Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) is one of the prominent 5G concepts that will allow service requirements that were not feasible so far due to the high communications latency and rigidness of cellular networks. The ETSI and the 3GPP are working towards the standardization of MEC applications integration in 5G networks, and how to route user traffic to a Local Area Data Network where local applications are deployed. Nevertheless, there are no practical implementations that facilitate the dynamic relocation of applications from the core to a MEC host, or from a MEC host to another without interruption and transparently to User Equipment (UE). Furthermore, the MEC concept can also be included in a 4G network to provide new advanced services with existing infrastructures. In this paper we propose to use Software-Defined Networking (SDN) to create a new instance of the IP anchor point to dynamically redirect the UE traffic to a new physical location (e.g. an edge infrastructure) while maintaining session and service continuity. We also present a novel, completely distributed approach based on SDN to maintain the previous context of the connection in the new instance of the IP anchor point, and we analyze the performance of this mechanism in comparison to other possible alternatives to keep the session state. This approach can be used to implement edge services in a 4G or 5G network.
Vehicle automation is driving the integration of advanced sensors and new applications that demand high-quality information, such as collaborative sensing for enhanced situational awareness. In this work, we considered a vehicular sensing scenario supported by 5G communications, in which vehicle sensor data need to be sent to edge computing resources with stringent latency constraints. To ensure low latency with the resources available, we propose an optimization framework that deploys User Plane Functions (UPFs) dynamically at the edge to minimize the number of network hops between the vehicles and them. The proposed framework relies on a practical Software-Defined-Networking (SDN)-based mechanism that allows seamless re-assignment of vehicles to UPFs while maintaining session and service continuity. We propose and evaluate different UPF allocation algorithms that reduce communications latency compared to static, random, and centralized deployment baselines. Our results demonstrated that the dynamic allocation of UPFs can support latency-critical applications that would be unfeasible otherwise.
Drones may be more advantageous than fixed cameras for quality control applications in industrial facilities, since they can be redeployed dynamically and adjusted to production planning. The practical scenario that has motivated this paper, image acquisition with drones in a car manufacturing plant, requires drone positioning accuracy in the order of 5 cm. During repetitive manufacturing processes, it is assumed that quality control imaging drones will follow highly deterministic periodic paths, stop at predefined points to take images and send them to image recognition servers. Therefore, by relying on prior knowledge about production chain schedules, it is possible to optimize the positioning technologies for the drones to stay at all times within the boundaries of their flight plans, which will be composed of stopping points and the paths in between. This involves mitigating issues such as temporary blocking of line-of-sight between the drone and any existing radio beacons; sensor data noise; and the loss of visual references. We present a self-corrective solution for this purpose. It corrects visual odometer readings based on filtered and clustered Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) data, as an alternative to direct Kalman fusion. The approach combines the advantages of these technologies when at least one of them works properly at any measurement spot. It has three method components: independent Kalman filtering, data association by means of stream clustering and mutual correction of sensor readings based on the generation of cumulative correction vectors. The approach is inspired by the observation that UWB positioning works reasonably well at static spots whereas visual odometer measurements reflect straight displacements correctly but can underestimate their length. Our experimental results demonstrate the advantages of the approach in the application scenario over Kalman fusion, in terms of stopping point detection and trajectory estimation error.INDEX TERMS Ultra-Wide Band, visual odometer, sensor fusion, wireless technologies, drone positioning, industry applications, Industry 4.0, quality control.
Wireless connectivity is essential for industrial production processes and workflow management. Moreover, the connectivity requirements of industrial devices, which are usually long-term investments, are diverse and require different radio interfaces. In this regard, the 3GPP has studied how to support heterogeneous radio access technologies (RATs) such as Wi-Fi and unlicensed cellular technologies in 5G core networks. In some cases, these technologies coexist in the same spectrum. Dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS), which has already been proven to increase spectrum efficiency in licensed bands, can also be applied to this scenario. In this paper, we propose two solutions for mobile network operators (MNOs) or service providers to dynamically divide (multiplex) the radio resources of a shared channel between a Wi-Fi basic service set (BSS) and one or several carriers of scheduled wireless networks, such as cellular technologies, with a configurable level of sharing granularity. These solutions do not require modifications to the current commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) end devices. We adapt the existing IEEE 802.11 procedures to notify the Wi-Fi stations that they must share channels with different access networks. We demonstrate that our dynamic sharing proposals are also advantageous over direct coexistence and evaluate each of them quantitatively and qualitatively to determine when one or the other is preferable. The evaluation is particularized for IEEE 802.11ac and long-term evolution (LTE) license assisted access (LAA), but the solutions can be easily extended to 5G new radio-unlicensed (5G NR-U) or to any other wireless technology in which the network side schedules end device transmissions.
Mobile core networks handle critical control functions for delivering services in modern cellular networks. Traditional point-to-point architectures, where network functions are directly connected through standardized interfaces, are being substituted by service-based architectures (SBAs), where core functionalities are finer-grained microservices decoupled from the underlying infrastructure. In this way, network functions and services can be distributed, with scaling and fail-over mechanisms, and can be dynamically deployed, updated, or removed to support slicing. A myriad of network functions can be deployed or removed according to traffic flows, thereby increasing the complexity of connection management. In this context, 3GPP Release 16 defines the service communication proxy (SCP) as a unified communication interface for a set of network functions. In this paper, we propose a novel software-defined networking (SDN)-based solution with the same role for a service mesh architecture where network functions can be deployed anywhere in the infrastructure. We demonstrated its efficiency in comparison with alternative architectures.
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