PUBLICATIONS & CONFERENCES
Publications
Discover recent publications and academic contributions organized by year.
2024 Publications
Beyond Multi-Access Edge Computing: Essentials to Realize a Mobile, Constrained Edge
Published: January 2024The main purpose of ETSI multi-access edge computing (MEC) is to improve latency and bandwidth consumption by keeping local traffic local while providing computing resources near the end-user. Despite its clear benefits, the next-generation of hyper-distributed applications (e.g., edge robotics, augmented environments, or smart agriculture) will exacerbate latency and bandwidth requirements, posin…
2023 Publications
Applying Blockchain consensus mechanisms to Network Service Federation: Analysis and performance evaluation
Published: October 2023Cutting edge (vertical) applications may swiftly saturate service providers' virtualized infrastructure. In 5G and beyond, service providers seek out for innovative solutions such as Network Service Federation (NSF) which allows orchestration of external domain services/resources to provide a zero-downtime end-to-end vertical service. Distributed ledger technologies, such as Blockchain, are used t…
Choose, not hoard: Information-to-model matching for Artificial Intelligence in O-RAN
Published: April 2023Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) is an emerging paradigm, whereby virtualized network infrastructure elements from different vendors communicate via open, standardized interfaces. A key element therein is the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based controller. Traditionally, all data available in the network has been used to train a single AI model to be used at th…
IEEE 802.11az Indoor Positioning with mmWave
Published: December 2023Last years we have witnessed the uprising of location-based applications, which depend on the device's capabilities to accurately obtain their position. IEEE 802.11, foretelling the need for such applications, started the IEEE 802.11az work on Next Generation Positioning. Although this standard provides positioning enhancements for sub-6 GHz and mmWave bands, high accuracy in the order of centimet…
Data-centric Service-Based Architecture for Edge-Native 6G Network
Published: November 2023Starting with 5G, mobile networks moved away from the point-to-point model used by previous generations towards a Service-Based Architecture (SBA) focused on a Cloudnative design. While 5G considers the SBA mainly as a central location with a single administrative domain, 6G is expected to become more of a fully-distributed system. This raises the need for flexible service routing capabilities tha…
Managing the far-edge: are today's centralized solutions a good fit
Published: May 2023Edge computing has established itself as the foundation for next-generation mobile networks, IT infrastructure, and industrial systems thanks to promised low network latency, computation offloading, and data locality. These properties empower key use-cases like Industry 4.0, Vehicular Communication and Internet of Things. Nowadays implementation of Edge computing is based on extensions to availabl…
Network support for high-performance distributed machine learning
Published: February 2023The traditional approach to distributed machine learning is to adapt learning algorithms to the network, e.g., reducing updates to curb overhead. Networks based on intelligent edge, instead, make it possible to follow the opposite approach, i.e., to define the logical network topology around the learning task to perform, so as to meet the desired learning performance. In this paper, we propose a s…
2022 Publications
FoReCo: a forecast-based recovery mechanism for real-time remote control of robotic manipulators
Published: May 2022Wireless communications represent a game changer for future manufacturing plants, enabling flexible production chains as machinery and other components are not restricted to a location by the rigid wired connections on the factory floor. However, the presence of electromagnetic interference in the wireless spectrum may result in packet loss and delay, making it a challenging environment to meet th…
Inter-Slice Mobility Management in 5G: Motivations, Standard Principles, Challenges and Research Directions
Published: April 2022Mobility management in a sliced 5G network introduces new and complex challenges. In a network-sliced environment, user mobility has to be managed among not only different base stations or access technologies but also different slices. Managing user mobility among slices, or inter-slice mobility, motivates the need for new solutions. This article, presented as a tutorial, focuses on the problem of…
KPI guarantees in network slicing
Published: April 2022Thanks to network slicing, mobile networks can now support multiple and diverse services, each requiring different key performance indicators (KPIs). In this new scenario, it is critical to allocate network and computing resources efficiently and in such a way that all KPIs targeted by a service are met. Accounting for all sorts of KPIs (e.g., availability and reliability, besides the more traditi…
A flexible IPv6 mobility management architecture for SDN¿based 5G mobile networks
Published: March 2022With the advent of increasingly diverse services, applications, and use cases, the 5G mobility environment is expected to be highly heterogeneous. The distributed mobility management (DMM) is emerging as a promising approach for 5G, which provides decentralized handover and traffic management at the edge of the network. However, in order to meet the disparate mobility needs, the DMM process requir…
Federation in dynamic environments: can blockchain be the solution?
Published: February 2022Deploying multi-domain network services is be-coming a need for operators. However, achieving that in a real operational environment is not easy and requires the use of federation. Federation is a multi-domain concept that enables the use and orchestration of network services/resources to/from external administrative domains. In this article, we first characterize the federation concept, and invol…
Distributed Ledger Technologies for Network Slicing: A Survey
Published: February 2022Network slicing is one of the fundamental tenets of Fifth Generation (5G)/Sixth Generation (6G) networks. Deploying slices requires end-to-end (E2E) control of services and the underlying resources in a network substrate featuring an increasing number of stakeholders. Beyond the technical difficulties this entails, there is a long list of administrative negotiations among parties that do not neces…
Dimensioning V2N services in 5G networks through forecast-based scaling
Published: January 2022With the increasing adoption of intelligent transportation systems and the upcoming era of autonomous vehicles, vehicular services (such as remote driving, cooperative awareness, and hazard warning) will have to operate in an ever-changing and dynamic environment. Anticipating the dynamics of traffic flows on the roads is critical for these services and, therefore, it is of paramount importance to…
Special issue on Edge Computing in Pervasive Systems [Editorial]
Published: July 2022Resumen no disponible
Edge Robotics: are we ready? An experimental evaluation of current vision and future directions
Published: May 2022Cloud-based robotics systems leverage a wide range of Information Technologies (IT) to offer tangible benefits like cost reduction, powerful computational capabilities, data offloading, etc. However, the centralized nature of cloud computing is not well-suited for a multitude of Operational Technologies (OT) nowadays used in robotics systems that require strict real-time guarantees and security. E…
2021 Publications
DQN dynamic pricing and revenue driven service federation strategy
Published: December 2021This paper proposes a dynamic pricing and revenue-driven service federation strategy based on a Deep Q-Network (DQN) to instantly and automatically decide federation across different service provider domains, each introduces dynamic service prices offering to its customers and towards other domains. A dynamic pricing model is considered in this work based on the analysis of real pricing data colle…
A 5G-based eHealth monitoring and emergency response system: experience and lessons learned
Published: September 20215G is being deployed in major cities across the globe. Although the benefits brought by the new 5G air interface will be numerous, 5G is more than just an evolution of radio technology. New concepts, such as the application of network softwarization and programmability paradigms to the overall network design, the reduced latency promised by edge computing, or the concept of network slicing – just …
Multi-domain solutions for the deployment of private 5G networks
Published: July 2021Private 5G networks have become a popular choice of various vertical industries to build dedicated and secure wireless networks in industry environments to deploy their services with enhanced service flexibility and device connectivity to foster industry digitalization. This article proposes multiple multi-domain solutions to deploy private 5G networks for vertical industries across their local pr…
Public and non-public network integration for 5Growth Industry 4.0 use cases
Published: July 20215G is playing a paramount role in the digital transformation of the industrial sector, offering high-bandwidth, reliable, and low-latency wireless connectivity to meet the stringent and critical performance requirements of manufacturing processes. This work analyzes the applicability of 5G technologies as key enablers to support, enhance, and even enable novel advances in Industry 4.0. It proposes…
5Growth: An end-to-end service platform for automated deployment and management of vertical services over 5G networks
Published: March 2021This article introduces the key innovations of the 5Growth service platform to empower vertical industries with an AI-driven automated 5G end-to-end slicing solution that allows industries to achieve their service requirements. Specifically, we present multiple vertical pilots (Industry 4.0, transportation, and energy), identify the key 5G requirements to enable them, and analyze existing technica…
Delay and reliability-constrained VNF placement on mobile and volatile 5G infrastructure
Published: January 2021Ongoing research and industrial exploitation of SDN and NFV technologies promise higher flexibility on network automation and infrastructure optimization. Choosing the location of Virtual Network Functions is a central problem in the automation and optimization of the software-defined, virtualization-based next generation of networks such as 5G and beyond. Network services provided for autonomous …
Monitoring in fog computing: state-of-the-art and research challenges
Published: January 2021Fog computing has rapidly become a widely accepted computing paradigm to mitigate cloud computing-based infrastructure limitations such as scarcity of bandwidth, large latency, security, and privacy issues. Fog computing resources and applications dynamically vary at run-time, and they are highly distributed, mobile, and appear-disappear rapidly at any time over the internet. Therefore, to ensure …
Toward intelligent cyber-physical systems: Digital twin meets artificial intelligence
Published: August 2021Industry 4.0 aims to support smarter and autonomous processes while improving agility, cost efficiency, and user experience. To fulfill its promises, properly processing the data of the industrial processes and infrastructures is required. Artificial intelligence (AI) appears as a strong candidate to handle all generated data, and to help in the automation and smartification process. This article …
Dissecting the impact of information and communication technologies on digital twins as a service
Published: July 2021Recent advances on Edge computing, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and 5G are stimulating the interest of the industrial sector to satisfy the stringent and real-time requirements of their applications. Digital Twin is a key piece in the industrial digital transformation and its benefits are very well studied in the literature. However, designing and implementing a Digital Twin system that i…
DEEP: A vertical-oriented intelligent and automated platform for the edge and fog
Published: June 2021The fifth generation (5G) of mobile communications introduces improvements on many fronts when compared to its previous generations. Besides the performance enhancements and new advances in radio technologies, it also integrates other technological domains, such as cloud-to-things continuum and artificial intelligence. In this work, the 5G-DIVE Elastic Edge Platform (DEEP) is proposed as the linki…
Stateless Flow-Zone Switching Using Software-Defined Addressing
Published: April 2021Resumen no disponible
2020 Publications
Federation of 5G services using distributed ledger technologies
Published: November 2020Federation of services, as a 5G networks concept, aims to provide orchestration of services across multiple administrative domains. In this paper, we are exploring a solution of applying distributed ledger technologies, precisely the combination of blockchain and smart contracts, to enable highly secure, private, fast and distributed interaction between administrative domains in the federation pro…
Overview of Architectural Alternatives for the Integration of ETSI MEC Environments from Different Administrative Domains
Published: August 2020Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is proposed as a standard framework for the provision and consumption of applications and services in proximity to the end-users of network operators. Proximity has been identified as one of the enablers of the forthcoming 5G, where extreme low latency and large bandwidth will be necessary for some services. However, the need of proximity imposes to network operat…
On the integration of NFV and MEC technologies: architecture analysis and benefits for edge robotics
Published: July 2020Forthcoming networks will need to accommodate a large variety of services over a common shared infrastructure. To achieve the necessary flexibility and cost savings, these networks will need to leverage two promising technologies: Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC). While the benefits of NFV and MEC have been largely studied as independent domains, the bene…
Adaptive telemetry for software-defined mobile networks
Published: July 2020The forthcoming set of 5G standards will bring programmability and flexibility to levels never seen before. This has required introducing changes in the architecture of mobile networks, enabling different features such as the split of control and data planes, as required to support the rapid programming of heterogeneous data planes. Software Defined Networking (SDN) has emerged as a basic toolset …
Applicability of SDN and NFV techniques for a virtualization-based roaming solution
Published: July 2020Network programming and virtualization are technological trends being incrementally introduced in operational networks. This creates an environment where new innovations can be incorporated, facilitating also the evolution of the way in which existing services are delivered. These changes, however, are not only motivated by technical reasons. External factors, such as regulation, can trigger the e…
Automating vertical services deployments over the 5GT platform
Published: July 2020This article presents a system for 5G networks that makes it possible to meet the diverse needs of vertical industries simultaneously sharing the same physical infrastructure. Orchestration, network slicing, edge computing, and federation are key technologies enabling industry verticals to have their own virtual networks, which might require aggregating transport networking and computing fabric, f…
Realizing the Network Service Federation Vision: Enabling Automated Multidomain Orchestration of Network Services
Published: June 2020The 5G-TRANSFORMER project proposes an NFV/SDN-based architecture to manage the end-to-end deployment of composite NFV network services, which may involve multiple administrative domains, hence, requiring network service federation capabilities. At the architectural level, this article presents the service federation functionality of the 5G-TRANSFORMER service orchestrator. It covers the gaps iden…
A baseline roadmap for advanced wireless research beyond 5G
Published: February 2020This paper presents a baseline roadmap for the evolution of 5G new radio over the next decade. Three timescales are considered, namely short-term (2022-ish), medium-term (2025-ish), and long-term (2030-ish). The evolution of the target key performance indicators (KPIs) is first analyzed by accounting for forecasts on the emerging use cases and their requirements, together with assumptions on the p…
2019 Publications
Modeling Mobile Edge Computing Deployments for Low Latency Multimedia Services
Published: February 2019Multi-access edge computing (MEC) technologies bring important improvements in terms of network bandwidth, latency, and use of context information and critical for services like multimedia streaming, augmented, and virtual reality. In future deployments, operators will need to decide how many MEC points of presence (PoPs) are needed and where to deploy them, also considering the number of base sta…
Orchestrating QoS-based connectivity services in a multi-operator sandbox
Published: February 2019One of the main features of 5G networks is the coordinated orchestration of both information technology (IT) and connectivity resources. This enables the deployment of a flexible and programmable architecture able to provision end-to-end services with different (and sometimes quite) stringent quality of service (QoS) constraints. In this paradigm, service orchestration may take place over single o…
A Comprehensive Review of Enhancements and Prospects of Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6 Protocol
Published: January 2019The emerging mobility management schemes for the fifth generation (5G) of mobile networks mostly follow the network-based protocol principles, which do not involve the mobile node (MN) in their operation. Such solutions have not been able to meet the ultra-low handover latency requirement in complex mobility scenarios in 5G. These objectives can be potentially achieved through increased involvemen…
Integrating Fronthaul and Backhaul Networks: Transport Challenges and Feasibility Results
Published: October 2019In addition to CPRI, new functional splits have been defined in 5G creating diverse fronthaul transport bandwidth and latency requirements. These fronthaul requirements shall be fulfilled simultaneously together with the backhaul requirements by an integrated fronthaul and backhaul transport solution. In this paper, we analyze the technical challenges to achieve an integrated transport solution in…
Experimental framework and evaluation of the 5G-Crosshaul control infrastructure
Published: May 2019The goal of 5G-Crosshaul is to integrate fronthaul and backhaul operation under the same data and control planes. This paper focuses on the latter, by experimentally showing the flexibility of the 5G-Crosshaul Control Infrastructure (XCI). In this sense, various network setups featuring heterogeneous network and computing resources and high-speed mobility were deployed over the 5G-Crosshaul testbe…
Optimization of an integrated fronthaul/backhaul network under path and delay constraints
Published: February 2019Cloud or Centralized Radio Access Networks (C-RANs) are expected to be widely deployed under 5G in order to support the anticipated increasedtraffic demands and reduce costs. Under C-RAN, the radio el- ements (e.g., eNB or gNB in 5G) are split into a basic radio part (Distributed Unit, DU),and a pool-able base band processing part (Central Unit, CU). This functional split results in high bandwidth…
2018 Publications
5G-TRANSFORMER: slicing and orchestrating transport networks for industry verticals
Published: August 2018This article dives into the design of the next generation mobile transport networks to simultaneously support the needs of various vertical industries with diverse range of networking and computing requirements. Network slicing has emerged as the most promising approach to address this challenge by enabling per-slice management of virtualized resources. We aim to bring the network slicing paradigm…
Experimental evaluation of SDN-based service provisioning in mobile networks
Published: May 20185G networks will be characterized by their diversity in terms of traffic patterns, multi-tenancy and heterogeneous and stringent traffic requirements. Network softwarization is a key enabler to cope with such management burden, as it provides the ability to control all networking functions through (re)programming, thus providing higher flexibility to meet heterogeneous requirements while keeping d…
2017 Publications
Toward the network of the future: from enabling technologies to 5G concepts
Published: August 2017There is a wide consensus by the research community and the industry that it will not be possible to satisfy future mobile traffic demand and application requirements by simply evolving the current fourth-generation architecture. Instead, there is a need for a considerable revision of the mobile network system: such an effort is commonly referred to as the future fifth-generation (5G) architecture…
Distributed mobility management solutions for next mobile network architectures
Published: July 2017The architecture of current operator infrastructures is being challenged by the non-stopping growing demand of data hungry services appearing every day. While currently deployed operator networks have been able to cope with traffic demands so far, the architectures for the 5th generation of mobile networks (5G) are expected to support unprecedented traffic loads while decreasing costs associated t…
Analysis of end-to-end multi-domain management and orchestration frameworks for software defined infrastructures: an architectural survey
Published: April 2017Over the last couple of years, industry operators' associations issued requirements towards an end-to-end management and orchestration plane for 5G networks. Consequently, standard organisations started their activities in this domain. This article provides an analysis and an architectural survey of these initiatives and of the main requirements, proposes descriptions for the key concepts of domai…
5G-Crosshaul Network Slicing: Enabling Multi-Tenancy in Mobile Transport Networks
Published: August 20175G requires a redesign of transport networks in order to feed the increasingly bandwidth hungry radio access networks and to benefit from the performance/cost efficiency provided by the integration of both backhaul and fronthaul segments over the same transport substrate as well as the incorporation of cloud RAN architectures. In addition, to increase its usage and cost efficiency, this new transp…
Towards a unified fronthaul-backhaul data plane for 5G The 5G-Crosshaul project approach
Published: March 2017The paper presents a study of key aspects in the design of a flexible unified data plane capable of integrating both fronthaul and backhaul transport in future 5G systems. In this study, we first review candidate access and multiplexing technologies from the state of the art and assess their capability to support legacy and new fronthaul and backhaul traffic. We then propose a new design framework…
5G-crosshaul: an SDN/NFV integrated fronthaul/backhaul transport network architecture
Published: February 2017This article proposes an innovative architecture design for a 5G transport solution (dubbed 5G-Crosshaul) targeting the integration of existing and new fronthaul and backhaul technologies and interfaces. At the heart of the proposed design lie an SDN/NFV-based management and orchestration entity (XCI), and an Ethernet-based packet forwarding entity (XFE) supporting various fronthaul and backhaul t…
2016 Publications
Mobility management: deployment and adaptability aspects through mobile data traffic analysis
Published: December 2016The expected boost in mobile data traffic and the evolution towards the next generation of networks are making cellular operators reconsider whether current approaches for handling mobility could be improved, according to the characteristics of the mobile traffic that actually flows through real networks. In this work, we make use of extensive analysis of real network traces to infer the main char…
5GEx: realising a Europe-wide multi-domain framework for software-defined infrastructures
Published: September 2016Market fragmentation has resulted in a multitude of network and cloud/data center operators, each focused on different countries, regions and technologies. This makes it difficult and costly to create infrastructure services spanning multiple domains, such as virtual connectivity or compute resources. In this article, we discuss the goals and work being done within the 5GEx (5G Exchange) project i…
Software-defined mobility management: Architecture proposal and future directions
Published: April 2016A common characteristic for all of the uses in 5G wireless networks is the ubiquity and the almost permanent connection to the mobile network to get access to external applications. This really imposes a challenge in the signaling procedures provided to get track of the user and to guarantee session continuity. The mobility management mechanisms will play a central role in the 5G networks because …
Experimental analysis of connectivity management in mobile operating systems
Published: January 2016We are immerse in a world that becomes more and more mobile every day, with ubiquitous connectivity and increasing demand for mobile services. Current mobile terminals support several access technologies, enabling users to gain connectivity in a plethora of scenarios and favoring their mobility. However, the management of network connectivity using multiple interfaces is still starting to be deplo…
5G-Crosshaul: an SDN/NFV control and data plane architecture for the 5G integrated Fronthaul/Backhaul
Published: September 2016This paper presents the control and data plane architecture design for a 5G transport solution (5G-Crosshaul) with the aim of integrating the fronthaul and backhaul network segments in a common transport stratum. The control plane relies on the Software-defined networking/Network Functions Virtualization concept to control and orchestrate the different elements of the network (the 5G-Crosshaul con…
An overview of the CPRI specification and its application to C-RAN-based LTE scenarios
Published: February 2016The CPRI specification has been introduced to enable the communication between radio equipment and radio equipment controllers, and is of particular interest for mobile operators willing to deploy their networks following the novel cloud radio access network approach. In such a case, CPRI provides an interface for the interconnection of remote radio heads with a baseband unit by means of the so-ca…
Conferences
Discover recent conference contributions, organized by year.