Experimentation is important when designing communication protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks. Lower-layers have a major impact on upper-layer performance, and the complexity of the phenomena can not be entirely captured by analysis or simulation. In this report, we go through the complete process, from designing an energy-efficient self-organizing communication architecture (MAC, routing and application layers) to real-life experimentation roll-outs. The presented communication architecture includes a MAC protocol which avoids building and maintaining neighborhood tables, and a geographically-inspired routing protocol over virtual coordinates. The application consists of a mobile sink interrogating a wireless sensor network based on the requests issued by a disconnected base station. After the design process of this architecture, we verify it functions correctly by simulation, and we perform a temporal verification. This study is needed to calculate the maximum speed the mobile sink can take. We detail the implementation, and the results of the off-site experimentation (energy consumption at PHY layer, collision probability at MAC layer, and routing). Finally, we report on the real-world deployment where we have mounted the mobile sink node on a radio-controlled airplane.
Virtualization is a topic of great interest in the area of mobile and wireless communication systems. However the term virtualization is used in an inexact manner which makes it difficult to compare and contrast work that has been carried out to date. The purpose of this paper is twofold. In the first place, the paper develops a formal theory for defining virtualization. In the second instance, this theory is used as a way of surveying a body of work in the field of wireless link virtualization, a subspace of wireless network virtualization. The formal theory provides a means for distinguishin…
There is a growing demand for wireless services with different requirements in a dense and heterogeneous wireless environment. Handling this complex ecosystem is becoming a challenging issue, and wireless virtualization emerges as an efficient solution. Although the inclusion of virtualization in wireless networks ensures a better use of resources, current approaches adopted for wireless virtualization can cause an underutilization of resources, since the resource allocated to a virtual wireless network is not shared with other one. This problem can be overcome by combining wireless virtualiza…
Wireless network virtualization enables multiple virtual wireless networks to coexist on shared physical infrastructure. However, one of the main challenges is the problem of assigning the physical resources to virtual networks in an efficient manner. Although some work has been done on solving the embedding problem for wireless networks, few solutions are applicable to dynamic networks with changing traffic patterns. In this paper we propose a dynamic greedy embedding algorithm for wireless virtualization. Virtual networks can be re-embedded dynamically using this algorithm, enabling increase…
Virtualization enables the sharing of a same wireless sensor network (WSN) by multiple applications. However, in heterogeneous environments, virtualized wireless sensor networks (VWSN) raises new challenges such as the need for on-the-fly, dynamic, elastic and scalable provisioning of gateways. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is an emerging paradigm that can certainly aid in tackling these new challenges. It leverages standard virtualization technology to consolidate special-purpose network elements on top of commodity hardware. This article presents a case study on NFV based gateways f…
With the proliferation of mobile demands and increasingly multifarious services and applications, mobile Internet has been an irreversible trend. Unfortunately, the current mobile and wireless network (MWN) faces a series of pressing challenges caused by the inherent design. In this paper, we extend two latest and promising innovations of Internet, software-defined networking and network virtualization, to mobile and wireless scenarios. We first describe the challenges and expectations of MWN, and analyze the opportunities provided by the software-defined wireless network (SDWN) and wireless n…
Network virtualization is a technology of running multiple heterogeneous network architecture on a shared substrate network. One of the crucial components in network virtualization is virtual network embedding, which provides a way to allocate physical network resources (CPU and link bandwidth) to virtual network requests. Despite significant research efforts on virtual network embedding in wired and cellular networks, little attention has been paid to that in wireless multi-hop networks, which is becoming more important due to its rapid growth and the need to share these networks among differ…
This paper provides solutions for virtualizing C-RANs wireless resources and sharing them between multiple mobile network operators (MNOs). The proposed solutions dynamically allocate wireless resources to users who subscribe to MNOs across the network. In addition, the proposed solutions maintain a high level of isolation between different MNOs, provide efficient and fair resource utilization, enable different scheduling polices, and manage intercell interference (ICI). An optimal solution is formulated as a combinatorial problem, which is computationally expensive. Consequently, two low-comp…
Virtualization enables multiple applications to share the same wireless sensor and actuator network (WSAN). However, in heterogeneous environments, virtualized wireless sensor and actuator networks (VWSAN) raise new challenges, such as the need for on-the-fly, dynamic, elastic, and scalable provisioning of gateways. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is a paradigm emerging to help tackle these new challenges. It leverages standard virtualization technology to consolidate special-purpose network elements on commodity hardware. This article presents NFV architecture for VWSAN gateways, in wh…
Wireless network virtualization and information-centric networking (ICN) are two promising technologies for next generation wireless networks. Although some excellent works have focused on these two technologies, device-to-device (D2D) communications have not beeen investigated in information-centric virtualized cellular networks. Meanwhile, content caching in mobile devices has attracted great attentions due to the saved backhaul consumption or reduced transmission latency in D2D-assisted cellular networks. However, when it comes to the multi-operator scenario, the direct content sharing betw…
This paper presents an approach to integrate wireless sensor networks (WSN) with the LabVIEW graphical development environment through a dedicated software driver. As personal constribution, a system architecture and concept implementation are described, in the context of a smart house monitoring scenario. Data acquisition is performed via the deployed wireless sensor network with focus on three main parameters: temperature, humidity and light. The data logging, monitoring and control functions are realized through a virtual instrumentation project. This also enables an easy-to-use user interf…
For stationary wireless ad hoc networks, one of the key challenging issues in routing and multicasting is to conserve as much energy as possible without compromising path efficiency measured as end-to-end delay. In this paper, we address the problem of path efficient and energy aware multicasting in static wireless ad hoc networks. We propose a novel distributed scalable algorithm for finding a virtual multicast backbone (VMB). Based on this VMB, we have further developed a multicasting scheme that jointly improves path efficiency and energy conservation. By exploiting inherent broadcast advan…
When deploying resource-intensive signal processing applications in wireless sensor or mesh networks, distributing processing blocks over multiple nodes becomes promising. Such distributed applications need to solve the placement problem (which block to run on which node), the routing problem (which link between blocks to map on which path between nodes), and the scheduling problem (which transmission is active when). We investigate a variant where the application graph may contain feedback loops and we exploit wireless networks? inherent multicast advantage. Thus, we propose Multicast-Aware R…
Some of the new trends emerging in future wireless networks enable a vastly increased fluidity in accessing a wide range of resources, thus supporting flexible network composition and dynamic allocation of resources to virtual network operators (VNOs). In this work we study a new resource allocation opportunity that is enabled by the cloud radio access network architecture. In particular, we investigate the relationship between the cloud-based antennas and spectrum as two important resources in virtualized wireless networks. We analyze the interplay between spectrum and antennas in the context…
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have become very popular and are being used in many application domains (e.g. smart cities, security, gaming and agriculture). Virtualized WSNs allow the same WSN to be shared by multiple applications. Semantic applications are situation-aware and can potentially play a critical role in virtualized WSNs. However, provisioning them in such settings remains a challenge. The key reason is that semantic applications provisioning mandates data annotation. Unfortunately it is no easy task to annotate data collected in virtualized WSNs. This paper proposes a data annot…
Next generation (5G) wireless networks are expected to support the massive data and accommodate a wide range of services/use cases with distinct requirements in a cost-effective, flexible, and agile manner. As a promising solution, wireless network virtualization (WNV), or network slicing, enables multiple virtual networks to share the common infrastructure on demand, and to be customized for different services/use cases. This article focuses on network-wide resource allocation for realizing WNV. Specifically, the motivations, the enabling platforms, and the benefits of WNV, are first reviewed…
Power management is one of the vital issue in wireless sensor networks, where the lifetime of the network relies on battery powered nodes. Transmitting at high power reduces the lifetime of both the nodes and the network. One efficient way of power management is to control the power at which the nodes transmit. In this paper, a virtual multiple input multiple output wireless sensor network (VMIMO-WSN)communication architecture is considered and the power control of sensor nodes based on the approach of game theory is formulated. The use of game theory has proliferated, with a broad range of ap…
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have become pervasive and are used in many applications and services. Usually the deployments of WSNs are task oriented and domain specific; thereby precluding re-use when other applications and services are contemplated. This inevitably leads to the proliferation of redundant WSN deployments. Virtualization is a technology that can aid in tackling this issue, as it enables the sharing of resources/infrastructure by multiple independent entities. In this paper we critically review the state of the art and propose a novel architecture for WSN virtualization. The …
Radio access network (RAN) virtualization is gaining more and more ground and expected to re-architect the next-generation cellular networks. Existing RAN virtualization studies and solutions have mostly focused on sharing communication capacity and tend to require the use of the same PHY and MAC layers across network slices. This approach has not considered the scenarios where different slices require different PHY and MAC layers, for instance, for radically different services and for whole-stack research in wireless living labs where novel PHY and MAC layers need to be deployed concurrently …
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an exploding market as well as a important focus area for research. Security is a major issue for IoT products and solutions, with several massive problems that are still commonplace in the field. In this paper, we have successfully minimized the risk of data eavesdropping and tampering over the network by securing these communications using the concept of tunneling. We have implemented this by connecting a router to the internet via a Virtual Private network while using PPTP and L2TP as the underlying protocols for the VPN and exploring their cost benefits, com…
It is widely acknowledged that the forthcoming 5G architecture will be highly heterogeneous and deployed with a high degree of density. These changes over the current 4G bring many challenges on how to achieve an efficient operation from the network management perspective. In this article, we introduce a revolutionary vision of the future 5G wireless networks, in which the network is no longer limited by hardware or even software. Specifically, by the idea of virtualizing the wireless networks, which has recently gained increasing attention, we introduce the Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) taxo…
In this paper we propose a new scheduling algorithm called Real Time Scheduling (RTS) which uses virtual nodes for self stabilization. This algorithm deals with all the contributing components of the end-to-end travelling delay of data packets in sensor network and with virtual nodes algorithm achieves QoS in terms of packet delivery, multiple connections, better power management and stable routes in case of failure. RTS delays packets at intermediate hops (not just prioritizes them) for a duration that is a function of their deadline. Delaying packets allows the network to avoid hot spotting …
In order to better accommodate the dramatically increasing demand for data caching and computing services, storage and computation capabilities should be endowed to some of the intermediate nodes within the network. In this paper, we design a novel virtualized heterogeneous networks framework aiming at enabling content caching and computing. With the virtualization of the whole system, the communication, computing and caching resources can be shared among all users associated with different virtual service providers. We formulate the virtual resource allocation strategy as a joint optimization…
The last years have witnessed a dramatic growth in the number as well as the variety of graphics intensive mobile applications, which allow users to interact and navigate through large scenes such as ancient places, museums and even virtual cities. These applications support many clients and impose a heavy requirement on network resources and computational resources. One key issue in the design of cost efficient mobile walkthrough applications is the data transmission between servers and mobile client devices. In this paper, we propose an effective progressive mesh transmission framework that …
With the recent advances in sensor hardware and software, architectures for virtualized Wireless Sensor Networks (vWSNs) are now emerging. Through node- and network-level virtualization, vWSNs can be offered as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) which can aid in realizing the true potential of Internet-of-Things (IoT). Cloud computing offers elastic provisioning of large-scale infrastructures to multiple concurrent users where Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) interacts with IaaS in order to efficiently host and execute applications over these infrastructures. Amalgamating IoT with cloud computing …
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are the key components of the emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm. They are now ubiquitous and used in a plurality of application domains. WSNs are still domain specific and usually deployed to support a specific application. However, as WSN nodes are becoming more and more powerful, it is getting more and more pertinent to research how multiple applications could share a very same WSN infrastructure. Virtualization is a technology that can potentially enable this sharing. This paper is a survey on WSN virtualization. It provides a comprehensive review of…
Wireless network virtualization has attracted great attentions from both academia and industry. Another emerging technology for next generation wireless networks is in-band full duplex (FD) communications. Due to its promising performance, FD communication has been considered as an effective way to achieve self-backhauls for small cells. In this paper, we introduce wireless virtualization into small cell networks, and propose a virtualized small cell network architecture with FD self-backhauls. We formulate the virtual resource allocation problem in virtualized small cell networks with FD self…
China University of Petroleum (East China)（中国石油大学（华东））；Beijing Institute of Satellite Information Engineering（北京卫星信息工程研究所）
The rapid development of virtual network architecture makes it possible for wireless network to be widely used. With the popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) industry in daily life, efficient resource allocation of wireless network has become a problem. Especially when network users request wireless network resources from different management domains, they still face many practical problems. From the perspective of virtual network embedding (VNE), this paper designs and implements a multi-objective optimization VNE algorithm for wireless network resource allocation. Resource allocation i…
This study presents the design of the hybrid wireless virtualization HWV controller based network architecture. Using a HWV controller, an unified approach can be taken for provisioning and management of virtualized heterogeneous radios, irrespective of their MAC and PHY layer mechanisms. It is shown that the airtime occupancy by transmissions from different slices or groups can be used as a single metric for tying these virtualized platforms. The HWV controller can account and dynamically reprovision slice quotas, which can be used for maximizing the revenue of the network operator or aggrega…
Live virtual machine migration aims at enabling the dynamic balanced use of the networking/computing physical resources of virtualized data-centers, so to lead to reduced energy consumption. Here, we analytically characterize, prototype in software and test an optimal bandwidth manager for live migration of VMs in wireless channel. In this paper we present the optimal tunable-complexity bandwidth manager (TCBM) for the QoS live migration of VMs under a wireless channel from smartphone to access point. The goal is the minimization of the migration-induced communication energy under service leve…
End-to-End (E2E) network slicing enables wireless networks to provide diverse services on a common infrastructure. Each E2E slice, including resources of radio access network (RAN) and core network, is rented to mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) to provide a specific service to end-users. RAN slicing, which is realized through wireless network virtualization, involves sharing the frequency spectrum and base station antennas in RAN. Similarly, in core slicing, which is achieved by network function virtualization, data center resources such as commodity servers and physical links are shar…
Real-time industrial application requires routing protocol that guarantees data delivery with reliable, efficient and low end-to-end delay. Existing Routing(THVR) [13] is based velocity of Two-Hop Velocity and protocol relates two-hop velocity to delay to select the next forwarding node, that has overhead of exchanging control packets, and depleting the available energy in nodes. We propose a Real-Time Reliable Data delivery based on Virtual Coordinates Routing (RRDVCR) algorithm, based on the number of hops to the destination rather than geographic distance. Selection of forwarding node is ba…
This research concentrates on the design and analysis of an algorithm referred to as Virtual Network Configuration (VNC) which uses predicted future states of a system for faster network configuration and management. VNC is applied to the configuration of a wireless mobile ATM network. VNC is built on techniques from parallel discrete event simulation merged with constraints from real-time systems and applied to mobile ATM configuration and handoff. Configuration in a mobile network is a dynamic and continuous process. Factors such as load, distance, capacity and topology are all constantly ch…
Age of information (AoI) is a recently proposed metric that measures the time elapsed since the generation of the last received information update. We consider the problem of AoI minimization for a network under general interference constraints, and time varying channel. We study the case where the channel statistics are known, but the current channel state is unknown. We propose two scheduling policies, namely, the virtual queue based policy and age-based policy. In the virtual queue based policy, the scheduler schedules links with maximum weighted sum of the virtual queue lengths, while in t…
Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications have attracted great attention from both academia and industry. In this paper, with recent advances in wireless network virtualization and software-defined networking (SDN), we propose a novel framework for M2M communications in software-defined cellular networks with wireless network virtualization. In the proposed framework, according to different functions and quality of service (QoS) requirements of machine-type communication devices (MTCDs), a hypervisor enables the virtualization of the physical M2M network, which is abstracted and sliced into mult…
Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications have attracted great attention from both academia and industry. In this paper, with recent advances in wireless network virtualization and software-defined networking (SDN), we propose a novel framework for M2M communications in software-defined cellular networks with wireless network virtualization. In the proposed framework, according to different functions and quality of service (QoS) requirements of machine-type communication devices (MTCDs), a hypervisor enables the virtualization of the physical M2M network, which is abstracted and sliced into mult…
The Metaverse and its promises are fast becoming reality as maturing technologies are empowering the different facets. One of the highlights of the Metaverse is that it offers the possibility for highly immersive and interactive socialization. Virtual reality (VR) technologies are the backbone for the virtual universe within the Metaverse as they enable a hyper-realistic and immersive experience, and especially so in the context of socialization. As the virtual world 3D scenes to be rendered are of high resolution and frame rate, these scenes will be offloaded to an edge server for computation…
Nodes of minimum connected dominating set (MCDS) form a virtual backbone in a wireless adhoc network. In this paper, a modified approach is presented to determine MCDS of an underlying graph of a Wireless Adhoc network. Simulation results for a variety of graphs indicate that the approach is efficient in determining the MCDS as compared to other existing techniques.
Using Service Function Chaining (SFC) in wireless networks became popular in many domains like networking and multimedia. It relies on allocating network resources to incoming SFCs requests, via a Virtual Network Embedding (VNE) algorithm, so that it optimizes the performance of the SFC. When the load of incoming requests -- competing for the limited network resources - increases, it becomes challenging to decide which requests should be admitted and which one should be rejected. In this work, we propose a deep Reinforcement learning (RL) solution that can learn the admission policy for differ…
Constructing a connected dominating set as the virtual backbone plays an important role in wireless networks. In this paper, we propose two novel approximate algorithms for dominating set and connected dominating set in wireless networks, respectively. Both of the algorithms are based on edge dominating capability which is a novel notion proposed in this paper. Simulations show that each of proposed algorithm has good performance especially in dense wireless networks .
The delay guarantee is a challenge in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), where energy constraints must be considered. The coexistence of renewable energy and electricity grid is expected as a promising energy supply manner for WSNs to remain function for a potentially infinite lifetime. In this paper, we address cross-layer control to guarantee worse case delay for Heterogeneous Powered (HP) WSNs. We design a novel virtual delay queue structure, and apply the Lyapunov optimization technique to develop cross-layer control algorithm only requiring knowledge of the instantaneous system state, which…
Augmented and/or virtual reality (AR/VR) are emerging as one of the main applications in future fifth generation (5G) networks. To meet the requirements of lower latency and massive data transmission in AR/VR applications, a solution with software-defined networking (SDN) architecture is proposed for 5G small cell networks. On this basis, a multi-path cooperative route (MCR) scheme is proposed to facilitate the AR/VR wireless transmissions in 5G small cell networks, in which the delay of MCR scheme is analytically studied. Furthermore, a service effective energy optimal (SEEO) algorithm is dev…
In this paper, we present the performance of different broadcast schemes for multihop sensor networks based on mathematical modeling. In near future many applications will demand multicast (Broadcast) communication feature from the sensor networks. This broadcast feature does not use virtual carrier sensing but relies on physical carrier sensing to reduce collision. For this paper, we analyze the different broadcast schemes for multihop wireless sensor networks and also calculated the achievable throughput.
The concept of small worlds is introduced into the physical topology of wireless networks in this work. A. Helmy provided two con- struction schemes of small worlds for the wireless networks, link rewiring and link addition, but he mainly focused on the virtual topology. Based on the broadcasting nature of the radio transmission, we propose a con- struction scheme of small worlds for the physical topology of Multiple- Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) wireless networks. Besides the topology- related topics, we also evaluate the reduction of the power required by a request.
Immersive social interactions of mobile users are soon to be enabled within a virtual space, by means of virtual reality (VR) technologies and wireless cellular systems. In a VR mobile social network, the states of all interacting users should be updated synchronously and with low latency via two-way communications with edge computing servers. The resulting end-to-end latency depends on the relationship between the virtual and physical locations of the wireless VR users and of the edge servers. In this work, the problem of analyzing and optimizing the end-to-end latency is investigated for a s…
In this paper, we propose a design solution for the implementation of Virtualized Network Coding Functionality (VNCF) over a service coverage area. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Network Coding (NC) architectural designs are integrated as a toolbox of NC design domains so that NC can be implemented over different underlying physical networks including satellite or hybrid networks. The design includes identifying theoretical limits of NC over wireless networks in terms of achievable rate region and optimizing coding rates for nodes that implement VNCF. The overall design target is to…
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are being used extensively today in various domains. However, they are traditionally deployed with applications embedded in them which precludes their re-use for new applications. Nowadays, virtualization enables several applications on a same WSN by abstracting the physical resources (i.e. sensing capabilities) into logical ones. However, this comes at a cost, including an energy cost. It is therefore critical to ensure the efficient allocation of these resources. In this paper, we study the problem of assigning application sensing tasks to sensor devices, in v…
Virtual reality (VR) is becoming prevalent with a plethora of applications in education, healthcare, entertainment, etc. To increase the user mobility, and to reduce the energy consumption and production cost of VR head mounted displays (HMDs), wireless VR with edge-computing has been the focus of both industry and academia. However, transferring large video frames of VR applications with their stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements over wireless network requires innovations and optimizations across different network layers. In order to develop efficient architectures, protocols and s…
Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) refers to the virtualization of base station functionalities by means of cloud computing. This results in a novel cellular architecture in which low-cost wireless access points, known as radio units (RUs) or remote radio heads (RRHs), are centrally managed by a reconfigurable centralized "cloud", or central, unit (CU). C-RAN allows operators to reduce the capital and operating expenses needed to deploy and maintain dense heterogeneous networks. This critical advantage, along with spectral efficiency, statistical multiplexing and load balancing gains, make C-R…
As 5th Generation research reaches the twilight, the research community must go beyond 5G and look towards the 2030 connectivity landscape, namely 6G. In this context, this work takes a step towards the 6G vision by proposing a next generation communication platform, which aims to extend the rigid coverage area of fixed deployment networks by considering virtual mobile small cells (MSC) that are created on demand. Relying on emerging computing paradigms such as NFV (Network Function Virtualization) and SDN (Software Defined Networking), these cells can harness radio and networking capability l…
Contemporary Virtual Reality (VR) setups commonly consist of a Head-Mounted Display (HMD) tethered to a content-generating server. "Cutting the wire" in such setups and going truly wireless will require a wireless network capable of delivering enormous amounts of video data at an extremely low latency. Higher frequencies, such as the millimeter-wave (mmWave) band, can support these requirements. Due to high attenuation and path loss in the mmWave frequencies, beamforming is essential. For VR setups, beamforming must adapt in real-time to the user's head rotations, but can rely on the HMD's bui…
Just recently, the concept of augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) over wireless has taken the entire 5G ecosystem by storm spurring an unprecedented interest from both academia, industry and others. Yet, the success of an immersive VR experience hinges on solving a plethora of grand challenges cutting across multiple disciplines. This article underscores the importance of VR technology as a disruptive use case of 5G (and beyond) harnessing the latest development of storage/memory, fog/edge computing, computer vision, artificial intelligence and others. In particular, the main requirements of…
We consider a hybrid wireless local area network composed of both WiFi and LiFi Access Points (AP) and wireless devices. Each device is identified in the network by a unique IP address, using a virtual network interface obtained by bonding the WiFi and LiFi physical interfaces, implemented through commercially available products. We measure the time it takes to switch between the two physical interfaces and its impact on the traffic flow, under different settings of the mechanisms used by the interface bonding driver. Different specific triggering events are considered for the switch, namely: …
