Digital Marketplaces Unleashed
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67.3.1 5G Network Stack
The socio‐technical evolution in the last few decades has been significantly driven by the evolution of mobile communications and has contributed to the economic and social development of both developed and developing countries. Mobile communication has become closely integrated in the daily life of the whole society. It is expected that the socio‐technical trends and the evolution of mobile communications systems will remain tightly coupled together and will form a foundation for society in 2020 and beyond.
In the future, however, it is foreseeable that new demands, such as larger traffic volume, rapidly increasing number of devices with diverse service requirements, pursuit of better quality of user experience (QoE), and better affordability by further decreasing costs, will require an increasing number of innovative solutions. It is up to the 5G network designers to take all these demands into account during the current specification phase.
It is required to consider framework guidelines for IMT’s 2020 (5G) capabilities targeting 2020 and beyond, as well as to assess spectrum implications, technological and applications trends, potential traffic growth and new users. As one example, ultra‐low latency may be achieved on control and data planes by considerable enhancement and new technical solutions concerning both network architecture aspects and radio interface [7].
As already mentioned, 5G is not only a merger of fixed and mobile networks, it will also take into account sectors that are especially data‐intensive (e. g. automotive). Fig. 67.1 depicts the different industry approaches and considers new to develop radio link connections to cope with machine to machine communications (e. g. Industry 4.0). In the end, the Future IMT (International Mobile Telecommunications) will be ready for enhanced mobile broadband.
Fig. 67.1Source: Recommendation ITU‐R M.2083, https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-M.2083-0-201509-I/en (09/2015)
An example for the EU’s vision of 5G networks was initiated under EU Commissioner OETTINGER’s initiative: high level discussions and collaboration between TELCO association and the ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association) lead to the consideration of Connected Advanced Driver Assistant Systems and automated vehicles in 5G networks. Major features within this vision include: [8] High‐density platooning, communicating convoy: Chains of multiple vehicles travelling on highways at distances below 5 m and at speeds of up to 100 km/h.
See‐Through – Sharing sensor data of one vehicle to other vehicles: Data sharing of essential sensors of a single vehicle are shared with all other vehicles nearby
Tele‐operated driving, remotely controlled vehicle: Driving tasks performed remotely by a human driver who is located outside the vehicle
Map update for highly automated driving: High definition (HD) map information for roads and corresponding infrastructure
Other application cases in Industry 4.0 and in the IoT in general exhibit very similar characteristics.
Anticipating the widespread 5G deployment, we envision that many functional entities will merge into one big network (Fig. 67.2).
Fig. 67.2Stuart Revell, University of Surrey
This converged network will follow certain market drivers and use cases, which are Competiveness, Internet of Things, Safety & Security and Video with very high throughput. Thus, coverage, capacity or efficient spectrum utilization is a key driver. On the other hand, the to be expected massive growth in IoT applications will influence strategies for critical infrastructure, smart cities or automotive applications. Not to forget the safety and security topics like finance/payments, public safety or cyber security through design or massive bandwidth needs for Virtual & Augmented reality, higher resolution, Broadcast or video on demand.
All these market drivers and use cases have been identified and developed over the last years to e. g. cope with industrial process automation or remote surgery.
67.3.2 Fog Computing and 5G
In addition to the distinctive organizational characteristics of Fog Computing examined above, the Fog has some very distinct technical characteristics. Fog Computing nodes are distributed at the network edges and geographically available in much larger numbers than traditional Cloud nodes. The main data centers are typically away from the Fog Computing Nodes (FCN). FCNs can cope with mobility of devices, thus a kind of handover between different Fog nodes is mandatory. It is comparable to the handover process in cellular phone networks, thus no information will be lost. In addition, advanced services can be offered that may only be required in the IoT context (e. g. translation between IP and non‐IP transport) [9]
In Fig. 67.3, the technical characteristics of the Fog and Cloud Computing paradigms are compared.
Fig. 67.3T H. Luan et. al. “Fog Computing: Focusing on Mobile Users at the Edge”
By reaching out to the network edges, storage, control and configuration of the Fog resources will be performed there as well. The concept to adaptively implement F‐RANs at the edge devices means closer to the end users. However, the main advantage has to be seen in the Radio Network of 5G, which means pooling of Radio Resources, the user equipment (cell phone) itself gets smarter and control tasks can be processed on the cell phone.
While talking about Fog Computing with immediate effect Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) will be perceived either. Despite the fact that there are some similarities in network scenarios, there are also some differences [10]. The differences are single‐tenant versus multi‐tenant, point of processing data and the way to approach connectivity, e. g. combining functions of connectivity versus operating independently.
To overcome shortcomings like real‐time response or long‐thin connection between Cloud and mobile applications, Fog Computing has recently emerged as a more practical solution to enable the smooth convergence between Cloud and mobile for content delivery and real‐time data processing [2]. The idea of Fog Computing is placing a light‐weight Cloud‐like facility at the proximity of mobile users (cf. Sect. 67.2); the Fog therefore can serve mobile users with a direct short‐fat connection as compared to the long‐thin mobile Cloud connection. More importantly, as deployed at localized sites, Fog Computing can provide customized and engaged location‐aware services which are more desirable to mobile users [11].
67.3.3 Emerging Network Architectures
There are different network architectures under evaluation for 5G and proposed by the major infrastructure providers. For instance, a big infrastructure provider (NOKIA) sees its future network architecture (Fig. 67.4) to entail the full use of open source software technologies, industry compliance and greater cooperation with IT players. At the same time, standardization bodies and organizations such as 3GPP and ETSI will continue to help define the best standard for 5G, assuring interoperability with regard to the air interface and associated software and mobility control architecture.
Fig. 67.4Nokia: The network architecture for the 5G era will adapt new paradigms
Crucially, because it is not possible to foresee all future uses, applications and business models, the network needs to be flexible and scalable to cope with the unknown [12]. Following the basic requirements laid out in Sect. 67.2 can only be considered as a minimalist starting point in this regard.
A different infrastructure provider (Ericsson) follows the principle of slicing.
Network slicing allows networks to be logically separated, with each slice providing customized connectivity, and all slices running on the same, shared infrastructure. This is a much more flexible solution than a single physical network providing a maximum level of connectivity. As illustrated in Fig. 67.5, network slicing supports, for example, business expansion due to the fact that it lowers the risks associated with introducing and running new services—the isolated nature of slices protects existing
services running on the same physical infrastructure from any impact.
Fig. 67.5Ericsson: Network slicing supports business expansion
Evolved virtualization, network programmability, and 5G use cases will change everything about network design, from planning and construction through deployment. Network functions will no longer be located according to traditional vertical groupings in single network nodes, but will instead be distributed to provide connectivity where it is needed.
To support the wide range of performance requirements demanded by new business opportunities, multiple access technologies, a wide variety of services, and lots of new device types, the 5G core will be highly flexible [13].
Both of these architectures, however, are not specifically geared towards Fog Computing. The Fog can be incorporated with the emerging networking technologies with a layered architecture as shown in Fig. 67.6 and described below. Network Slicing is generally tied to Virtualization, however layered architecture to physical separation.
Fig. 67.6T H. Luan, Fog computing in emerging technologies
Three main functions can be distinguished, namely 5G technologies, network function virtualization (NFV) and software‐defined networking (SDN). The focus is on localization and the already available access networks can be adapted to serve also Fog nodes resp. layers. Virtualization with regards to Fog computing will enable mobile users to get desired applications based on their actual location and SDN will update the Fog nodes by using the Cloud on a global network view. Thus, the entire network can be managed using a SDN approach [11].
67.4 Conclusion
In general, we elaborated on the previous pages on different topics with regards to 5G and Fog computing. On the one hand side we touched the Ran (Radio Access Network) on the other side core functions like network slicing, SDN or NFV. In particular network slicing is predestined for fast and efficient access for different industrial applications and seamless broadband for consumers. With SDN and NFV, network slicing is extremely flexible from core to access. The concept to adaptively implement F‐RANs at the edge devices means closer to the end users. SDN for control is a kind of centralization while the F‐RAN has a distributed characteristic, based on edge devices.
An important key asset of Fog Computing is information on Localization. The network and user information are collected from the mobile edge networks used locally and shared to other service providers, to enrich the set of services based on the location of a mobile user. As compared to Cloud, Fog Computing can provide enhanced Service Quality (QoS) with much increased data rate and reduced service latency and response time. Moreover, by downloading through local connections without going through the backbone network, the users can benefit from the reduced bandwidth cost. Thus, real‐time applications and communication is already now possible due to latency in the range of 1 millisecond as demonstrated by German Telecom (5G:haus) in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress in 2016. To grant full Mobility, the network needs to combine Location Awareness, Quality of Service, and an intelligent protocol suite to a Mobility framework. Currently, a couple of different approaches are under consideration by the standardization groups. One of them is the DMM (Distributed Mobility Management), which has to support functions like minimizing packet loss during cell changes, maintaining the same IP address assigned to a user across different cells and minimizing impact to the user experience (e. g. minimization of interruption time). And eventually, Security, therefore the network has to provide basic and advanced security services in order to alleviate the security problems. Although Fog Computing is defined as the extension of the Cloud Computing paradigm, its distinctive characteristics in the location sensitivity, wireless connectivity, and geographical accessibility create new security issues [14]. There is still work to be done to elaborate in more depth this complicated topic.
Fog server store, compute and communicate hardware resources, which leads to three‐dimensional service‐oriented resource allocations. Moreover, with the three‐tier Mobile‐Fog‐Cloud architecture and rich potential applications in both mobile networking and IoT, Fog Computing also opens broad research issues on network management, traffic engineering, big data and novel service delivery. Together, data virtualization and fog computing help bring intelligence and analytical capabilities to the data, which opens a wide range of business opportunities, e. g. driverless car or smart logistics. Therefore, we envision a bright future of Fog Computing [11] and we will have to further elaborate whether Fog Computing together with Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) forms the perfect tandem.
References
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Further Reading
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M. Firdhous, O. Ghazali und S. Hassan, “Fog Computing: Will it be the Future of Cloud Computing?,” in The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (SDIWC), Proceedings of the Thrid International Conference on Informatics & Applications (ICIA2014), 2014.
16.
“Gartner Says 6.4 Billion Connected ”Things“ Will Be in Use 2016, Up From 2015,” 2015.
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2018
Claudia Linnhoff-Popien, Ralf Schneider and Michael Zaddach (eds.)Digital Marketplaces Unleashedhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49275-8_68