Orchestrating 5G edges

Ondertitel:collaborative and distributed management and orchestration of open programmable and virtualized edge networks

To respond to innovation aspirations from the digital society, networks need to be significantly more flexible and adjustable. Such flexibility can be achieved through network softwarization, which makes network infrastructure fully programmable/adjustable. The two main pillars of network programmability are Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN), where NFV virtualizes network resources and enables the dynamic creation of Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs), and SDN programs the way those VNFs are connected to each other over the network. The 5G ecosystems, consisting of 5G New Radio, edge, transport, and core network, are robust software-based systems that rely on both SDN and NFV to enable network programmability. By applying the concept of virtualization (e.g., in the core and edge networks, and partially on the radio side), more and more resources are virtualized, resulting in an enormous heterogeneity across the network ecosystems. Thus, one of the significant challenges lies in agile management and orchestration of those resources that are diverse and distributed across the overall 5G ecosystem. The MANagement and Orchestration (MANO) role is to identify the needs of traffic and services running on the virtualized network infrastructure and dynamically respond to those needs by performing service reconfigurations, such as scaling, migration, and service teardown, which are known as MANO operations. Throughout this Ph.D. research, we have been focused on investigating service and resource management and orchestration in Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC)-enhanced 5G networks to enable openness and programmability of 5G and beyond ecosystems. The main objective of this research is to leverage 5G, MEC, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML), to perform efficient and automated MANO operations across different technological/administrative edge domains, and to achieve the low-latency-aware VNF placement and seamless migration of programmable Network Services (NSs). One of the main components of this research is its applicability to the next-generation real-world networks and systems, as it has been driven by an active engagement with industry, which resulted in strong collaboration with several important partners from 5G, automotive, and transport & logistics industries. Moreover, the thesis contributed to the following European projects: H2020 5G-CARMEN, H2020 DAEMON, H2020 VITAL-5G, H2020 5G-BLUEPRINT, and H2020 FED4FIRE+, resulting in  ve journal papers (published and submitted), 12 publications in conference proceedings (full, work-in-progress, and demo papers; published and submitted), and a book chapter, as a first author, as well as three journals and six conference papers, as a co-author (published and submitted).

ISBN:978-90-5728-770-1

Jaar van publicatie:2022

Trefwoorden:Doctoral thesis

Toegankelijkheid:Closed