IEEE 5G World Forum (WF-5G)

Date: Monday July 9
Time: 11:00 – 4:00
Room: Lawrence

WS1A: Workshop on 5G Cloud Native Design

11:00 – 11:05
Welcome by Session Chair, Bessem Sayadi, Nokia Bell-Labs, France

11:05 – 11:40
Keynote Speaker: Bill Snow, Chief Development Officer with the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), CA, USA
Title: ONF’s New Edge Cloud

Bill Snow is the Chief Development Officer with the Open Networking Foundation (formerly ON.Lab). He is responsible for all engineering and operations at ONF and leads the teams providing core engineering to the ONOS and CORD projects. Prior to joining ONF, Mr. Snow spent over 25 years in the industry building development teams and delivering innovative products. He has led engineering teams for both startups and public companies in the networking and security spaces. He was responsible for the routing and high availability teams delivering the Cisco CRS-1. He was also responsible for the Centillion LAN switching product line prior to Centillion’s acquisition by Bay Networks. He received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, a Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Stanford University as well as a Master of Science in Engineering Management from Stanford University.

Technical Session: Paper Presentation

11:40 – 12:05
Paper#1: Re-Factored Operational Support Systems for the Next Generation Platform-as-a-Service (NGPaaS)

Paul Veitch, BT, United Kingdom (Great Britain), Adam Broadbent, BT, United Kingdom (Great Britain), Bessem Sayadi, Nokia Bell-Labs, France, Steven Van Rossem, Ghent University & iMinds – IBCN, Belgium, Lionel Natarianni, Nokia Bell Labs France, France, Bilal Al Jammal, Nokia Bell Labs France, France (Presenter), Laurent Roullet, Nokia Bell Labs France, France, Angelos Mimidis Kentis, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark, Eder Ollora Zaballa, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark, Sébastien Pinneterre, Virtual Open Systems SAS, France, Michele Paolino, Virtual Open Systems SAS, France, Aurora Ramos, Atos, Spain, Kevin Du, OnApp, United Kingdom (Great Britain), Michail Flouris, OnApp, United Kingdom (Great Britain), Leonardo Mariani, University of Milano Bicocca, Italy, Oliviero Riganelli, University of Camerino, Italy  , Matteo Orru, University of Milano Bicocca, Italy, Marco Mobilio, University of Milano-Bicoca, Anas Shatnawi, University of Milan-Bicocca, Maurice Zembra, Vertical M2M, France

Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS) systems offer customers a rich environment in which to build, deploy, and run applications. Today’s PaaS offerings are tailored mainly to the needs of web and mobile applications developers, and involve a fairly rigid stack of components and features. The vision of the H2020 5GPPP Phase 2 Next Generation Platform-as-a-Service (NGPaaS) project is to enable “build-to-order” customized PaaSs, tailored to the needs of a wide range of use cases with telco-grade 5G characteristics. This paper sets out the salient and innovative features of NGPaaS and explores the impacts on Operational Support Systems and Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS), moving from fixed centralized stacks to a much more flexible and modular distributed architecture.

12:05 – 12:30
Paper#2: 5G-CORNET: Platform as a Service

Vuk Marojevic, Virginia Tech, USA (Presenter), Shem Kikamaze, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA, Randall Nealy, Virginia Tech, USA, Carl B. Dietrich, Virginia Tech & Wireless @ Virginia Tech, USA

Practical testing of the latest wireless communications standards requires the availability of flexible radio frequency hardware, networking and computing resources. We are providing a Cloud-based infrastructure which offers the necessary resources to carry out tests of the latest 5G standards. The testbed provides a Cloud-based Infrastructure as a Service. The research community can access hardware and software resources through a virtual platform that enables isolation and customization of experiments. In other words, researchers have control over the preferred experimental architecture and can run concurrent experiments on the same testbed. This paper introduces the resources that can be used to develop 5G testbeds and experiments.

12:30 – 12:55
Paper#3: Control Plane Fault Tolerance for Resilient Software-Defined Networking based Critical Infrastructure Communications

Fabian Kurtz, TU Dortmund University, Germany (Presenter), Dennis Overbeck, TU Dortmund University, Germany, Caner Bektas, TU Dortmund University, Germany, Christian Wietfeld, TU Dortmund University, Germany

Modern societies depend increasingly on Critical Infrastructures (CIs) such as Smart Grids (SGs) or Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs). These in turn rely on complex monitoring and control functionalities, which themselves require capable, flexible and robust communication infrastructures. As dedicated networks and computing resources are associated with high costs and time-consuming deployment, the upcoming fifth generation of mobile communication (5G) aims to enable cloud-based shared infrastructures via Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN). While NFV separates hardware and logical functionalities, SDN abstracts physical data packet forwarding from programmable network control tasks such as routing. Thereby so called SDN controllers are created, which simplify the integration of heterogeneous technologies and enable the flexible addition of new features. Yet, due to the controllers’ centralized nature a potential single-point-of-failure is created. In literature, different mitigations for this threat to system robustness exist. Nevertheless, many studies are purely simulative or don’t fully address CI communication requirements. Thus we present a heartbeat-based approach to SDN resilience, utilizing redundant controllers. An empirical evaluation, on the example of particularly demanding SGs traffic, illustrates reduced end-to-end failover delays, i.e. the duration cloud-driven 5G networks cannot process requests or changes.

12:55-13:00
Session Closing Remarks

13:00 – 14:00 
Lunch 

WS1B: Workshop on 5G Cloud Native Design

14:00-14:05
Welcome by Session Chair, Bessem Sayadi, Nokia Bell-Labs, France

14:05-14:40
Keynote Speaker: Amina Boubendir, Project Manager, Orange Labs France
Title: Servicification of Telco-grade Network Architectures: Towards Openness and Zero-Touch Management

Dr. Amina Boubendir is a researcher and project manager in Orange Labs France. Her research interests are mainly in the area of design and management of networks and services. Currently, Amina is leading research activities on the exposure and orchestration of network services and infrastructures, internally and externally in collaboration with industry and academia. She is member of the IEEE Communications Society, actively involved in the network and service management communities through conferences like “Innovation in Cloud, Internet and Networks (ICIN)”, “Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS)”, “Integrated Network Management (IM)”, and “Network Softwarization (NetSoft)”. Amina received an Engineering degree in Telecommunication Systems from the University of Science and Technology of Algiers, a Specialized Master in Network Design and Architecture from Télécom ParisTech, and a PhD in Networking and Computer Science from Télécom ParisTech.

Technical Session: Paper Presentation

14:40 – 15:05
Paper#4: Creating Tailored and Adaptive Network Services with the Open Orchestration C-RAN Framework

Marti Floriach-Pigem, Barcelona Tech-UPC, Spain, Guillem Xercavins-Torregrosa,  Barcelona Tech-UPC, Spain, Antoni Gelonch, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain, Vuk Marojevic, Virginia Tech, USA (Presenter)

Next generation wireless communications networks will lever-age software-defined radio and networking technologies, combined with cloud and fog computing. A pool of resources can then be dynamically allocated to create personalized network services (NS). The enabling technologies are abstraction, virtualization and consolidation of resources, automatization of processes, and programmatic provisioning and orchestration. ETSI’s network functions virtualization (NFV) management and orchestration (MANO) framework provides the architecture and specifications of the management layers. We introduce OOCRAN, an open-source software framework and testbed that extends existing NFV management solutions by incorporating the radio communications layers. This paper presents OOCRAN and illustrates how it monitors and manages the pool of resources for creating tailored NSs. OOCRAN can automate NS reconfiguration, but also facilitates user control. We demonstrate the dynamic deployment of cellular NSs and dis-cuss the challenges of dynamically creating and managing tailored NSs on shared infrastructure.

15:05 – 15:30
Paper#5: Cognitive Neural Network Delay Predictor for High Speed Mobility in 5G C-RAN Cellular Networks

Ali Mahmood, University of Salford, United Kingdom, Adil Al-Yasiri, University of Salford, United Kingdom, Omar Younis Alani, University of Salford, United Kingdom (Presenter)

The future fifth Generation (5G) cellular network is expected to support one million connections per square kilometer with 1 ms end-to-end as a desired latency. The potential of this ultra-dense network motivated the researchers to develop a new architecture. Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) technology was proposed to meet the demand of future networks, however, moving the baseband processing from multiple physical base stations on the ground within the cell site into the cloud brings many challenges. One of these challenges is how to acquire accurate Channel State Information (CSI) for a dense number of access points and User Equipment (UE), which are the future theme of 5G deployment. CSI reflects the instantaneous communication link status between the mobile user and the base station. Hence, the imperfect or delayed CSI can influence the performance of the whole network. In order to reduce the impact of this outdated CSI and to improve its accuracy in C-RAN architecture, a Cognitive Neural Network Delay Predictor (CNNDP) is proposed for compensating the transmission and acquisition delay of the CSI working simultaneously along with the conventional prediction technique for predicting the time variations of the communication channel. The results demonstrate a significant enhancement in the data throughput of the network with the proposed approach.

15:30 – 15:55
Paper#6: Adaptive Multiplicity Codes based PIR Protocol for Multi-Cloud Platform Services

Lou Salaun, Nokia Bell Labs, France, Amira Alloum, Nokia Bell Labs, France (Presenter), Philippe Jacquet, Nokia Bell Labs, France

Our contribution consists in deriving an adaptive multiplicity code based PIR protocol based on a code construction selection algorithm which guarantees minimal communication overhead for a given system architecture. We formulate the related constrained optimization problem, analyze it and introduce an algorithm for enabling the adaptive Information Theoretical secure PIR protocol to operate in highly dynamic Multi Cloud platform services. In addition, we prove that this algorithm also solves the feasibility problem and achieves optimal solution.

15:55 – 16:00
Session Closing Remarks

16:00 – 16:30 
Coffee Break 

WS2A: Workshop on Tactile Internet

16:30 – 16:35
Welcome by the Session Chair, Meryem Simsek, ICSI, Berkeley, USA

16:35 – 17:15
Keynote Speaker: Prof. Frank Fitzek, TU Dresden Germany
Title:  Tactile Internet and 5G Communications Systems

Frank H. P. Fitzek is a Professor and chair of the communication networks group at Technische Universität Dresden coordinating the 5G Lab Germany. He received his diploma (Dipl.-Ing.) degree in electrical engineering from the University of Technology – Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) – Aachen, Germany, in 1997 and his Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University Berlin, Germany in 2002 and became Adjunct Professor at the University of Ferrara, Italy in the same year. In 2003 he joined Aalborg University as Associate Professor and later became Professor. He co-founded several start-up companies starting with acticom GmbH in Berlin in 1999. He has visited various research institutes including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), VTT, and Arizona State University. In 2005 he won the YRP award for the work on MIMO MDC and received the Young Elite Researcher Award of Denmark. He was selected to receive the NOKIA Champion Award several times in a row from 2007 to 2011. In 2008 he was awarded the Nokia Achievement Award for his work on cooperative networks. In 2011 he received the SAPERE AUDE research grant from the Danish government and in 2012 he received the Vodafone Innovation price. His current research interests are in the areas of wireless and mobile 5G communication networks, mobile phone programming, network coding, cross layer as well as energy efficient protocol design and cooperative networking.

Technical Session: Paper Presentation

17:15 – 17:40
Towards Low Latency in 5G HetNets: A Bayesian Cell Selection / User Association Approach

Mohamed Elkourdi (Presenter), Asim Mazin (Presenter), Richard D. Gitlin, Univ.of South Florida, USA

Expanding the cellular ecosystem to support an immense number of connected devices and creating a platform that accommodates a wide range of emerging services of different traffic types and Quality of Service (QoS) metrics are among the 5G’s headline features. One of the key 5G performance metrics is ultra-low latency to enable new delay-sensitive use cases. Some network architectural amendments are proposed to achieve the 5G ultra-low latency objective. With these paradigm shifts in system architecture, it is of cardinal importance to rethink the cell selection / user association process to achieve substantial improvement in system performance over conventional maximum signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (Max-SINR) and cell range expansion (CRE) algorithms employed in Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-Advanced). In this paper, a novel Bayesian cell selection/user association algorithm, incorporating the access nodes capabilities and the user equipment (UE) traffic type, is proposed in order to maximize the probability of proper association and consequently enhance the system performance in terms of achieved latency. Simulation results show that Bayesian game approach attains the 5G low end-to-end latency target with a probability exceeding 80%.

17:40 – 18:05
Dynamic QoS Allocation for Real-Time Wireless Control in Tactile Internet

Bo Chang (Presenter), Guodong Zhao, Muhammad Ali Imran, Liying Li, Zhi Chen, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, University of Glasgow

Ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) is critical to enable real-time wireless control in tactile internet (TACNET). However, it requires significant wireless resource consumption due to the extreme quality-of-service (QoS) requirement. In this paper, we propose a dynamic QoS allocation method from the perspective of communication-control co-design. In the proposed method, the QoS of URLLC is adjusted in a control process, where high QoS is given to critical control periods while low QoS is given to non-critical ones. As a result, the proposed method can significantly reduce the wireless energy consumption compared with conventional method that uses high QoS during the whole control process. Simulation results show the performance of our method.

18:05 – 18:30
Learning-Based Resource Allocation for Data-Intensive and Immersive Tactile

Medhat Elsayed, Melike Erol-Kantarci (Presenter), University of Ottawa, Canada

The immersive tactile applications that are emerging in the entertainment, education and health industries are anticipated to be available for mobile users in the close future. These applications are data-intensive and delay-sensitive due to the nature of information that is being exchanged. With today’s mobile networks, the throughput and latency challenges are the major roadblocks for mobile users. In this paper, we propose a resource allocation technique with the aim of increasing throughput and reducing latency of Data Intensive Devices (DIDs). We consider the coexistence of DIDs with traditional User Equipments (UEs) on a two-tier, densely deployed network of Small cell Base Stations (SBSs) and eNBs. We propose a Q-learning-based resource allocation scheme, namely, Throughput Maximizing Q-Learning (TMQ) that learns the efficient resource allocation of both SBSs and eNB. The proposed technique is compared with well-known Proportional Fairness (PF) algorithm in terms of average throughput, delay, and fairness. Simulation results show that TMQ outperforms PF in terms of the compared metrics.

18:30 – 18:35
Session Closing Remarks