The TV set feedback feature standardized in the next generation TV system, ATSC 3.0, would enable opportunistic access of active TV channels in future Cognitive Radio Networks. This new dynamic spectrum access approach is named as black-space access, as it is complementary of current TV white space, which stands for inactive TV channels. TV black-space access can significantly increase the available spectrum of Cognitive Radio Networks in populated urban markets, where spectrum shortage is most severe while TV whitespace is very limited. However, to enable TV black-space access, secondary user has to evacuate a TV channel in a timely manner when TV user comes in. Such strict real-time constraint is an unique challenge of spectrum management infrastructure of Cognitive Radio Networks. In this paper, the real-time performance of spectrum management with regard to the degree of centralization of infrastructure is modeled and tested. Based on collected empirical network latency and database response time, we analyze the average evacuation time under four structures of spectrum management infrastructure: fully distribution, city-wide centralization, national-wide centralization, and semi-national centralization. The results show that national wide centralization may not meet the real-time requirement, while semi-national centralization that use multiple co-located independent spectrum manager can achieve real-time performance while keep most of the operational advantage of fully centralized structure.
Traffic demand in the access has grown in the last years, and service providers need to upgrade their infrastructure to the latest access standards. While fiber has become the preferred technology of choice in access networks, there are many fibre access technologies available in the market. This poses a challenging question to operators not always easy to answer: how to upgrade? what technology and for how long it will cope with the demands? In this paper we model the traffic forecast in the access for the next decade and analyze possible upgrade scenarios of fibre access networks, concluding…
Recently, edge computing has emerged as a promising paradigm to support mobile access in IoT multinetworks. However, coexistence of heterogeneous wireless communication schemes brings about new challenges to the mobility management and access control in such networks. To maintain its computing continuum, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) architecture can be applied to the distributed edge networks, which provides consistent frameworks for mobility management and creates secure mechanisms for access control. In this paper, we first review the state-of-the-art SDN technology and its applications…
Data centres are growing in numbers and size, and their networks expanding to carry larger amounts of traffic. The traffic profile is constantly varying, particularly in cloud data centres where tenants arrive, leave, and may change their resource requirements in between, and so the network configuration must change at a commensurate rate. Software-Defined Networking - programmatic control of network configuration - has been critical to meeting the demands of modern data centre network management, and has been the subject of intense focus by the research community, working in conjunction with …
The ongoing efforts in the research development and standardization of 5G, by both industry and academia, have resulted in the identification of enablers (Software Defined Networks, Network Function Virtualization, Distributed Mobility Management, etc.) and critical areas (Mobility management, Interference management, Joint access-backhaul mechanisms, etc.) that will help achieve the 5G objectives. During these efforts, it has also been identified that the 5G networks due to their high degree of heterogeneity, high QoS demand and the inevitable density (both in terms of access points and users…
While more organizations have been trying to move their infrastructure to the cloud in recent years, there have been significant challenges in how identities and access are managed in a hybrid cloud setting. This paper showcases a novel identity and access management framework for shared resources in a multi-tenant hybrid cloud environment. The paper demonstrates a method to implement the "mirror" identities of on-premise identities in the cloud. Following the best security practices, the framework ensures that only rightful users can use their mirror identities in the cloud. Furthermore, the …
The distributed structure of the Internet of things has gradually replaced the centralized structure because of its scalability, security, and single point of failure. The huge scale of information recording of the Internet of things brings challenges and opportunities to the trust management of the Internet of things. Through the analysis of a variety of existing trust management schemes, this paper proposes a unified data structure for distributed access service records, TokenChain, in which triple DES data encryption is used to ensure privacy and traceability, to achieve a unified trust man…
Network slicing is one of the key features for 5G networks to be able to accommodate the anticipated diversity of applications and business actors in a resource-efficient manner. While significant progress has already been achieved at 3GPP specifications level with regard to the system architectural and functional aspects for the realisation of network slicing in 5G networks, management solutions for the exploitation of this feature in the Next Generation Radio Access Network (NG-RAN) are still at a very incipient stage. In this context, this paper presents a framework for the management of ne…
In this paper, a dynamic spectrum management framework is proposed to improve spectrum resource utilization in a multi-access edge computing (MEC) in autonomous vehicular network (AVNET). To support the increasing data traffic and guarantee quality-of-service (QoS), spectrum slicing, spectrum allocating, and transmit power controlling are jointly considered. Accordingly, three non-convex network utility maximization problems are formulated to slice spectrum among BSs, allocate spectrum among autonomous vehicles (AVs) associated with a BS, and control transmit powers of BSs, respectively. Via l…
Enabling high-definition (HD)-map-assisted cooperative driving among autonomous vehicles (AVs) to improve the navigation safety faces technical challenges due to increased communication traffic volume for data dissemination and increased number of computing/storing tasks on AVs. In this article, a new architecture that combines multi-access edge computing (MEC) and software-defined networking (SDN) is proposed for flexible resource management and enhanced resource utilization. With MEC, the interworking of multiple wireless access technologies can be realized to exploit the diversity gain over…
Licensed Shared Access (LSA) is a spectrum sharing mechanism where bandwidth is shared between a primary network, called incumbent, and a secondary mobile network. In this work, we address dynamic spectrum management mechanisms for LSA systems. We propose a fair spectrum management algorithm for distributing incumbent's available spectrum among mobile networks. Then, we adapt the proposed algorithm to take mobile network operator's regulatory compliance aspect into account and penalize the misbehaving network operators in spectrum allocation. We extend our results to the scenario where more th…
Heterogeneous and dynamic IoT environments require a lightweight, scalable, and trustworthy access control system for protection from unauthorized access and for automated detection of compromised nodes. Recent proposals in IoT access control systems have incorporated blockchain to overcome inherent issues in conventional access control schemes. However, the dynamic interaction of IoT networks remains uncaptured. Here, we develop a blockchain based Trust and Reputation System (TRS) for IoT access control, which progressively evaluates and calculates the trust and reputation score of each parti…
Fog radio access networks (F-RANs) are seen as potential architectures to support services of internet of things by leveraging edge caching and edge computing. However, current works studying resource management in F-RANs mainly consider a static system with only one communication mode. Given network dynamics, resource diversity, and the coupling of resource management with mode selection, resource management in F-RANs becomes very challenging. Motivated by the recent development of artificial intelligence, a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) based joint mode selection and resource management …
Historical fragmentation in spectrum access models accentuates the need for novel concepts that allow for efficient sharing of already available but underutilized spectrum. The emerging Licensed Shared Access (LSA) regulatory framework is expected to enable more advanced spectrum sharing between a limited number of users while guaranteeing their much needed interference protection. However, the ultimate benefits of LSA may in practice be constrained by space-time availability of the LSA bands. Hence, more dynamic LSA spectrum management is required to leverage such real-time variability and su…
During the 2020 pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus, many countries implemented stay-at-home measures, which led to many businesses and schools moving from in-person to online mode of operation. We analyze sampled Netflow records at a medium-sized US Regional Optical Network to quantify the changes in the network traffic due to stay-at-home measures in that region. We find that human-driven traffic in the network decreases to around 70%, and mostly shifts to local ISPs, while VPN and online meeting traffic increases up to 5 times. We also find that networks adopt a variety of online meeting …
Resource Management in RIS-Assisted Rate Splitting Multiple Access for Next Generation (xG) Wireless Communications: Models, State-of-the-Art, and Future Directions
Encrypted traffic poses new and unique challenges for network operators because information that is useful or necessary for management purposes is not accessible anymore. This paper examines proposed approaches to provide end-to-end encryption as well as ways to provide the access to the needed information for network management. The two main approaches we consider are 1.- extending and adapting a widely deployed protocol such as TLS, so that information necessary for network management can be obtained; and 2.- introducing a new protocol layer, such as PLUS, that contains the necessary informa…
Regulatory radio spectrum management is evolving from traditional static frequency allocation and assignment schemes towards dynamic spectrum management and access schemes. This evolution is necessitated by a number of factors including underutilization of licensed spectrum bands, changing market and technological developments and increased demand for spectrum for emerging applications in multimedia communications, internet-of-things and fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. In simple terms dynamic spectrum management involves allowing unlicensed users known as secondary users (SUs) to acce…
This paper presents a graphical interface for the management of a wireless local area network that integrates a set of coordinated Wi-Fi access points. The interface interacts with a network application that is responsible for load balancing and mobility management. The graphical application is able to obtain and display the information stored in a system that includes a number of access points, and displays it in a friendly way for the network manager. Finally, the application allows remote management of the system, adjusting its parameters or making transfers between access points.
Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) and Fog Radio Access Networks (FRAN) are promising candidates within the 5G and beyond systems. This work examines the benefit of adopting NOMA in an FRAN architecture with constrained capacity fronthaul. The paper proposes methods for optimizing joint scheduling and power adaptation in the downlink of a NOMA-based FRAN with multiple resource blocks (RB). We consider a mixed-integer optimization problem which maximizes a network-wide rate-based utility function subject to fronthaul-capacity constraints, so as to determine i) the user-to-RB assignment, ii) …
The multiple choices of access networks offer different opportunities and overcome the limitations of other technologies. Optimal selection of interface is a big challenge for multiple interfaces supported mobile terminals to make a seamless handover and to optimize the power consumption. Seamless handover, resource management, and CAC to support QoS and multiple interface management to reduce power consumption in mobile terminal are the most important issues for the UMTS/WLAN overlaying network. The access of both interfaces simultaneously can reduce the handover latency and data loss in hete…
Network softwarization has revolutionized the architecture of cellular wireless networks. State-of-the-art container based virtual radio access networks (vRAN) provide enormous flexibility and reduced life cycle management costs, but they also come with prohibitive energy consumption. We argue that for future AI-native wireless networks to be flexible and energy efficient, there is a need for a new abstraction in network softwarization that caters for neural network type of workloads and allows a large degree of service composability. In this paper we present the NeuroRAN architecture, which l…
In Federated Learning (FL), a global statistical model is developed by encouraging mobile users to perform the model training on their local data and aggregating the output local model parameters in an iterative manner. However, due to limited energy and computation capability at the mobile devices, the performance of the model training is always at stake to meet the objective of local energy minimization. In this regard, Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC)-enabled FL addresses the tradeoff between the model performance and the energy consumption of the mobile devices by allowing users to offloa…
High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) was introduced to UMTS radio access segment to provide higher capacity for new packet switched services. As a result, packet switched sessions with multiple diverse traffic flows such as concurrentvoice and data, or video and data being transmitted to the same user are a likely commonplace cellular packet data scenario. In HSDPA, Radio Access Network (RAN) buffer management schemes are essential to support the end-to-end QoS of such sessions. Hence in this paper we present the end-to-end performance study of a proposed RAN buffer management scheme for …
High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) was introduced to UMTS radio access segment to provide higher capacity for new packet switched services. As a result, packet switched sessions with multiple diverse traffic flows such as concurrent voice and data, or video and data being transmitted to the same user are a likely commonplace cellular packet data scenario. In HSDPA, Radio Access Network (RAN) buffer management schemes are essential to support the end-to-end QoS of such sessions. Hence in this paper we present the end-to-end performance study of a proposed RAN buffer management scheme for…
Merging mobile edge computing (MEC) functionality with the dense deployment of base stations (BSs) provides enormous benefits such as a real proximity, low latency access to computing resources. However, the envisioned integration creates many new challenges, among which mobility management (MM) is a critical one. Simply applying existing radio access oriented MM schemes leads to poor performance mainly due to the co-provisioning of radio access and computing services of the MEC-enabled BSs. In this paper, we develop a novel user-centric energy-aware mobility management (EMM) scheme, in order …
