Blockchain technology is highly coupled with cryptocurrencies; however, it provides several other potential use cases, related to energy and sustainability, Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities, smart mobility and more. Blockchain can offer security for Electric Vehicle (EV) transactions in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) concept, allowing electricity trading to be performed in a decentralized, transparent and secure way. Additionally, blockchain provides the necessary functionalities for IoV decentralized application development, such as data exchange, personal digital identity, sharing economy and optimized charging pattern. Moreover, blockchain technology has the potential to significantly increase energy efficiency, decrease management costs and guarantee the effective use of the energy recourses. Therefore, its application in the IoV concept provides secure, autonomous and automated energy trading between EVs. While several studies on blockchain technology in smart grids have been conducted, insufficient attention has been given to conducting a detailed review and state-of-the-art analysis of blockchain application in the IoV domain. To this end, this work provides a systematic literature review of blockchain-based applications in the IoV domain. The aim is to investigate the current challenges of IoV and to highlight how blockchain characteristics can contribute to this emerging paradigm. In addition, limitations and future research directions related to the integration of blockchain technology within the IoV are discussed. To this end, this study incorporates the theoretical foundations of several research articles published in scientific publications over the previous five years, as a method of simplifying our assessment and capturing the ever-expanding blockchain area. We present a comprehensive taxonomy of blockchain-enabled applications in the IoV domain, such as privacy and security, data protection and management, vehicle management, charging optimization and P2P energy trading, based on a structured, systematic review and content analysis of the discovered literature, and we identify key trends and emerging areas for research. The contribution of this article is two-fold: (a) we highlight the limitations presented in the relevant literature, particularly the barriers of blockchain technology and how they influence its integration into the IoV and (b) we present a number of research gaps and suggest future exploratory areas.

5G is considered to be the technology that will accommodate the development and management of innovative services with stringent and diverse requirements from end users, calling for new business models from the industry. In this context, the development and efficient management of Network Services (NS) serving specific vertical industries and spanning across multiple administrative domains and heterogeneous infrastructures is challenging. The main challenges regard the efficient provision of NSs considering the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements per vertical industry along with the optimal usage of the allocated resources. Towards addressing these challenges, this paper details an innovative approach that we have developed for managing and orchestrating such NSs, called SONATA, and compare it with OSM and Cloudify, which are two of the most known open-source Management and Orchestration (MANO) frameworks. In addition to examining the supported orchestration mechanisms per MANO framework, an evaluation of main operational and functional KPIs is provided based on experimentation using a real testbed. The final aim is the identification of their strong and weak points, and the assessment of their suitability for serving diverse vertical industry needs, including of course the Internet of Things (IoT) service ecosystem.

The Healthcare 4.0 era is surrounded by challenges varying from the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices' data collection, integration and interpretation. Several techniques have been developed that however do not propose solutions that can be applied to different scenarios or domains. When dealing with healthcare data, based on the severity and the application of their results, they should be provided almost in real-time, without any errors, inconsistencies or misunderstandings. Henceforth, in this manuscript a platform is proposed for efficiently managing healthcare data, by taking advantage of the latest techniques in Data Acquisition, 5G Network Slicing and Data Interoperability. In this platform, IoMT devices' data and network specifications can be acquired and segmented in different 5G network slices according to the severity and the computation requirements of different medical scenarios. In sequel, transformations are performed on the data of each network slice to address data heterogeneity issues, and provide the data of the same network slices into HL7 FHIR-compliant format, for further analysis. 1-IntroductionMost of the current researches are dealing with how medical and health-monitoring devices, clinical wearables, and remote sensors can contribute to better health for patients, and a more efficient healthcare that can drive better systems, population, and patient outcomes [1]. For the past years, medical device manufacturers and suppliers have been facing more challenges in product development to bring their devices faster and easier to the market, facing increasing complexities mainly in how to achieve and gather quicker, more reliable, interoperable and efficient measurements. Current healthcareknown as Healthcare 4.0 [2], is considered as one of the fastest industries to adopt the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, aiming to help in personalized services, reduce operating costs, and improve patient care and quality of life. Such thing has led to the marriage of the IoT and medicine, generating the concept of Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) [3]. In this domain, IoMT is promising changes in the way that the medical industry delivers healthcare, as almost all of the IoMT devices are linked to cloud platforms, while they are equipped with cellular or wireless communication, thus allowing the machine-to-machine communication.Nevertheless, for most patients and care providers, the promises of the IoT and IoMT have not yet introduced dramatic changes in how these stakeholders are experiencing healthcare. What is required is higher connection speeds that will be transforming the relationship of the patients and the healthcare providers, and integrating electronic communications into medical care, which can be achieved through the arrival of the 5G networks [4]. According to [5], 5G will enable more than $1 trillion in devices and services for the global healthcare sector. However, most of these devices are facing high degrees of heterogeneity, since they are having different capabilities, or ...

Unlike previous generations, 5G will be more than just a mobile network. 5G will have broader coverage, including humans, but also cars, robots, and things in general; and will target verticals like eHealth, Automotive, or Industry 4.0, just name a few. To deal with this, 5G will need to be faster, more efficient, reliable, flexible, agile, and, at the same time, cost less. For this to be possible, 5G has to engage with the best-of-breed of the emerging technologies, where NFV is definitely in the top list. ETSI NFV is today in an advanced stage of standardization. In particular, many MANO platforms are today available, with different levels of development, varying on the number of features and maturity levels. In this context, this paper describes the 5GTANGO Service Platform, an open source MANO framework currently under development in the scope of the 5GTANGO H2020 project, and whose main developments started in a previous H2020 project named SONATA. In particular, some features that go beyond the state-of-the-art are approached, either considering standardization or implementations available. Those features are Policy, SLA and Slicing.

Efficient Service Level Agreements (SLA) management and anticipation of Service Level Objectives (SLO) breaches become mandatory to guarantee the required service quality in software-defined and 5G networks. To create an operational Network Service, it is highly envisaged to associate it with their network-related parameters that reflect the corresponding quality levels. These are included in policies but while SLAs target usually business users, there is a challenge for mechanisms that bridge this abstraction gap. In this paper, a generic black box approach is used to map high-level requirements expressed by users in SLAs to low-level network parameters included in policies, enabling Quality of Service (QoS) enforcement by triggering the required policies and manage the infrastructure accordingly. In addition, a mechanism for determining the importance of different QoS parameters is presented, mainly used for "relevant" QoS metrics recommendation in the SLA templates.

In recent years, there has been a lot of focus on how medical and health monitoring devices, clinical wearables, and remote sensors can contribute to better health for patients and more efficient healthcare systems. The fifth generation of mobile, cellular technologies, networks and solutions, promises high bandwidth, low latency and reliability are highly demanded in order to support the needs of healthcare, it is undeniable that what is needed is the transformation of the healthcare providers-patients relationship by integrating richmedia communications into medical care. A key challenge refers to the amount of this information and the way it is transmitted and processed. The different formats, rates and size of datasets (continuously increasing) raise the need for environments able to manage these datasets in an efficient way, while also incorporating and facilitating the requirements of approaches that aim at analyzing them (e.g. through machine learning and artificial intelligence mechanisms) towards efficient healthcare. To this end, network slicing has been envisioned as the promising solution on the heterogeneous medical data requirements and diverse constraints. In this paper we propose an innovative eHealth system powered by 5G network slicing, in order to meet the requirements for establishing an efficient network with high capacity. In this context, healthcare data collection and management inside isolated slices are considered, for creating holistic views of patients, increasing the awareness concerning patients' health condition that leads to the personalization of treatments and enhances health outcomes.

Abstract-5G does not only aim at higher capacity and lower latency than current 4G in mobile broadband networks, but also to increase the level of programmability, control and flexibility to meet the requirements from innovative use cases such as IoT, smart manufacturing, and immersive media. However, several difficulties still need to be overcome for a better technological adoption. To reduce the time-to-market for networked services and to lower the entry barrier to third party developers of VNFs and network services, an integrated development and operations (DevOps) methodology is a promising way. One of the biggest challenges in upcoming 5G DevOps is the validation and verification (V&V) of individual VNFs and network services (VNF graphs) so that operators can be sure of their behavior. In this paper, we propose an NFV architecture that supports the DevOps methodology with a V&V platform and an advanced NFV catalogue. The conceptual components of the V&V platform, the foreseen methodology and the outcomes are explained. Finally, we explore some perspectives in applying such V&V approach in another 5G research project.

The wide deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) applications raises the need for underlying environments and infrastructures that can both support the traffic data requirements and enable the process of distributed IoT data. 5G-the fifth generation of mobile, cellular technologies, networks and solutions, provides the enabling environments to fulfil the aforementioned IoT applications diverse requirements. 5G promises to bring the reliability, latency, scalability and adaptability that would be needed for several services in the IoT space and beyond. To satisfy these demands, network slicing has been envisioned as the promising solution in an IoT-oriented 5G architecture. In this paper we propose an efficient IoT-oriented architecture supporting network slicing for 5G-enabled IoT services over the 5G Core, in order to meet the requirements for establishing an efficient network with high capacity, while ensuring the maximum Quality of Service (QoS) to the end users-applications.