Applications in the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) add an additional layer of complexity over traditional robotics, namely, networking and communication with the edge and the cloud. The field of cloud robotics has already revolutionized robotic systems, among others, by offloading computationally intensive tasks to the cloud. However, existing approaches are not necessarily suitable for real-time communication and distributed computing, and are not natively supported by widespread robotic middlewares such as ROS 2. Traditional Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have been widely adopted for secure communication, but often introduce complexity in the setup and latency that can hinder real-time performance. Zenoh, an emerging data-centric networking framework, offers an alternative with low-latency, efficient data dissemination optimized for edge-to-cloud scenarios. Zenoh also integrates seamlessly with ROS 2, enabling lower overhead communication. This paper presents a comparative study of VPN and Zenoh in edge-cloud robotics, focusing mainly on communication latency, data throughput, and fault tolerance within a real-world robotic use case. Through experimental analysis, we highlight the strengths and limitations of both approaches and provide insight into their suitability for distributed robotic applications. The findings contribute to understanding the trade-offs between security, latency, and scalability in networking solutions for the IoRT.

The cloud-to-edge-to-IoT continuum represents a seamless flow of data processing and management, spanning from centralized cloud services to distributed edge computing and interconnected IoT devices. This paradigm can become very challenging in real implementations, especially in the presence of multiple stakeholders using proprietary and heterogeneous software and hardware. The Horizon Europe NEPHELE project proposes the virtualization of IoT devices through a specific software stack called Virtual Object Stack (VOStack) that promotes openness and interoperability. In this paper, we present an implementation of VOStack using W3C Web of Things (WoT) standard in a post-disaster domain for two different types of IoT devices: a ground robot (Turtlebot2) for navigation and mapping in an unknown environment, and a Raspberry Pi 3 acting as a wireless sensor network gateway. We propose an application graph for the resulting hyper-distributed application (HDA) and present our first implementation to validate the proposed solution.

Several relevant research and innovation activities have recently investigated the technical and economic advantages of cloud computing for the provisioning of telco service infrastructures, in particular towards all-IP next generation 5G networks. In fact, the evolution of telco service infrastructures traditionally requires a significant upfront investment (and a long adoption process). Conversely, cloud exploitation significantly lowers investment risks by potentially providing elasticity in service provisioning via flexible Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) on top of a Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Infrastructure. In this context, the paper presents novel solutions that we have designed, implemented, and evaluated within the EU FP7 Mobile Cloud Networking project (MCN). Their aim is to achieve cost-effective elastic provisioning of telco services over heterogeneous and federated cloud providers, with the specific focus of supporting the extreme quality levels that are demanded by traditional, non-virtualized, and dedicated telco infrastructures. In particular, we concentrate on how to effectively and efficiently automate service state migration for coarse-grained telco service (cloudified) components by leveraging industry-mature orchestration technologies and cloud management frameworks. While our proposed state migration model and procedure are general, its implementation is experimented for MCN's Rating, Charging, and Billing as a Service (RCBaaS). This MCN functionality has been chosen by purpose due to its challenging reliability and uptime requirements. The reported experimental and simulation results show the technical feasibility of the proposed solution under different and realistic load conditions for next-generation and cloudified 5G services.

This paper states the research done in building a Wildfire Propagation Simulation tool able to present graphically, how the fire will be propagated in case of a wildfire. The core of this tool was developed using Cellular Automata (CA) relayed on mathematical foundations for modeling the propagation and the transition rules of the CA. Also, the mathematical model was combined with a geographical information system provided by Google Maps API, allowing to conduct a simulation that considers the kind and density of vegetation in a specific zone of interest. Finally, we define and perform a full simulation providing information for managing and predicting wildfires and, the future works derived from this research.

Cloud-based deployments have become more and more mainstream in recent years, with many companies evaluating moving their infrastructure to the cloud, whether a public cloud, a private cloud, or a mix of the two through the hybrid cloud concept. One service offered by many clouds providers is Database-as-a-Service, where a user is offered a direct endpoint and access credentials to a chosen type of database. In this paper, we evaluate the performance impact of application splitting in a Hybrid Cloud environment. In this context, the database may be located in a cloud setting and the application servers on another cloud or on-premises, or the other way around. We found that for applications with low database latency and throughput requirements, moving to a public cloud environment can be a cost saving solution. None of the cloud providers evaluated were able to provide comparable performance for database-heavy database applications when compared to an optimized enterprise environment. Evaluating application splitting, we conclude that bursting to the cloud is a viable option in most cases, provided that the data is moved to the cloud before performing the requests.

In the last years we have experienced a growing industrial interest in Mobile Cloud Networking (MCN) as the opportunity to exploit the cloud computing paradigm through Network Function Virtualization (NFV), primarily with the goal to reduce CAPEX/OPEX for future mobile networks deployment and operation. The gain from the point of view of infrastructure costs reduction is almost clear and recognized, while many technical challenges are still to be solved, especially with industry-mature solutions, due to the complexity of managing such type of infrastructures. In particular, the dynamicity and flexibility introduced by the virtualization of network functions add novel requirements on the service management and orchestration layers. In this perspective, this paper originally presents the architecture and primary implementation guidelines of the Mobile Cloud Networking framework developed within a large EU FP7 project. More specifically, it focuses on the innovative technical elements of our solution for service management and orchestration, namely i) orchestration strategies based on resource unit affinity and ii) compliance with emerging Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) standards. To practically demonstrate the suitability of the proposed approach, a specific real use case has been implemented, i.e., the cloudification of the 3GPP IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), by reporting and analyzing the related performance results.

Cloud computing enables the on-demand delivery of resources for a multitude of services and gives the opportunity for small agile companies to compete with large industries. In the telco world, cloud computing is currently mostly used by mobile network operators (MNO) for hosting non-critical support services and selling cloud services such as applications and data storage. MNOs are investigating the use of cloud computing to deliver key telecommunication services in the access and core networks. Without this, MNOs lose the opportunities of both combining this with over-the-top (OTT) and value-added services to their fundamental service offerings and leveraging cost-effective commodity hardware. Being able to leverage cloud computing technology effectively for the telco world is the focus of mobile cloud networking (MCN). This paper presents the key results of MCN integrated project that includes its architecture advancements, prototype implementation, and evaluation. Results show the efficiency and the simplicity that a MNO can deploy and manage the complete service lifecycle of fully cloudified, composed services that combine OTT/IT- and mobile-network-based services running on commodity hardware. The extensive performance evaluation of MCN using two key proof-of-concept scenarios that compose together many services to deliver novel converged elastic, on-demand mobile-based but innovative OTT services proves the feasibility of such fully virtualized deployments. Results show that it is beneficial to extend cloud computing to telco usage and run fully cloudified mobile-network-based systems with clear advantages and new service opportunities for MNOs and end-users.

In cloud environments High Availability characteristics are established by the usage of failover software (like e.g. HAProxy, Keepalive or Pacemaker). Though these tools enable automatic recovery of cloud services from outages, the recovery can still be very slow if it is not configured adequately. In this paper we developed a "Recovery Time Test" to determine if recovery time depends on configuration of the failover software and how recovery time depends on configuration settings. Another goal of the Recovery Time Test is to determine the factor by which recovery time can be decreased by a given configuration. As proof of concept, we applied the Recovery Time Test to an OpenStack cloud environment which is controlled by the Pacemaker failover software. Pacemaker mean recovery time can take a value between 110 and 160 seconds, if the tool is configured badly. We found that with a proper configuration Pacemaker mean recovery time can be reduced significantly to a value between 15 and 20 seconds.

The maturity reached by virtualisation technology enabled great innovation for efficient applications and services development and delivery, independent of the underlying hardware equipment, especially with the large deployment of off-the-shelf hardware based cloud infrastructures. In order to take advantage of this technology, the existing network functions have to be developed and adapted to the new paradigm. However, traditional telecom services are still implemented on dedicated hardware resulting in high deployment and maintenance costs compared to the other already cloudified services. ETSI Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) aims to fill this gap by applying to telecom the virtualisation technologies. This paper introduces a set of three software architectures for efficient virtualisation of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) in different operator environments responding to the high level requirements of the ETSI NFV use case for virtualizing operator core network functions. Additionally, a management architecture for simplifying the deployment and runtime orchestration of such a virtual service on top of a cloud infrastructure is presented. Furthermore, one of the IMS software architectures was implemented based on the Fraunhofer FOKUS Open IMS Core, measured and evaluated on top of an OpenStack cloud.

This paper describes a framework on how to test High Availability capabilities of cloud architectures, particularly OpenStack. The “Dependability Modeling Framework” which consists of a modelling of the system parts, user interactions and dependencies between them will form the basis for this test. The test procedure consists of simulating random shutdown of system components, polling the availability of user interactions and measuring the impact of outages and expected downtime. Outage impacts and downtime are used to rate the underlying system architecture. The test procedure is applied on a single node OpenStack installation in order to show validity of the test concept.

IEEE 802.16 networks provide mechanisms for QoS support at MAC level, but end-to-end QoS issues are not addressed in detail in the standards. This paper presents an analysis and an experimental validation of a comprehensive solution that describes and implements end-to-end QoS in networks with IEEE802.16e segments. A complete QoS model has been specified, defining the traffic descriptors, the QoS parameters and the resource management functions for networks with WiMAX access. This QoS model has been applied to the next step in signalling (NSIS) protocol suite and its impact has been evaluated on end-to-end QoS when heterogeneous network domains are involved. This work is based on the of results of activities focussed on the study of signalling protocols, carried out within the EU Integrated Project WEIRD (WiMAX extension to isolated research data networks).

This paper analyzes a two-hop extension to the coverage of an IEEE 802.16 cell. There is natural degradation in cell capacity due to multihop communications which can be mitigated by spatial reuse, adaptive modulation and coding. We estimate the available capacity by analyzing the random geometry related to the locations of the base station, the sponsor nodes and the mesh subscriber stations situated two hops away from the base station. The results show the trade-offs of extending the coverage area and the decrease of the capacity.

We present an admission control (AC) algorithm for the specific case of pre-provisioned IEEE 802.16 d links for VoIP aggregates. The algorithm approaches AC from a new perspective as admission criterion is speech quality, the sole true quality metric for voice services. As we found the E-Model can be used to reliably estimate speech quality and the resulting R-Score as admission criterion. Moreover, we show that speech quality can be evaluated on aggregate level without compromising individual call's speech quality. The algorithm is simple, fast, and precise and its behaviour is consistent over a range of different deployments.

In the existing papers on cooperative diversity, the fading channels are idealistically assumed to be Rayleigh fading channel. Taking into account the realistic propagation environments in the presence of spatial fading correlation, the performance of cooperative protocols using distributed space-time block code (DSTBC) in the two-ring scattering model is analyzed. The time division multiple access scheme is proposed with half duplex mode. Cooperative scheme is proposed, because cooperative diversity can combat the fading correlation by spatial decorrelation which is produced by independent multipaths and scattering paths between source nodes (SNs) and destination nodes (DNs). Cooperative relaying is shown to increase the link stability (or, alternatively, decrease the link outage probability) significantly. Therefore, the outage capacity and average bit error rate (BER) of cooperation are presented by applying various cooperative schemes in the correlated channel. Based on theoretical analyses and simulation results, the cooperative diversity yields significant performance gain in correlated channel, i.e., reducing the spatial correlation of each path and enhancing the overall performance of virtual MIMO system by high quality of cooperative interuser channel.

In this paper we present a framework for autonomic QoS provisioning for VoIP services. The central role is held by a Measurement Based Admission Control algorithm which incorporates three innovations. First, the mathematical underpin- ing obeys a non-parametric approach, removing the dependency on a priori assumed characteristics of the underlying stochastic process, i.e. those of the work arrival process. Thus, we tackle a major issue of common parametric MBAC. The second and the third enhancement is embodied in the combination of a closed-loop control based on perceived QoS. Typically, MBAC algorithms do not validate there decision and thats why many algorithms miss QoS targets due to non- stationaries in work arrival processes. As a metric for perfor- mance evaluation we devised a new approach based on the Emodel, an ITU-T standard for quantifying QoS assessment based on human perception. The contribution is the mathematical framework for both, the non-parametric MBAC and its closed-loop control but also an analysis based on simulations.

Long-Range-Dependency (LRD) and Self-Similarity (SS) effects are synthetically generated by multiplexing ON/OFF sources with Pareto distributed ON and OFF times. Dependent on a myriad of parameters, however, it can be questioned if resulting traffic actually exhibits SS and LRD effects. In this paper we evaluate the robustness of these effects in simulator generated traffic to parameter settings. Using a typical simulation for performance evaluation, we measure the degree of SS and LRD.