RT Dissertation/Thesis
T1 Mechanisms for integration of MEC and NFV for 5G networks in dynamic and heterogeneous scenarios
A1 Antevski, Kiril
AB The 5G technology presents a significant leap into making the Information and Communicationtechnology and integral part of the industries, and societies. Enhanced connectivityfeatures unlock a range of different applications that provide unique user experiencesuch as virtual and augmented reality, or mission-critical communications thatimprove the healthcare and environmental protection, digital twin for optimizing the productionlines, etc. Besides the new radio technology, the virtualization technology isthe major enabler of most of the exciting novel applications. Viritualization enables serviceproviders to customize and shape the existing computing, networking and storageinfrastructure to accommodate the requirements of the different range of customers oftenreferred as vertical industries.The Network Function Virtualization (NFV) with the Software-defined Networking(SDN) are the key technologies that enable deployment of multiple isolated and customizednetworks on top of a single administrative domain infrastructure. The MultiaccessEdge technology revamps carrier’s infrastructure with application-oriented capabilitiesfeeding applications with context information to elevate the user experience. Eventhough initially projected as a mobile operator technology, it is applicable to any serviceprovider.This thesis departs from the point on how to integrate both, NFV and MEC, for differentenvironments and scenarios. The MEC technology is not virtualized intrinsicallyhence the first part of the thesis explores the integration of MEC in NFV environment.Initially a MEC application and the utilization of radio context information is showcasedthrough an Edge robotics scenario. Later the full integration of virtualized MEC componentswithin an NFV infrastructure is elaborated through categorization, and proposedsolution in tackling integration issues. Further, a tutorial is presented on how the exemplaryEdge robotics would be deployed, terminated and managed in an MEC in NFVenvironment. The elaborated procedures present high compatibility and readiness forMEC in NFV future deployments. The findings are compared with existing works on thesimilar topic.The joint, or horizontal, integration of MEC in NFV is referred to a single administrativedomain. The rest of the thesis is focusing on how administrative domains are ableto fulfill vertical requirements by deploying end-to-end services across multiple domains.One of the thesis contribution is towards the definition, characterization and classificationof federation - the process of deploying NFV services across multi-domain scenarios.Further the federation scenario is showcased in a static environment for a novel missioncriticaleHealth application. All the federation functionalities are demonstrated in a realcaseexperimental emergency scenario for a patient suffering from a heart-attack. Theassumption is that the federation occurs between two administrative domains enabling end-to-end AR/VR emergency services spread across two NFV based infrastructures. Theobtained experimental results provide improvement in the future emergency events whileleveraging on novel technologies such as AR/VR. The drawbacks are evaluated accordingly.The use of both MEC and NFV enables better user experience, customized networksand it is a big step towards automation, and reactive network life-cycle management. Thefollowing part of the thesis focuses on how to apply the federation concept in dynamicenvironments - where the conditions change rapidly, the resources are volatile and therelationships between administrative domains are established on-the-fly or unexpectedlybroken. Blockchain as a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is applied to facilitateand build trust in the brief negotiation process between mutually unknown administrativedomains. A concrete step-by-step process is proposed which its application, in orchestrationand life-cycle management (e.g., healing process), of emulated NFV servicehas been experimentally evaluated across multiple Blockchain platforms. Additionally,the Blockchain solution is applied in a small-scale Edge robotics experimental scenario.The Edge robotics service is a MEC-in-NFV based remote control application for mobilerobots which leverage the DLT federation to extend the robot driving range by deployingradio network extension on top of an external domain infrastructure, without any interruptionor downtime of the end-to-end Edge robotics service.In the last part of the thesis the focus is set on how service provides or telco operatorsmay increase their profit margins by leveraging the federation process and using MachineLearning algorithms to generate a profitable decision of whether to federate a service ordeploy the service over the constituent infrastructure. The application of Reinforcementlearning algorithms such as Q-learning provides a promising near-optimal results. Theseare improved with the application of Deep Q-learning techniques through the use of realdynamic price fluctuations for service offerings.
YR 2022
FD 2022-06
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10016/36473
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10016/36473
LA eng
DS e-Archivo
RD 1 sept. 2024