especially when the video source is located remotely in the public Internet, in which case none of the state-of-the-art solutions is able to support such an objective at global Internet scale.

Fifth-generation (5G) envisages a “hyper-connected society” where an enormous number of diverse entities could communicate with each other anywhere and at any time, some of which will demand extremely challenging performance requirements such as sub-millisecond latency, and higher data rates. Cloud-enabled radio access networks (CE-RANs) where intelligence is placed at the edge of the mobile network and in the proximity of end users emerge as a promising solution to improve online experience. To make CE-RAN more flexible and cost-effective, network functions virtualization and software defined networking technologies are employed, enabling features such as resource pooling, scalability, spectral efficiency, and multi tenancy. The accommodation of such technologies in the context of 5G requires multipronged efforts at various levels, in particular at the management and orchestration. Among all topics that falls into this subject, e.g., resource optimization and efficient lifecycle management, this paper focuses on two critical challenges, i.e., service mapping and quality of service assurance. Particularly, the proposed service placement solution takes into account two main constraints, i.e., quality of user experience and limited hardware capabilities available at the network edge. Simulation tools as well as the SESAME testbed have been used to extract results in this paper and a proof-of-concept evaluation is presented.

This paper examines how utilization of Service Delivery Platform (SDP) technology can potentially address some of the key issues facing the existing retail supply chain management (SCM). Existing SCM issues are identified and an analysis of the key functionality requirements for SDPs is described. Meeting these requirements ensures that SDP can provide a collaborative platform for a supply chain with improved end-to-end visibility. Thus the supply chain can better respond to market changes, particularly advantageous in today's demand-driven market.

The 3G mobile networks are currently undergoing evolution and optimization to cope with the rapid growth in IP data traffic and to ensure their competitiveness during the next 10 years and beyond. Roaming, a key revenue generator for mobile wireless networks, has been identified as one of the key capabilities to be retained in the evolved architecture. However, drawbacks have been identified with the existing home controlled and visited controlled roaming models. Towards that end, this paper proposes mechanisms to resolve the problems associated with both of the existing roaming models, utilizing a context transfer concept. The proposed solutions enhance the home controlled roaming model with the optimal routing capability for the user traffic while maintaining its existing strengths such as home control of user traffic and home services access. For the visited controlled roaming model, the proposed mechanisms enable home operator control over the user traffic while retaining its optimized routing for user-to-user traffic and local breakout features

The 3GPP system is currently being evolved into a system that is composed of heterogeneous access systems with the aim to provide various services at a higher-data-rate and lower-latency based on packet switched networks. Efficient resource usage, charging and international roaming, inherent features within the 3GPP system, are among the key capabilities to be retained in the evolved system. The policy control and charging (PCC) architecture allows operators to perform service based QoS policy and flow based charging control. This paper describes the PCC architecture and how it may evolve in the future 3GPP system for both non-roaming and roaming scenarios. Different possible architectural options are analysed, where the advantages as well as the associated issues arising from these different options are described. The level of impact of the proposed architecture on the baseline (Release 6/7) radio access and core network architecture is also highlighted