Deploying an NFV-Based Experimentation Scenario for 5G Solutions in Underserved Areas

Abstract

Presently, a significant part of the world population does not have Internet access. The fifth-generation cellular network technology evolution (5G) is focused on reducing latency, increasing the available bandwidth, and enhancing network performance. However, researchers and companies have not invested enough effort into the deployment of the Internet in remote/rural/ undeveloped areas for different techno-economic reasons. This article presents the result of a collaboration between Brazil and the European Union, introducing the steps designed to create a fully operational experimentation scenario with the main purpose of integrating the different achievements of the H2020 5G-RANGE project so that they can be trialed together into a 5G networking use case. The scenario encompasses (i)a novel radio access network that targets a bandwidth of 100 Mb/s in a cell radius of 50 km, and (ii) a network of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SUAV). This set of SUAVs is NFV-enabled, on top of which Virtual Network Functions (VNF) can be automatically deployed to support occasional network communications beyond the boundaries of the 5G-RANGE radio cells. The whole deployment implies the use of a virtual private overlay network enabling the preliminary validation of the scenario components from their respective remote locations, and simplifying their subsequent integration into a single local demonstrator, the configuration of the required GRE/IPSec tunnels, the integration of the new 5G-RANGE physical, MAC and network layer components and the overall validation with voice and data services.

Cellular and Virtualization Technologies for UAVs: An Experimental Perspective

“…Moreover, using a VPN provides an additional layer of security, as all the communications between its elements will be encrypted to allow its transmission through the VPN tunnel, preventing man-in-the-middle attacks or the unauthorized attachment of malicious nodes to the network. Details on including data encryption, such as VPN service, can be found in our previous work [ 43 ].…”

“…The VPN relay is not greatly affecting the performance since the VPN server is located on the same network as the UAV-controller. More details about the performance decrease of introducing a VPN service can be found in [ 43 ]. Reliability tests were also performed by sending a 200 Kb/s stream as required in the KPIs (both downlink and uplink), and no packets were lost during this process.…”

5G: Next Generation Mobile Wireless Technology for A Fast Pacing World

“…The Fifth Generation (5G) mobile communication technology has emerged in an unprecedented era where the need for fast and efficient mobile communication technology is on the rise. The 3 rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) leads the standardization of 5G [1]. 5G is a significant evolution of the present 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network.…”

Energy-Constrained Design of Joint NOMA-Diversity Schemes with Imperfect Interference Cancellation

“…The design of an effective technique for handling a large amount of uncoordinated traffic is still an open issue both for Fifth and Sixth Generation (5G/6G) communication systems, whose final aim is the provisioning of a pervasive space/terrestrial scenario implementing the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Existing networks manage the distributed load by adopting the well known Slotted Aloha (SA) protocol [ 5 ], for which several extensions have been proposed [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ].…”