In 5G and beyond, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies enables an easy deployment of Virtualized Network Functions (VNF). However, designing and building scalable NFV infrastructure is quite challenging to adopt and making VNFs deployment on existing hardware. To understand such behaviour, the EU SoftFire project developed federated virtualization testbed for NFV/SDN experiments. This paper outlines the SoftFire Middleware framework and proposes an automated Measurement-as-a-Service (MaaS) for performing VNF-to-VNF performance metrics, such measurements can be exploited by an orchestrator to perform VNF instantiate selection.

In the near future, 5G-connected vehicles will be able to exchange messages with each other, with the roadside infrastructure, with back-end servers, and with the Internet. They will do so with reduced latency, increased reliability, and large throughput under high mobility and user density. Different services with different requirements, such as Advanced Driving Assistance (ADA) and High Definition (HD) Video Streaming, will share the same physical resources, such as the wireless channel. Thus, a rigid orchestration among them becomes necessary to prioritize network resource allocation. This study proposes a Connected Vehicle Service Orchestrator (CVSO) which optimizes the Quality of Experience (QoE) of an in-vehicle infotainment video delivery service, while taking into account the required bandwidth for coexisting high priority services, such as ADA. To this end, we provide an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation for the problem of optimally assigning a video streaming bitrate/quality per user to maximize the overall QoE, considering information from the video service and the Radio Access Network (RAN) levels. Our system takes advantage of recent developments in the area of Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC). In particular, we have implemented the CVSO and other service-level components and have deployed them on top of a standards-compliant MEC platform that we have developed. We exploit MEC-native services such as the Radio Network Information Service (RNIS) to offer the CVSO the necessary level of RAN awareness. Experiments on a full LTE network testbed featuring our MEC platform demonstrate the performance improvements our system brings in terms of video QoE. Furthermore, we propose and evaluate different algorithms to solve the ILP, which exhibit different trade-offs between solution quality and execution time.

With both mobile network services and related data traffic volume on the rise, reliability of the radio access network is of the essence. A number of radio functional splits are defined by 3GPP to offer increased flexibility of implementation and feasibility of new mobile network services. For example, it is possible to implement certain radio functions in the Cloud, an architectural solution referred to as C-RAN. C-RAN solutions require highly reliable backhaul and fronthaul network designs. This paper describes PROnet, a programmable optical software-defined network testbed, which has been upgraded to offer backhaul and fronthaul transport capabilities in support of C-RAN functionalities with increased reliability. The testbed is upgraded with a specially designed 1 + 1 protection mechanism at the Ethernet layer in order to meet the stringent network round-trip requirements imposed by one of the C-RAN functional split options on the fronthaul.

This study proposes to jointly utilize virtual distributed unit (vDU) and central unit (vCU) hot backup and Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) filtering to shorten the fronthaul connection recovery time upon virtualized function failure and reduce the required backup capacity during normal working conditions. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves about three seconds fronthaul recovery time and reduces up to 95% the fronthaul backup connection capacity requirements.

This paper first overviews the verticals supported by 5G technology in the 5G trial site of Bari and Matera. Such services will operate in the 3.6 - 3.8 GHz radio spectrum released by Italian Ministry of Economic Development for precommercial services. Special focus will be on use cases related to road safety. The issues and the possible solutions for implementing a pedestrian awareness service based on vehicle-to-pedestrian communication will be highlighted.

In 5G mobile communication systems, Coordinated scheduling (CS) is a Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) technique exploited to improve the cell throughput by reducing the interference among contemporary transmissions at the cell edge. CS is based on coordinating the transmission scheduling decisions by exchanging scheduling information among the evolved NodeB (eNB) on the X2 interface. However, CS performance heavily depends on the time it takes the information to propagate among the eNBs (i.e., convergence time). This paper proposes a novel bandwidth allocation (BA) scheme which prioritizes the X2 traffic with respect to other traffic types when a TDM PON is used as 5G backhaul. Results show the impact of the proposed scheme when either Centralized Coordinated Scheduling (CCS) or Distributed Coordinated Scheduling (DCS) is utilized. In particular, results show that prioritizing X2 traffic over S1 traffic improves the convergence time. Moreover, CCS implementation is preferable when the number of eNBs-ONUs is large because of the lower convergence time and lower increase of the S1 traffic delay.

Conventional elastic optical networking, EON, uses elasticity in two domains, time and frequency, to optimize utilization of optical network resources in the presence of fluctuating traffic demand and link quality. Currently, networking exploiting a third domain, space, is the focus of significant research efforts since space-division multiplexing, SDM, has the potential to substantially improve future network capacity and spectral efficiency. This article extends 2D-EON to include elasticity in all three domains: time, frequency, and space. We introduce enabling technologies, architectures, and algorithms for 3D-EONs. Based on sample network topologies, we investigate algorithms for routing, spectrum, spatial mode, and modulation format assignment - RSSMA. In particular, we investigate fragmentation-aware RSSMA and how the constraints in the formation of super-channels in MIMO-based SDM systems can impact the network performance in terms of blocking probability.