arXiv subjects

Pablo Fondo-Ferreiro

Publications and source records attributed to Pablo Fondo-Ferreiro.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

A Simulator for FANETs Using 5G Vehicle-to-Everything Communications and Named-Data Networking

This work presents a simulator designed for the validation, evaluation, and demonstration of flying adhoc networks (FANETs) using 5G vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications and the named-data networking (NDN) paradigm. The simulator integrates the ns-3 network simulator and the Zenoh NDN protocol, enabling realistic testing of applications that involve the multi-hop communication among multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

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arXiv2025

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Backhaul Link Selection for Network Slices in IAB Networks

Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) has been recently proposed by 3GPP to enable network operators to deploy fifth generation (5G) mobile networks with reduced costs. In this paper, we propose to use IAB to build a dynamic wireless backhaul network capable to provide additional capacity to those Base Stations (BS) experiencing congestion momentarily. As the mobile traffic demand varies across time and space, and the number of slice combinations deployed in a BS can be prohibitively high, we propose to use Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) to select, from a set of candidate BSs, the one that can provide backhaul capacity for each of the slices deployed in a congested BS. Our results show that a Double Deep Q-Network (DDQN) agent using a fully connected neural network and the Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) activation function with only one hidden layer is capable to perform the BS selection task successfully, without any failure during the test phase, after being trained for around 20 episodes.

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arXiv2025

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Enabled Physical-Layer Network Coding for Higher Order M-QAM Signals

Physical-Layer Network Coding (PNC) is an effective technique to improve the throughput and latency in wireless networks. However, there are two major challenges for PNC, especially when using higher order modulations: 1) phase synchronization and power control at the paired User Equipments (UEs); and 2) the ambiguity removal of the PNC mapping at the relay node. To address these challenges, in this paper, we apply power control at transmitting UEs and exploit Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) to synchronize the phase of the transmitted signals and ensure that they arrive at the relay with the same power and phase rotation. Then, we employ modular addition for an unambiguous PNC mapping for M-ary Quadrature Amplitude Modulations (M-QAM). We evaluate the performance of the system in the framework of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)-PNC for different RIS sizes and modulation orders. Furthermore, we study the sensitivity of PNC systems for Channel Estimation Error (CEE). The results reveal that 1) PNC systems show quite higher sensitivity to CEE compared with RIS-assisted one-way relay channel systems; 2) when the CEE is low, RIS can considerably enhance the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of the PNC system, e.g., for a Bit Error Rate (BER) of $10^{-3}$ (without channel coding), increasing the RIS size from one to 256 elements in 28 GHz band leads to 200% improvement in SNR.

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arXiv2025

5G Network Slicing as a Service Enabler for theAutomotive Sector

Network slicing, a key technology introduced in 5G standards, enables mobile networks to simultaneously support a wide range ofheterogeneous use cases with diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements. This work discusses the potential benefits of networkslicing for the automotive sector, encompassing manufacturing processes and vehicular communications. The review of the stateof the art reveals a clear gap regarding the application of network slicing from the perspective of industrial verticals such asautomotive use cases and their specific requirements. Departing from this observation, we first identify limitations of previouscellular technologies and open challenges for supporting the data services required. Then we describe network slicing as an enablerto face these challenges. We present an analysis of the cost equilibrium for network slicing to be effective for car manufacturers,and tests in real 5G networks that demonstrate the performance improvement in OTA updates coexisting with other services.

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arXiv2025

Intelligent Backhaul Link Selection for Traffic Offloading in B5G Networks

Fifth Generation (5G) mobile networks considers an expansive set of heterogeneous services with stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, and traffic demand with inherent spatial-temporal distribution, which places the backhaul network deployment under potential strain. In this paper, we propose to harness network slicing, Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) technology coupled with satellite connectivity to build a dynamic wireless backhaul network that can provide additional backhaul capacity to the base stations on demand when the wired backhaul link is temporarily out of capacity. To construct the network design, Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) models are used to select, for each network slice of the congested base station, an appropriate backhaul link from the pool of available IAB and satellite links that meets the QoS requirements (i.e., throughput and latency) of the slice. Simulation results show that around 20 episodes are sufficient to train a Double Deep Q-Network (DDQN) agent, with one fully-connected hidden layer and Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) activation function, that adjusts the topology of the backhaul network.

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arXiv2025

Learning-based visibility prediction for terahertz communications in 6G networks

Terahertz communications are envisioned as a key enabler for 6G networks. The abundant spectrum available in such ultra high frequencies has the potential to increase network capacity to huge data rates. However, they are extremely affected by blockages, to the point of disrupting ongoing communications. In this paper, we elaborate on the relevance of predicting visibility between users and access points (APs) to improve the performance of THz-based networks by minimizing blockages, that is, maximizing network availability, while at the same time keeping a low reconfiguration overhead. We propose a novel approach to address this problem, by combining a neural network (NN) for predicting future user-AP visibility probability, with a probability threshold for AP reselection to avoid unnecessary reconfigurations. Our experimental results demonstrate that current state-of-the-art handover mechanisms based on received signal strength are not adequate for THz communications, since they are ill-suited to handle hard blockages. Our proposed NN-based solution significantly outperforms them, demonstrating the interest of our strategy as a research line.

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arXiv2024

Is the edge really necessary for drone computing offloading? An experimental assessment in carrier-grade 5G operator networks

In this article, we evaluate the first experience of computation offloading from drones to real fifth-generation (5G) operator systems, including commercial and private carrier-grade 5G networks. A follow-me drone service was implemented as a representative testbed of remote video analytics. In this application, an image of a person from a drone camera is processed at the edge, and image tracking displacements are translated into positioning commands that are sent back to the drone, so that the drone keeps the camera focused on the person at all times. The application is characterised to identify the processing and communication contributions to service delay. Then, we evaluate the latency of the application in a real non standalone 5G operator network, a standalone carrier-grade 5G private network, and, to compare these results with previous research, a Wi-Fi wireless local area network. We considered both multi-access edge computing (MEC) and cloud offloading scenarios. Onboard computing was also evaluated to assess the trade-offs with task offloading. The results determine the network configurations that are feasible for the follow-me application use case depending on the mobility of the end user, and to what extent MEC is advantageous over a state-of-the-art cloud service.

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arXiv2024

Coordinated Allocation of Radio Resources to Wi-Fi and Cellular Technologies in Shared Unlicensed Frequencies

Wireless connectivity is essential for industrial production processes and workflow management. Moreover, the connectivity requirements of industrial devices, which are usually long-term investments, are diverse and require different radio interfaces. In this regard, the 3GPP has studied how to support heterogeneous radio access technologies (RATs) such as Wi-Fi and unlicensed cellular technologies in 5G core networks. In some cases, these technologies coexist in the same spectrum. Dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS), which has already been proven to increase spectrum efficiency in licensed bands, can also be applied to this scenario. In this paper, we propose two solutions for mobile network operators (MNOs) or service providers to dynamically divide (multiplex) the radio resources of a shared channel between a Wi-Fi basic service set (BSS) and one or several carriers of scheduled wireless networks, such as cellular technologies, with a configurable level of sharing granularity. These solutions do not require modifications to the current commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) end devices. We adapt the existing IEEE 802.11 procedures to notify the Wi-Fi stations that they must share channels with different access networks. We demonstrate that our dynamic sharing proposals are also advantageous over direct coexistence and evaluate each of them quantitatively and qualitatively to determine when one or the other is preferable. The evaluation is particularized for IEEE 802.11ac and long-term evolution (LTE) license assisted access (LAA), but the solutions can be easily extended to 5G new radio-unlicensed (5G NR-U) or to any other wireless technology in which the network side schedules end device transmissions.

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arXiv2024

A Software-Defined Networking Solution for Interconnecting Network Functions in Service-Based Architectures

Mobile core networks handle critical control functions for delivering services in modern cellular networks. Traditional point-to-point architectures, where network functions are directly connected through standardized interfaces, are being substituted by service-based architectures (SBAs), where core functionalities are finer-grained microservices decoupled from the underlying infrastructure. In this way, network functions and services can be distributed, with scaling and fail-over mechanisms, and can be dynamically deployed, updated, or removed to support slicing. A myriad of network functions can be deployed or removed according to traffic flows, thereby increasing the complexity of connection management. In this context, 3GPP Release 16 defines the service communication proxy (SCP) as a unified communication interface for a set of network functions. In this paper, we propose a novel software-defined networking (SDN)-based solution with the same role for a service mesh architecture where network functions can be deployed anywhere in the infrastructure. We demonstrated its efficiency in comparison with alternative architectures.

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arXiv2024

Efficient Anchor Point Deployment for Low Latency Connectivity in MEC-Assisted C-V2X Scenarios

Next-generation cellular networks will play a key role in the evolution of different vertical industries. Low latency will be a major requirement in many related uses cases. This requirement is specially challenging in scenarios with high mobility of end devices, such as vehicular communications. The Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) paradigm seeks to satisfy it. In this article we propose the dynamic deployment of anchor point network functions at edge locations and the assignment of terminals to these anchor points with the joint objective of minimizing communications latency and reducing network overhead. We formally define the problem as a multi-objective optimization and also propose a novel heuristic greedy algorithm for approximating the solution. This algorithm compares favorably with baseline and state-of-the-art strategies for latency minimization while reducing the overhead caused by network reconfigurations.

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arXiv2024

Quarantining Malicious IoT Devices in Intelligent Sliced Mobile Networks

The unstoppable adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) is driven by the deployment of new services that require continuous capture of information from huge populations of sensors, or actuating over a myriad of "smart" objects. Accordingly, next generation networks are being designed to support such massive numbers of devices and connections. For example, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is designing the different 5G releases specifically with IoT in mind. Nevertheless, from a security perspective this scenario is a potential nightmare: the attack surface becomes wider and many IoT nodes do not have enough resources to support advanced security protocols. In fact, security is rarely a priority in their design. Thus, including network-level mechanisms for preventing attacks from malware-infected IoT devices is mandatory to avert further damage. In this paper, we propose a novel Software-Defined Networking (SDN)-based architecture to identify suspicious nodes in 4G or 5G networks and redirect their traffic to a secondary network slice where traffic is analyzed in depth before allowing it reaching its destination. The architecture can be easily integrated in any existing deployment due to its interoperability. By following this approach, we can detect potential threats at an early stage and limit the damage by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks originated in IoT devices.

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arXiv2024

Latency Reduction in Vehicular Sensing Applications by Dynamic 5G User Plane Function Allocation with Session Continuity

Vehicle automation is driving the integration of advanced sensors and new applications that demand high-quality information, such as collaborative sensing for enhanced situational awareness. In this work, we considered a vehicular sensing scenario supported by 5G communications, in which vehicle sensor data need to be sent to edge computing resources with stringent latency constraints. To ensure low latency with the resources available, we propose an optimization framework that deploys User Plane Functions (UPFs) dynamically at the edge to minimize the number of network hops between the vehicles and them. The proposed framework relies on a practical Software-Defined-Networking (SDN)-based mechanism that allows seamless re-assignment of vehicles to UPFs while maintaining session and service continuity. We propose and evaluate different UPF allocation algorithms that reduce communications latency compared to static, random, and centralized deployment baselines. Our results demonstrated that the dynamic allocation of UPFs can support latency-critical applications that would be unfeasible otherwise.

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arXiv2024

Fast Decision Algorithms for Efficient Access Point Assignment in SDN-Controlled Wireless Access Networks

Global optimization of access point (AP) assignment to user terminals requires efficient monitoring of user behavior, fast decision algorithms, efficient control signaling, and fast AP reassignment mechanisms. In this scenario, software defined networking (SDN) technology may be suitable for network monitoring, signaling, and control. We recently proposed embedding virtual switches in user terminals for direct management by an SDN controller, further contributing to SDN-oriented access network optimization. However, since users may restrict terminal-side traffic monitoring for privacy reasons (a common assumption by previous authors), we infer user traffic classes at the APs. On the other hand, since handovers will be more frequent in dense small-cell networks (e.g., mmWave-based 5G deployments will require dense network topologies with inter-site distances of ~150-200 m), the delay to take assignment decisions should be minimal. To this end, we propose taking fast decisions based exclusively on extremely simple network-side application flow-type predictions based on past user behavior. Using real data we show that a centralized allocation algorithm based on those predictions achieves network utilization levels that approximate those of optimal allocations. We also test a distributed version of this algorithm. Finally, we quantify the elapsed time since a user traffic event takes place until its terminal is assigned an AP, when needed.

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arXiv2021

A Software-Defined Networking Solution for Transparent Session and Service Continuity in Dynamic Multi-Access Edge Computing

Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) will allow implementing low-latency services that have been unfeasible so far. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) are working towards the standardization of MEC in 5G networks and the corresponding solutions for routing user traffic to applications in local area networks. Nevertheless, there are neither practical implementations for dynamically relocating applications from the core to a MEC host nor from one MEC host to another ensuring service continuity. In this paper we propose a solution based on Software-Defined Networking (SDN) to create a new instance of the IP anchor point to dynamically redirect User Equipment (UE) traffic to a new physical location (e.g. an edge infrastructure). We also present a novel approach that leverages SDN to replicate the previous context of the connection in the new instance of the IP anchor point, thus guaranteeing Session and Service Continuity (SSC), and compare it with alternative state replication strategies. This approach can be used to implement edge services in 4G or 5G networks.

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