Edge computing is increasingly seen as the perfect enabler for distributed robotic applications requiring low latency and high adaptability. However, current approaches offload computational tasks exclusively to edge nodes, overlooking scenarios where onboard processing can meet performance tar-gets. Therefore, we propose a framework that unifies offloading decision and resource orchestration into a single algorithm that compares different allocation strategies under accuracy, latency, and energy goals. Results show that this approach admits more functions while maintaining strict performance targets, offering substantial gains in overall system utility.

Decentralized learning scenarios offer the opportunity of a flexible cooperation between learning nodes; in other words, each node may cooperate with an arbitrary subset of its peers. In such scenarios, we tackle the problem of choosing the nodes that cooperate towards the training of a machine learning model, hence, tweaking the cooperation graph connecting the nodes themselves. We propose and evaluate a data-driven approach to the problem, by proposing three metrics to choose the edges to activate in the cooperation graph, and an efficient iterative algorithm exploiting them. Through our performance evaluation, which leverages state-of-the-art datasets and neural network architectures, we find that privacy-preserving metrics accounting for the difference between local datasets are very effective in identifying the best edges to activate to improve the efficiency of model training without hurting performance.

This paper provides an extensive analysis of Reliable and Available Wireless (RAW) enhancements and solutions needed to manage industrial environments more effectively. Starting from the description of a representative industrial use case, an analysis of gaps and promising new extensions is performed. Namely, the need to (i) support multi-domain operation, at both technology and administrative levels; (ii) integrate RAW with edge architectures; and, (iii) increase the mobility support in RAW networks. The identified gaps are indeed not yet tackled by the relevant standardization development organizations, mainly the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and are thus object of our future work.

Ongoing research and industrial exploitation of SDN and NFV technologies promise higher flexibility on network automation and infrastructure optimization. Choosing the location of Virtual Network Functions is a central problem in the automation and optimization of the software-defined, virtualization-based next generation of networks such as 5G and beyond. Network services provided for autonomous vehicles, factory automation, e-health and cloud robotics often require strict delay bounds and reliability constraints influenced by the location of its composing Virtual Network Functions. Robots, vehicles and other end-devices provide significant capabilities such as actuators, sensors and local computation which are essential for some services. Moreover, these devices are continuously on the move and might lose network connection or run out of battery, which further challenge service delivery in this dynamic environment. This work tackles the mobility, and battery restrictions; as well as the temporal aspects and conflicting traits of reliable, low latency service deployment over a volatile network, where mobile compute nodes act as an extension of the cloud and edge computing infrastructure. The problem is formulated as a cost-minimizing Virtual Network Function placement optimization and an efficient heuristic is proposed. The algorithms are extensively evaluated from various aspects by simulation on detailed real-world scenarios.

Wireless communications represent a game changer for future manufacturing plants, enabling flexible production chains, as machinery and other components not to be restricted to a location by the rigid wired connections on the factory floor. However, the presence of electromagnetic interference in the wireless spectrum may result in packet loss and delay, making it a challenging environment to meet the extreme reliability requirements of industrial applications. In such conditions, achieving real-time remote control, either from the Edge or Cloud, becomes complex. In this paper, we investigate a forecast-based recovery mechanism for real-time remote control of robotic manipulators (FoReCo) that uses Machine Learning (ML) to infer lost commands caused by interference in the wireless channel. FoReCo is evaluated through both simulation and experimentation in interference prone IEEE 802.11 wireless links, and using a commercial research robot that performs pick-and-place tasks. Results show that upon interference FoReCo reduces the trajectory error by more than a 34.35% in both simulation, and experimentation. We also show that FoReCo is sufficiently lightweight to be deployed in existing hardware.

Thanks to network slicing, mobile networks can now support multiple and diverse services, each requiring different key performance indicators (KPIs). In this new scenario, it is critical to allocate network and computing resources efficiently and in such a way that all KPIs targeted by a service are met. Accounting for all sorts of KPIs (e.g., availability and reliability, besides the more traditional throughput and latency) is an aspect that has been scarcely addressed so far and that requires tailored models and solution strategies. We address this issue by proposing a novel methodology and resource orchestration scheme, named OKpi, which provides high-quality decisions on VNF (Virtual Network Function) placement and data routing, including the selection of radio points of attachment. Importantly, OKpi has polynomial computational complexity and accounts forallKPIs required by each service, and for any resource available from the fog to the cloud. We prove several properties of OKpi and demonstrate that it performs very closely to the optimum under real-world scenarios. We also implement OKpi in a testbed supporting a robot-based, smart factory service, and we present some field tests that further confirm the ability of OKpi to make high-quality decisions.

This paper proposes a dynamic pricing and revenue-driven service federation strategy based on a Deep Q-Network (DQN) to instantly and automatically decide federation across different service provider domains, each introduces dynamic service prices offering to its customers and towards other domains. A dynamic pricing model is considered in this work based on the analysis of real pricing data collected from public cloud provider, and upon this a dynamic arrival process as a result of the price changes is proposed for formulating the service federation problem as a Markov Decision Problem (MDP). In this work, several reinforcement learning algorithms are developed to solve the problem, and the presented results show that the DQN method reached 90% of the optimal revenue and outperformed existing state-of-the-art strategies, and it can learn the federation pricing dynamics to make optimum federation decisions according to price changes.

5G networks aim to provide orchestration of services across multiple administrative domains through the concept of federation. In this paper, we are exploring the federation feature of a platform for 5G transport network of vertical services. Then we formulate the decision problem that directly impacts the revenue of 5G administrative domains, and we propose as solution a Q-learning algorithm. The simulation results show near optimum profit maximization and a well-trained Q-learning algorithm can outperform the intuitive “greedy” approach in a realistic scenario.

Networks can now process data as well as transporting it; it follows that they can support multiple services, each requiring different key performance indicators (KPIs). Because of the former, it is critical to efficiently allocate network and computing resources to provide the required services, and, because of the latter, such decisions must jointly consider all KPIs targeted by a service. Accounting for newly introduced KPIs (e.g., availability and reliability) requires tailored models and solution strategies, and has been conspicuously neglected by existing works, which are instead built around traditional metrics like throughput and latency. We fill this gap by presenting a novel methodology and resource allocation scheme, named OKpi, which enables high-quality selection of radio points of access as well as VNF (Virtual Network Function) placement and data routing, with polynomial computational complexity. OKpi accounts for all relevant KPIs required by each service, and for any available resource from the fog to the cloud. We prove several important properties of OKpi and evaluate its performance in two real-world scenarios, finding it to closely match the optimum.

5G networks require flexibility, automation and programmability to satisfy the requirements of verticals industries. 5G-TRANSFORMER project proposes an SDN/NFV based network platform to enable this vision. Among its features, this platform allows the end-to-end deployment of parts of a network service (NS) in multiple administrative domains, which is known as network service federation (NSF). This feature increases network flexibility, opening the door to new business models. This paper complements our previous work by providing a detailed description of the 5G-TRANSFORMER NSF workflow, its interface and a profiling of the operations involved in the deployment of an NS between multiple administrative domains in a real experimental setup. Experimental results reveal i) that a federated NS can be deployed in the order of few minutes (less than 5 minutes), in line with the 5G target of reducing service setup to minutes, and ii) the impact of the NSF procedure in the deployment time is reduced when compared with the deployment of the same NS in a single administrative domain.

The 3GPP has provided its first standard specifications for network slicing in the recent Release 15. The fundamental principles are specified which constitute the standard network slicing framework. These specifications, however, lack the session continuation mechanisms among slices, which is a fundamental requirement to achieve inter-slice mobility. In this paper, we propose three solutions which enable session continuation among slices in the current 3GPP network slicing framework. These solutions are based on existing, well-established standard mechanisms. The first solution is based on the Return Routability/Binding Update (RR/BU) procedure of the popular Internet standard, Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6). The second solution is based on the 3GPP standard GPRS Tunnelling Protocol User Plane (GTPv1-U), which establishes a GTP tunnel between previous and new slice for session continuation. The third solution is a hybrid solution of both MIPv6-RR/BU and GTPv1-U protocols. We compare the performance of all these solutions through analytical modelling. Results show that the GTPv1-U based and the hybrid MIPv6/GTPv1-U solutions promise lower service disruption latency, however, incur higher resource utilization overhead compared to MIPv6-RR/BU and 3GPP standard PDU Session Establishment process.

The interest in extending the range of mobile networks by means of drones, which carry a cellular radio base station or even a complete mobile core, is continuously increasing in research as well as in industry. Whereas the asset in such solutions is well motivated, various practical aspects are not fully considered, such as weight, power consumption and associated flight time of such drones, which usually carry limited and expensive mobile energy resources. In this paper we leverage various advantageous architectural and operational aspects of a 5G Mobile Core and propose the use of a low-cost system-on-chip solution on board of a drone to realize a flying 5G User Plane Function, which serves as data plane anchor to mobile devices attaching to the cellular base station co-located with the drone and enables offloading traffic to services, which can run on the system-on-chip board as well. We prototyped a standard-conform User Plane Function by means of the open source fd.io project for Vector Packet Processing and enabled mobile access to flying lightweight mobile edge services. The paper describes how the drone system operates with the architecture backend in the fixed infrastructure and presents experimentally determined performance figures, comparing the developed low-costs flying edge services with a setup, which deploys the 5G User Plane Function as well as services in the fixed infrastructure.

`Roam Like at Home' is a slogan used to express the new roaming regulation applied to the countries within the European Union. Since June 15th, 2017, mobile network subscribers of the network operators within the European Union can use mobile services in other European countries without having extra charges for it. Although almost all mobile subscribers within countries of the European Union benefits from the new roaming rule, many mobile service providers are yet to be adapted to this change. Therefore, those providers bear the burden of the cost for the inter-provider traffic. Moreover, the latency between subscribers and their operator specific content must be reduced in order to provide a roaming service `like at home'. An emerging virtualization technology such as a Network Function Virtualization (NFV) sheds light on these challenges. This paper describes the concept of the mobile roaming service and our on-going implementation work as a part of 5G-PPP 5GEx project which aims at localizing inter-provider mobile traffic within the virtualized network infrastructure.

Supporting end-to-end network slices and services across operators has become an important use case of study for 5G networks as can be seen by 5G use cases published in 3GPP, ETSI as well as NGMN. This paper presents the in- depth architecture, implementation and experiment on a multi-domain orchestration framework that is ab le to deploy such multi-operator service as well as monitor the service for SLA compliance. Our implemented architecture allows operators to abstract their sensitive details while exposing the relevant amount of information to support inter-operator slice creation. Our experiment shows that the implemented framework is capable of creating services across operators while fulfilling the respective service requirements.

Next 5G networks will force service and network providers to support a huge variety of final services with very different requirements in terms of bandwidth, latency, etc. In parallel, vertical industries, as customers, will use 5G networks as technical enablers to support their businesses, demanding appropriate mechanisms for a flexible access and control of network and computing resource slices in the locations where such vertical have business. Since the footprint and the availability of resources to support the variety of services could be limited on the primary provider side, open environments enabling the trading of resources in the form of slices are required to facilitate the sharing of infrastructure with the necessary isolation and scalability. Here, this is exemplified by the proposal of adaptations between two prevalent architectures being defined in the EU H2020 projects 5G-Crosshaul and 5GExchange for allowing the trading of crosshaul resources enabling 5G services for Verticals.

The paper elaborates on the technological and architectural innovations researched and developed by 5G-PPP Phase 1 projects and covering innovation areas such as 5G system design and evaluation, novel air interfaces, network management and security as well as virtualization and service deployment aspects.

We are immerse in a world that becomes more and more mobile every day, with ubiquitous connectivity and increasing demand for mobile services. Current mobile terminals support several access technologies, enabling users to gain connectivity in a plethora of scenarios and favoring their mobility. However, the management of network connectivity using multiple interfaces is still starting to be deployed. The lack of smart connectivity management in multi interface devices forces applications to be explicitly aware of the variations in the connectivity state (changes in active interface, simultaneous access from several interfaces, etc.). In this paper, we analyze the present state of the connection management and handover capabilities in the three major mobile operating systems (OSes): Android, iOS and Windows. To this aim, we conduct a thorough experimental study on the connectivity management of each operating system, including several versions of the OS on different mobile terminals, analyzing the differences and similarities between them. Moreover, in order to assess how mobility is handled and how this can affect the final user, we perform an exhaustive experimental analysis on application behavior in intra- and inter-technology handover. Based on this experience, we identify open issues in the smartphone connectivity management policies and implementations, highlighting easy to deploy yet unimplemented improvements, as well as potential integration of mobility protocols.

Mobile network operators are aiming at strategies to accommodate the expected huge traffic growth with limited impact on the core network load. Enhancing the mobile architecture, along with deploying content delivery networks, represent promising areas where operators are putting their efforts to reduce costs while meeting the service guarantees. In this article we present a novel mobile architecture for 5G networks which benefits from the joint design of distributed mobility management and mobile video content delivery networks. We first discuss the architectural aspects of this combination and then present our validation and performance results from a real Linux-based prototype implementation.

Mobile Internet traffic is growing steeply, mainly due to the deployment of new broadband wireless technologies and the ever increasing connectivity demand coming from new services being available to mobile users. Current mobile network architectures rely on centralized mobility protocols which intrinsically pose enormous burdens on the central anchors, both in terms of connectivity needs and user mobility management. In order to face these issues, a new paradigm, called Distributed Mobility Management, is being explored, based on flattening the network architecture by deploying multiple mobility anchors at the edge of the network. In this article we conduct an analytic and experimental evaluation of a network-based IP distributed mobility management solution that leverages Proxy Mobile IPv6 protocol operations. We develop an analytic model of the signaling and packet delivery costs, as well as the handover latency of both Proxy Mobile IPv6 and our distributed solution. We have also implemented a Linux-based prototype of our proposal, which has been used to experimentally assess the handover latency in a real IEEE 802.11 scenario. Finally, we use the results obtained from the analytic and experimental performance to evaluate the benefits that could be achieved by deploying a distributed mobility management solution.

Current trends on mobile traffic show an exponential grow of the traffic consumed by users from smartphones and other portable devices. The explosion of traffic in cellular networks has forced operators to start deploying solutions to alleviate the congestion on their capacity-limited and expensive radio access networks. One of the solutions being discussed is the so called 3G offload that enables the terminals to use other technologies such as WiFi to offload some of the traffic. IP flow mobility is one mechanism providing 3G offload, by enabling selected flows to be moved among network interfaces. Although this is a very promising technology, it is not clear yet how it will affect the protocols currently in use to provide IP mobility in cellular networks, e.g., Proxy Mobile IPv6. The use of 3G offloading does not only benefits the operators, but also the final user, as it might extend the battery lifetime of its terminal. In this paper we first describe some network-based IP flow mobility extensions, highlighting important design choices. Secondly, we focus on providing experimental measurements showing how the use of this technology can result in an extended battery life for the case of 3G and WiFi enabled terminals.

In this demo we propose a novel architecture suitable for deployment in future mobile networks based on the distributed mobility management (DMM) paradigm. In DMM, the IP anchoring point gets closer to users, with the aim to flatten the architecture and to truly enable the fixed/mobile convergence. DMM allows operators to tackle the explosion of data traffic without burdening the core part of the network, offering a common IP framework for mobility and heterogeneous access. As a use case scenario, this demo has shown a possible deployment for a content delivery network's nodes, in order to exploit the DMM benefits.

The last few years have seen an exponential increase in mobile data use, coming primarily as a result of the “iPhone revolution”. Mobile operators are currently facing traffic demands higher than what their networks can support, which has triggered the need of implementing offloading mechanisms at different levels of the architecture. One of the problems is that existing mobility procedures are highly centralized, requiring all data traffic to traverse the mobile operator's network core. This paper presents an evolved 3GPP architecture that supports full distributed mobility management, while allowing incremental deployment and co-existence with existing solutions.

Video is a major challenge for the future mobile Internet as it is foreseen to account for close to 64% percent of consumer mobile traffic by 2013. However, the current Internet, and in particular the mobile Internet, was not designed with video requirements in mind and, as a consequence, its architecture is very inefficient when handling this type of traffic. This paper presents a novel mobility architecture inspired by the Distributed Mobility Management paradigm, capable of coping with the future video traffic demands, in a distributed and more scalable way. In the proposed solution, mobility support services are spread among several nodes at the edge of the network, thus realizing a flatter architecture and pushing services closer to the terminals. Our approach overcomes some of the major limitations of centralized IP mobility management solutions, by extending existing standard protocols.

Efficient vehicle-to-internet routing and address autoconfiguration are two of the missing pieces required to provide Internet connectivity from vehicles. Here, we propose TREBOL, a tree-based and configurable protocol which benefits from the inherent tree-shaped nature of vehicle to Internet traffic to reduce the signaling overhead while dealing efficiently with the vehicular dynamics. The paper describes the design and rationale of the solution, and presents the results of an experimental validation and performance evaluation, based on extensive simulations and real vehicular traces obtained in the region of Madrid.

Building vehicular networks in roads and highways is a challenging research topic with a large number of applications ranging from traffic jams and car collisions prevention to efficient route planning. The analysis of the distance between vehicles in roads is a key factor in, e.g., designing vehicular networks protocols or planning a supporting infrastructure to improve vehicular connectivity. This work proposes a Gaussian-exponential mixture model to characterize the time distance between vehicles in a highway lane, based on measurements collected at different locations in several highways of the city of Madrid, in Spain. The model arises from the observed behavior that some vehicles travel very close together, like in a burst mode, showing Gaussian inter-arrival times, while other vehicles are somehow isolated, showing exponentially distributed inter-arrival times. The experiments show that such a Gaussian-exponential mixture model accurately characterizes inter-vehicle times observed from real traces.

When there is no wired connectivity, wireless mesh networks (WMNs) can provide Internet access with lower cost and greater flexibility than traditional approaches. This has motivated the design of new protocols and algorithms for WMNs, and recently the deployment of experimental prototypes. In this paper we add to these previous works with the performance evaluation of a first CARMEN deployment, with the following distinguishing features: i) it is an indoor deployment, ii) it is used by real users to connect to the Internet, and iii) it is built using off-the-shelf hardware. The results show that mesh technology can provide users with a satisfactory Internet experience, and motives further research along this line.

In this paper, we propose a novel mechanism for application of an IPv6 automatic address configuration technique to vehicular ad-hoc networks. The solution consists of combining standardized IPv6 schemes with geographic routing functionalities, which enables the matching of geographically-scoped network partitions to single IPv6 multicast-capable links. Unlike existing solutions described in this paper and mostly derived from MANET approaches, our proposal explicitly targets automotive requirements, which we identify and analyze based on a real system architecture and its target applications. Furthermore, we examine the solutionpsilas timely aspects both analytically and experimentally with laboratory tests and compare the results. Finally, we outline intended future work on extending the proposed scheme.

Mobility in packet networks has become a critical issue in the last years. Mobile IP and the network mobility basic support protocol are the IETF proposals to provide mobility. However, both of them introduce performance limitations, due to the presence of an entity (home agent) in the communication path. Those problems have been tried to be solved in different ways. A family of solutions has been proposed in order to mitigate those problems by allowing mobile devices to use several geographically distributed home agents (thus making shorter the communication path). These techniques require a method to discover a close home agent, among those geographically distributed, to the mobile device. This paper proposes a peer-to-peer based solution, called peer-to-peer home agent network, in order to discover a close home agent. The proposed solution is simple, fully global, dynamic and it can be developed in IPv4 and IPv6.

WLAN hot-spots are becoming widely spread. This, combined with the availability of new multi-mode terminals integrating heterogeneous technologies, opens new business opportunities for mobile operators. Scenarios in which 3G coverage is complemented by WLAN deployments are becoming available. Thus, true all-IP based networks are ready to offer a new variety of services across heterogeneous access. However, to achieve this, some aspects still need to be analyzed. In particular, the effect of the terminal speed on the detection and selection process of the preferred access network is not yet well understood. In fact, efficiency of vertical handovers depends on the appropriate configuration of mobile devices. In this paper we present a simulation study of handover performance between 3G and WLAN access networks showing the impact of mobile users' speed. The mobile devices are based on the IEEE 802.21 cross layer architecture and use WLAN signal level thresholds as handover criteria. A novel algorithm to dynamically adjust terminals' configuration is presented.

An important requirement for Internet protocol (IP) networks to achieve the aim of ubiquitous connectivity is network mobility (NEMO). With NEMO support we can provide Internet access from mobile platforms, such as public transportation vehicles, to normal nodes that do not need to implement any special mobility protocol. The NEMO basic support protocol has been proposed in the IETF as a first solution to this problem, but this solution has severe performance limitations. This paper presents MIRON: Mobile IPv6 route optimization for NEMO, an approach to the problem of NEMO support that overcomes the limitations of the basic solution by combining two different modes of operation: a Proxy-MR and an address delegation with built-in routing mechanisms. This paper describes the design and rationale of the solution, with an experimental validation and performance evaluation based on an implementation

It is expected that IPv6 multihomed sites will obtain as many global prefixes as direct providers they have, so traffic engineering techniques currently used in IPv4 multihomed sites is no longer suitable. However, traffic engineering is required for several reasons, and in particular, for being able to properly support multimedia communications. In this paper we present a framework for traffic engineering in IPv6 multihomed sites with multiple global prefixes. Within this framework, we have included several tools such as DNS record manipulation and proper configuration of the policy table defined in RFC 3484. To provide automation in the management of traffic engineering, we analyzed the usage of two mechanisms to configure the policy table.

The network mobility (NEMO) basic support protocol enables mobile networks to change their point of attachment to the Internet, while preserving established sessions of the nodes within the mobile network. When only a nonnested mobile network is considered, the so-called triangle routing is the main problem that should be faced. In mobile IPv6, the route optimisation mechanism solves this problem, and the return routability mechanism aims to limit the security concerns originated because of the route optimisation. Nowadays return routability is considered a weak solution (i.e., based on strong assumptions). In this article we explore different approaches to route optimisation in NEMO and we devise how to adapt some of the terminal mobility solutions to a NEMO environment, where, as we propose, a delegation of signalling rights from the mobile network node to the mobile router is necessary.