This paper compares the power consumption of Long-Term Evolution (LTE), 5G Non-Standalone (5G-NSA), 5G-Standalone (5G-SA), and private 5G-SA networks at two locations. Our findings reveal that 5G-NSA consumes 92% to 111% more energy than LTE, while 5G-SA consumes 79% more. Although 5G-SA is 6.5% more efficient than 5G-NSA, both are less efficient than LTE. Notably, private 5G-SA is 63% more energy-efficient than public 5G-SA. These results highlight the need for optimized network design and technology selection based on specific use case requirements to ensure energy-efficient mobile communication.

As Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) seek to revolutionise their infrastructures and meet the growing demands of a data-centric world, the adoption of open RAN (Radio Access Network) technology has emerged as a compelling solution. This paper offers a comprehensive exploration of open RAN’s transformative potential within the MNO landscape and investigates the concrete implementation opportunity of Open-RAN (O-RAN). Starting out by providing an exhaustive overview of the state of the art in open RAN technology, research and deployments, leads to an in-depth analysis of the decision roadmap of open RAN adoption. This roadmap considers the network design, vendor criteria and implementation strategy. This paper contributes with a comprehensive examination of components and an overview of increasingly complex design opportunities including functional split and accelerator options. Thus, it serves as an enlightening and pragmatic guide for MNOs navigating the transition to opening the interfaces in their RAN. Finally the paper proposes a pragmatic exploration of implementation strategies, providing insights to the drawbacks MNOs will face and proposed solutions. Hence, this paper highlights how the O-RAN system is built in modules, which adds additional importance to the increasingly complex design phase when multiple aspects must be evaluated to become the (r)evolution of mobile networks.

The numerous applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have the prospects of stirring the global economic growth. Besides having a relatively small carbon footprint, the operating cost of UAVs is significantly less than that of manned aircrafts. Conventionally, civilian UAVs are flown such that the UAV controller is in Visual Line of Sight (VLOS) with the UAV. This mode of operation limits possible UAV applications to the visual acuity of the UAV operator. To explore all possible applications of UAVs, it is often required that they operate in large quantities and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS). In this article, the radio channel parameters between a UAV and a live 5G NR (New Radio) cellular network, operating on 3.5 GHz frequency was measured and analyzed. This was done by field measurements with TSMA6B - an industrial-grade mobile frequency scanner, attached to a rotary-wing UAV. Using the network configurations obtained by the MNO (Mobile Network Operator), measurement campaigns were carried out at altitudes (22 - 35 meters) within the elevation angle of the transmitting antenna. Collected results were used to fit a path loss regression line for each altitude using the measured power of the reference signal and the instantaneous distance of the UAV from the base station. Findings from the analysis show that the path loss model is height dependent with altitude-specific cell edge requirements. In conclusion, the findings indicate that a 3.5GHz radio channel, deployed in a rural scenario, approximates a free space channel with an increase in altitude. This is because the channel conditions are similar to a line-of-sight scenario with increased altitude.

MQTT is currently one of the most widely used protocols at the application layer for the Internet of Things (IoT). To manage an increasing number of IoT devices and optimize the transmission of information, the distribution of the MQTT broker (MQTT cluster) and the integration of the SDN technology in the MQTT architecture are nowadays strongly promoted ideas. Unfortunately, existing proposals have several limitations: 1) they are incompatible with currently deployed solutions, 2) they induce significant delays for information exchange between MQTT brokers within the same cluster, and 3) they do not take into account the distribution of data to the end users (subscribers). That is why, in this paper, we propose a new SDN-based Real-Time Distributed MQTT Broker: SoD-MQTT. The architecture and protocols described aim to minimize communication delays between brokers and to support very low latency applications (e-health, transportation). By leveraging the advantages of SDN, subscription, and publishing can also be efficiently managed. The conducted evaluations demonstrate the relevance of the solution in terms of latency and network utilization optimization compared to existing SDN-based MQTT brokers.

Cellular coverage measurements for 5th generation mobile networks (5G), Long-Term Evolution (LTE), Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT), and LTE for Machine Type Communication (LTEM) have been carried out above 450 feet in the airspace OD 1 near Hans Christian Andersen (HCA) Airport, Denmark, and the results for Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) and Signal to Interference & Noise Ratio (SINR) is presented. The main objective of this empirical work is to investigate the reachability of cellular technology for drone communication and navigation. The results conclude that 5G has good signal strength and acceptable communication signal quality compared to LTE, LTE-M, and NB-IoT.

Network emulators are a key component for the implementation and evaluation of new applications. A network emulator designed for 5G networks should support the deployment of a complete 5G architecture (core and access network) as well as the deployment of edge data centers (edge computing) and the implementation of flexible SDN (Software Defined Networks)/NFV (Network Function Virtualization) architecture. To date, there is no environment enabling this combination of features. In this paper, we introduce a new network emulator named Emu5GNet, allowing the deployment of applications in complex 5G networks enabling both emulation of the network and data processing. Then, we present the architecture set up to achieve this objective and identify some of the applications that could be deployed in this environment: network performance, mobility management, etc. We also propose a quick evaluation to show how our emulator could potentially be used.

In the last years, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has provided a new approach to network programmability, first regarding the control plane and later the data plane. With the popularity of the data plane programming languages like P4, SDN network automation has extended from developing control plane applications and deploying controllers to integrating custom packet processing pipelines in this process. However, developing control and data plane applications can become burdensome since expertise in both fields is scarce. The process of automating SDN networks requires (among many tasks) inter-plane correlated application self-collection and assembly. As a result, the orchestrator presented in this paper, named P4click, provides high-level interfaces in order to transparently deploy modular control and data plane applications for SDN networks. This paper describes the architecture design of the orchestrator, outlines the deployment structure, and provides a general view of control plane application deployment and data plane pipeline assembly. Besides, P4click requires no previous knowledge of data plane programming and provides a simple interface for network operators that have to deploy new network functionalities. The results in this paper show which tasks in the network automation are most influential (timewise) in bringing a network up and running from the ground up.

The IEEE Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Task Group specifies a set of standards that enables real-time communication with predictable and bounded delays over the Ethernet. Specifically, TSN introduces a new set of so-called shapers, which regulate traffic arrival and transmission in the networks. Prominent among those are the IEEE 802.1 Qbv Time Aware Shaper (TAS) and IEEE 802.1Qav Credit-Based Shaper (CBS). Another traffic control mechanism is the IEEE 802.1Qbu Frame Preemption. Most works in the literature have focused on the quantitative performance comparison between these mechanisms. However, the discussion on how they compare in terms of implementation cost has received less attention. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive comparison of the implementation cost of the aforementioned TSN traffic control mechanisms. This comparison can help system designers in choosing which of the mechanism(s) to deploy for their applications.

This work considers how network slicing can use the network architecture Cloud‐Radio Access Network (C‐RAN) as an enabler for the required prerequisite network virtualization. Specifically this work looks at a segment of the C‐RAN architecture called the fronthaul network. The fronthaul network required for network slicing needs to be able to dynamically assign capacity where it is needed. Deploying a fronthaul network faces a trade‐off between fronthaul bitrate, flexibility, and complexity of the local equipment close to the user. This work relates the challenges currently faced in C‐RAN research to the network requirements in network slicing. It also shows how using a packet‐switched fronthaul for network slicing will bring great advantages and enable the use of different functional splits, while the price to pay is a minor decrease in fronthaul length due to latency constraints.

A standard priority-queuing system is capable of arranging packets with different traffic classes to guarantee a relatively low latency for the high priority traffic. However, in practical cases, severe delay may be caused by starting a large, low-priority frame ahead of a time-critical frame. In this paper, interspersed express traffic is evaluated, which enables preemption of non-time-critical transmission, in particular, the preemptive queuing system allows the cut-through transmission for critical traffic and minimizes the jitter. We analyse the performance of packet preemption through a system level simulation in Riverbed Modeler. The simulation is complemented by numerical analysis which provides the average queuing delay for both types of traffic (preemptable and express). Furthermore, the paper describes an approach to implement the packet preemption solution on an FPGA in VHDL, which illustrates the complexity of hardware implementation.

We study the adaptation capabilities and robustness of the high-speed TCP CUBIC algorithm. For this purpose we consider a network environment with variable and high random packet loss and a large Bandwidth-Delay product, shared by multiple heterogeneous TCP connections. The analysis is based on and supported by packet-level simulations. The results show that the aggressive nature of CUBIC's nonlinear congestion window control principle causes a degradation of the time-average throughput at the moderate level of random packet loss even under increasing Round-Trip-Time of the flow. However, this algorithmic scalability and loss-free-time-dependent window growth allows recovering transmission rate faster in the high packet loss region due to the statistically lower number of dropped packets, compared to the moderate loss level.

This paper presents a new TCAM-based method for determining the Longest Prefix Match (LPM) in an IP routing table. The method is based on modifying the address encoder of the standard TCAM design to take the prefix lengths of the IP routing entries into account while performing multi-match resolution, thus allowing prefixes to be inserted in any random order. This enables full utilization of the TCAM address space while greatly simplifying the updating procedure as complex software sorting algorithms and extensive table modifications are avoided. The result is faster table updates and consequently a higher throughput of the network search engine, since the TCAM down time caused by incremental updates is eliminated. The LPM scheme is described in HDL for FPGA implementation and compared to an existing scheme for customized CAM circuits. The paper shows that the proposed scheme can process more packets per second, has less per-lookup power consumption and is easier to expand to larger routing tables than the existing implementation. The latency of the LPM operation is only log2N clock cycles, where N is the maximum number of prefixes in the TCAM, and in a pipelined implementation the throughput of the system is one Longest Prefix Match lookup per clock cycle.

In this paper we propose a novel scheme for on the fly code rate adjustment for forward error correcting (FEC) codes on optical links. The proposed scheme makes it possible to adjust the code rate independently for each optical frame. This allows for seamless rate adaption based on the link state of the optical light path and the required amount of throughput going towards the destination node. The result is a dynamic FEC, which can be used to optimize the connections for throughput and/or energy efficiency, depending on the current demand.

This paper presents an integration of multicast and unicast traffic scheduling algorithms for input-queued cell switches. The multi-level round-robin multicast scheduling (ML-RRMS) algorithm with the look-ahead (LA) mechanism provides a highly scalable architecture and is able to reduce the head-ofline (HOL) blocking problem that the weight-based algorithm (WBA) suffers from. Leveraging the FILter & Merge (FILM) scheme, multicast and unicast traffic are independently scheduled based on their requests. Decisions are integrated following a specific policy. Remainder is looped back to the filtering module that filters out the conflicting requests to ensure fairness. Simulation results show that comparing with the scheme using WBA for the multicast scheduling, the scheme proposed in this paper reduces the HOL blocking problem for multicast traffic and provides a significant improvement in terms of latency.

With the introduction of LTE networks operators need to plan a new, IP-based mobile backhaul. In this paper, we provide recommendation on dimensioning LTE backhaul networks links using three methods: delay-, dimensioning formula- and overbooking factor-based. Results are obtained from OPNET simulations with traffic model based on traffic forecast for 2015. A delay-based approach gives recommended bandwidth for expected number of users. A dimensioning formula is proposed to calculate link bandwidth when mean value of aggregated traffic in the network is known. An overbooking factor is calculated and verified. Simulation in this work proves that Carrier Ethernet, one of the candidate technologies for mobile backhaul, protects the network from users that want to flood the network with their data and manages to keep the delay experienced by other users low.

This paper proposes two out-of-sequence (OOS) preventative cell dispatching algorithms for the multicast input-queued space-memory-memory (IQ-SMM) Clos-network switch architecture, i.e. the multicast flow-based DSRR (MF-DSRR) and the multicast flow-based round-robin (MFRR). Treating each cell independently, the desynchronized static round-robin (DSRR) cell dispatching scheme can evenly distribute cells to the central switching modules, however, its frequent change of the input switching module connection pattern causes a serious OOS problem to the IQ-SMM architecture. Therefore large reassembly buffers are required at the output ports and high reassembly delay can degrade the multicast services. MF-DSRR can reduce the OOS problem and leverages the principle of DSRR to obtain a low complexity, however it fails to eliminate the in-packet OOS where cells of the same packet are disordered. Using more resources compared to MF-DSRR, MFRR is able to eliminate the in-packet OOS, resulting in a significant reduction of reassembly buffer size and delay.

In this paper, we propose a multi-level round-robin multicast scheduling (MLRRMS) algorithm with look-ahead (LA) mechanism for N×N input-queued switches. Fan-out splitting is applied, where a multicast cell can be transferred to all its destinations over any number of cell times. The scheduler constructs the Traffic Matrix before each cell transmission based on the fan-out vectors of the cells in the queues. A scheduling pointer independently moves on each column of the Traffic Matrix in a round-robin fashion and returns the decision to the Decision Matrix. The sync procedure is carried out to reduce the unnecessary transmissions of a cell. The look-ahead mechanism is executed to reduce the head-of-line blocking problem resulting in increased the throughput and reduced cell delay.

This study focuses on the multicast scheduling for M×N input-queued switches. An enhanced first-in-first-out -based round-robin multicast scheduling algorithm is proposed with a function of searching deeper into queues to reduce the head-of-line (HOL) blocking problem and thereby the multicast latency. Fan-out information of each input cell composes a traffic matrix and the scheduler executes a round-robin algorithm on each column independently. Scheduling decisions result in a decision matrix for the scheduler to release multicast cells accordingly. A matrix operation called sync is carried out on the decision matrix to reduce the number of transmission for each cell. To reduce the HOL blocking problem, a complement matrix is constructed based on the traffic matrix and the decision matrix, and a process of searching deeper into the queues is carried out to find cells that can be sent to the idle outputs. Simulation results show that the proposed function of searching deeper into the queues can alleviate the HOL blocking and as a result reduce the multicast latency significantly. Under both balanced and unbalanced multicast traffic, the proposed algorithm is able to maintain a stable throughput.

The Internet users behavioural patterns are migrating towards bandwidth-intensive applications, which require a corresponding capacity extension. The emerging 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) technology is a promising candidate for providing a ten-fold increase of todays available Internet transmission rate. As the need for 100 Gigabit Ethernet equipment rises, so does the need for equipment, which can properly test these systems during development, deployment and use. This paper presents early results from a work-in-progress academia-industry collaboration project and elaborates on the challenges of performing bit error rate testing at 100Gbps. In particular, we show how Bit Error Rate Testing (BERT) can be performed over an aggregated 100G Attachment Unit Interface (CAUI) by encapsulating the test data in Ethernet frames at line speed. Our results show that framed bit error rate testing can be performed at speeds exceeding 100Gbps using commercially available Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Even though extensive parallelization is used to achieve this goal, the resulting resource consumption of the proposed design remains relatively modest, leaving plenty of room for additional functionality besides the bit error rate tester.

In order to provide a reliable multicast service on the MPLS Transport Profile ring structure network, this paper proposes two innovative schemes. The proposed multicast service scheme is designed for the multi-ring structure, which enhances the ring structure's applicability and gives more support for the network resilience. The flow-based end-to-end OAM function is operated independently for each multicast traffic flow. It is able to monitor the status and performance of the whole multicast Label Switching Path and is designed in a hierarchical way on the multi-ring structure, which avoids the overwhelming burden falling on the Ingress node.

This paper describes a component-based software architecture and design methodology, which will enable efficient engineering, deployment, and run-time management of reconfigurable ambient intelligent services. A specific application of a media player is taken as an example to show the development of software bundles according to the proposed methodology. Furthermore, a software tool has been developed to facilitate composition and graphical representation of component based services. The tool will provide a model of a generic reusable component, and the user of the tool will be able to instantiate reusable components using this model implementation. The work has been carried out within the European project COMANCHE that will utilize component models to support Software Configuration Management.

This paper describes a Knowledge Management Framework for Software Configuration Management, which will enable efficient engineering, deployment, and run-time management of reconfigurable ambient intelligent services. Software Configuration Management (SCM) procedures are commonly initiated by device agents located in the users gateways. The Knowledge Management Framework makes use of Ontologies to represent knowledge required to perform SCM and to perform knowledge inference based on Description Logic reasoning. The work has been carried out within the European project COMANCHE that will utilize ontology models to support SCM. The COMANCHE ontology has been developed to provide a standard data model for the information that relates to SCM, and determine (infer) which SW Services need to be installed on the devices of users.