Adaptable and Automated Small UAV Deployments via Virtualization

Nogales, Borja; Sanchez-Aguero, Victor; Vidal, Iván; Valera, Francisco

doi:10.3390/s18124116

Cited by 35 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 32 publications

(40 reference statements)

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“…In the direct continuity of the work proposed in [267], Nogales et al [268] presented an improved architecture that uses UAVs in an NFV environment. The aim of this work is to unify functions and services, which is defined by the operator at the deployment of UAVs.…”

Section: B Other Nfv-enabled Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Softwarization of UAV Networks: A Survey of Applications and Future Trends

et al. 2020

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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become increasingly important in assisting 5G and beyond 5G (B5G) mobile networks. Indeed, UAVs have all the potentials to both satisfy the ever-increasing mobile data demands of such mobile networks and provide ubiquitous connectivity to different kinds of wireless devices. However, the UAV assistance paradigm faces a set of crucial issues and challenges. For example, the network management of current UAV-assisted systems is time consuming, complicated, and carried out manually, thus causing a multitude of interoperability issues. To efficiently address all these issues, Software-Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are two promising technologies to efficiently manage and improve the UAV assistance for the next generation of mobile networks. In the literature, no clear guidelines are describing the different use cases of SDN and NFV in the context of UAV assistance to terrestrial networks, including mobile networks. Motivated by this fact, in this survey, we guide the reader through a comprehensive discussion of the main characteristics of SDN and NFV technologies. Moreover, we provide a thorough analysis of the different classifications, use cases, and challenges related to UAV-assisted systems. We then discuss SDN/NFV-enabled UAV-assisted systems, along with several case studies and issues, such as the involvement of UAVs in cellular communications, monitoring, and routing, to name a few. We furthermore present a set of open research challenges, high-level insights, and future research directions related to UAV-assisted systems.

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Section: B Other Nfv-enabled Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Softwarization of UAV Networks: A Survey of Applications and Future Trends

et al. 2020

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“…In [3] an UAV platform provides to external controllers the opportunity to adapt the telemetry monitoring. In [4] is presented an NFV programmable infrastructure that enables the agile unification of services and functions, which may be determined by the operator of the UAVs at deployment time. NFV is used to decouple the drone hardware infrastructure from the control layer that virtualizes the infrastructure resources for the higher layers [5].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

An NFV-Based Energy Scheduling Algorithm for a 5G Enabled Fleet of Programmable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Tipantuña

Hesselbach

Sanchez-Aguero

et al. 2019

Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

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The fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) is expected to provide diverse and stringent improvements such as greater connectivity, bandwidth, throughput, availability, improved coverage, and lower latency. Considering this, drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices are perfect examples of existing technology that can take advantage of the capabilities provided by 5G technology. In particular, UAVs are expected to be an important component of 5G networks implementations and support different communication requirements and applications. UAVs working together with 5G can potentially facilitate the deployment of standalone or complementary communications infrastructures, and, due to its rapid deployment, these solutions are suitable candidates to provide network services in emergency scenarios, natural disasters, and search and rescue missions. An important consideration in the deployment of a programmable drone fleet is to guarantee the reliability and performance of the services through consistent monitoring, control, and management scheme. In this regard, the Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) paradigm, a key technology within the 5G ecosystem, can be used to perform automation, management, and orchestration tasks. In addition, to ensure the coordination and reliability in the communications systems, considering that the UAVs have a finite lifetime and that eventually they must be replaced, a scheduling scheme is needed to guarantee the availability of services and efficient resource utilization. To this end, in this paper is presented an UAV scheduling scheme which leverages the potential offered by NFV. The proposed strategy, based on a brute-force search combinatorial algorithm, allows obtaining the optimal scheduling of UAVs in time, in order to efficiently deploy network services. Simulation results validate the performance of the proposed strategy, by providing the number of drones needed to meet certain levels of service availability. Furthermore, the strategy allows knowing the sequence of replacement of UAVs to ensure the optimal resource utilization.

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“…Notwithstanding the benefits, the realization of this view presents a set of fundamental challenges that needs to be carefully addressed, such as the appropriate integration of these compute platforms as an NFV infrastructure, using an existing NFV software stack, so that an NFV orchestration service can deploy virtual functions on the UAVs; the constraints in terms of the computational resources provided by the compute platforms, as the UAVs transporting them may typically present limitations in terms of size, weight, and computing capacity of payload equipment; the proper placement of the virtual functions onto UAVs (i.e., selecting the best UAV candidate to deploy a particular virtual function); the maintenance of the control communications with the UAVs in order to manage the lifecycle of the VNFs in spite of the potentially intermittent availability of network communications with them (e.g., caused by mobility and battery constraints); the limited operation time of the UAVs due to their battery consumption; and the migration of the virtual functions when a UAV needs to be replaced due to its battery exhaustion. These benefits and challenges are detailed in previous work 18,19 that includes the design of an NFV system capable of supporting the automated deployment of network functions and services on UAV platforms, as well as the validation of the practical feasibility of this design.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this context, this paper focuses on describing a protocol to enable the automated deployment of moderately complex network services over a network of UAVs using the NFV standards and open source technologies. To illustrate the different steps of the protocol, a re-elaboration of an experiment presented in Nogales et al 19 is presented, consisting of the deployment of an IP telephony service. To aid the reproducibility of this work, real flight is considered as optional in the presented procedure, and performance results are obtained with the UAV devices on the ground.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automated Deployment of an Internet Protocol Telephony Service on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Network Functions Virtualization

Nogales

Vidal

Sanchez-Aguero

et al. 2019

JoVE

Self Cite

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The Network Function Virtualization (NFV) paradigm is one of the key enabling technologies in the development of the 5 th generation of mobile networks. This technology aims to lessen the dependence on hardware in the provision of network functions and services by using virtualization techniques that allow the softwarization of those functionalities over an abstraction layer. In this context, there is increasing interest in exploring the potential of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to offer a flexible platform capable of enabling cost-effective NFV operations over delimited geographic areas. To demonstrate the practical feasibility of utilizing NFV technologies in UAV platforms, a protocol is presented to set up a functional NFV environment based on open source technologies, in which a set of small UAVs supply the computational resources that support the deployment of moderately complex network services. Then, the protocol details the different steps needed to support the automated deployment of an internet protocol (IP) telephony service over a network of interconnected UAVs, leveraging the capacities of the configured NFV environment. Experimentation results demonstrate the proper operation of the service after its deployment. Although the protocol focuses on a specific type of network service (i.e., IP telephony), the described steps may serve as a general guide to deploy other type of network services. On the other hand, the protocol description considers concrete equipment and software to set up the NFV environment (e.g., specific single board computers and open source software). The utilization of other hardware and software platforms may be feasible, although the specific configuration aspect of the NFV environment and the service deployment may present variations with respect to those described in the protocol.

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Adaptable and Automated Small UAV Deployments via Virtualization

Cited by 35 publications

References 32 publications

Softwarization of UAV Networks: A Survey of Applications and Future Trends

Softwarization of UAV Networks: A Survey of Applications and Future Trends

An NFV-Based Energy Scheduling Algorithm for a 5G Enabled Fleet of Programmable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Automated Deployment of an Internet Protocol Telephony Service on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Network Functions Virtualization

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