To achieve a cost-effective network deployment, employing state-of-art technical advances provides a practical and effective way to enhance system performance and quality of service provisioning. Cooperative transmission has been recognized as one of the most effective paradigms to achieve higher system performance in terms of lower bit-error rate, higher throughput, larger coverage, more efficient energy utilization, and higher network reliability. This dissertation studies the location planning for the deployment of broadband access networks and explores the great potential of cooperative transmission in the context of single-cell cooperative relaying and multi-cell cooperative transmission, respectively. The placement problem is investigated in two categories of network deployment environment, i.e., an existing wireless access network and a perspective broadband access network, respectively. In an existing wireless access network, to solve some practical problems such as the requirements of capacity enhancement and coverage extension, relay stations (RSs) are introduced in the network architecture. We propose two optimization frameworks with the design objectives of maximizing cell capacity and minimizing number of RSs for deployment, respectively. Mathematical formulations are provided to precisely capture the characteristics of the placement problems. The corresponding solution algorithms are developed to obtain the optimal (or near-optimal) results in polynomial time. Numerical analysis and case studies are conducted to validate the performance benefits due to RS placement and the computation efficiency of the proposed algorithms. To deploy a new metropolitan-area broadband access network, we explore the integration of passive optical network (PON) and wireless cooperative networks (WCN) under the multi-cell cooperative transmission technology. An optimization framework is provided to solve the problem of dimensioning and site planning. The issues of node placement, BS-user association, wireless bandwidth and power breakdown assignment are jointly considered in a single stage to achieve better performance. We also propose a solution to the complex optimization problem based on decomposition and linear approximation. Numerical analysis and case studies are conducted to verify the proposed framework. The results demonstrate the performance gains and economic benefits. Given a set of network parameters, the proposed optimization frameworks and solutions proposed in this dissertation can provide design guidelines for practical network deployment and cost estimations. And the constructed broadband access networks show a more cost-effective deployment by taking advantage of the cooperative transmission technology.

In recent years, the ever-increasing environmental friendliness concern has made energy efficiency in telecom networks as an important theme in their operations. Meanwhile, mission-critical (MC) services and systems (such as healthcare, police, and firefighting) have been acquiring special attention from telecom designers and operators. The currently deployed MC network technologies are indigent in terms of bandwidth capacity, and thus they are not able to support the emerging MC multimedia applications. Therefore in this thesis, we first explore the possibility of provisioning the MC services over the integration of fiber-wireless (FiWi) technologies, which has been considered as a promising candidate for the deployment of high-speed and mobile broadband access networks. We then investigate the energy efficiency problem in the FiWi integration, which consists of WiMAX in the wireless plane, and of Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) - the most popular variant of the next-generation PON (NG-PON) technology, in the optical plane. In WiMAX, the energy saving protocol has been extensively investigated and standardized. Conversely, it has been recently studied in NG-PON, which currently consumes the least power among all the high-speed access networks. However, NG-PON has notably matured in the past few years and is envisioned to massively evolve in the near future. This trend will increase the power requirements of NG-PON and make it no longer coveted. Therefore we address the energy efficiency problem in NG-PON. For each of our contributions, we conduct extensive simulations to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed solutions.

Wireless access networks today consume 0.5 percent of the global energy. Rapidly growing demand for new services and ubiqutious connectivity, will further increase the energy consumption. This situation imposes a big challenge for mobile operators not only due to soaring cost of energy, but also increasing concern for global warming and sustainable development. This thesis focuses on the energy efficiency issue at the system level and studies how to incorporate energy-awareness into the design of future wireless access networks. The main contributions have been given in the areas of energy efficiency assessment, architectural and operational solutions, and total cost of investment analysis. The precise evaluation of energy efficiency is the first essential step to determine optimized solutions where metrics and models constitute the two key elements.We show that maximizing energy efficiency is not always equivalent to minimizing energy consumption which is one of the main reasons behind the presented contradictory and disputable conclusions in the literature. Further we indicate that in order to avoid the debatable directions, energy efficient network design problems should be formulated with well defined coverage and capacity requirements. Moreover, we propose novel backhaul power consumption models considering various technology and architectural options relevant for urban and rural environments and show that backhaul will potentially become a bottleneck in future ultra-high capacity wireless access networks. Second, we focus on clean-slate network deployment solutions satisfying different quality of service requirements in a more energy efficient manner. We identify that the ratio between idle- and transmit power dependent power consumption of a base station as well as the network capacity requirement are the two key parameters that affect the energy-optimum design.While results show that macro cellular systems are the most energy efficient solution for moderate average traffic density, Hetnet solutions prevail homogeneous deployment due to their ability to increase the capacity with a relatively lower energy consumption and thus enable significant energy savings in medium and high capacity demand regions. Moreover, we investigate the energy saving potential of short-term energy aware management approach, i.e., cell DTX, taking advantage of low resource utilization in the current networks arising from strict QoS requirements. With the help of developed novel quantitative method, we show that Cell DTX brings striking reduction in energy consumption and further savings are achievable if the networks are designed taking into account the fact that network deployment and operation are closely related. Finally, we develop a general framework for investigating the main cost elements and for evaluating the viability of energy efficient solutions.We first reveal the strong positive impact of spectrum on both energy and infrastructure cost and further indicate that applying sustainable solutions might also bring total cost reduction, but the viability highly depends on unit cost values as well as the indirect cost benefits of energy efficiency. Results obtained in this dissertation might provide guidelines for the network designers to achieve future high-capacity and sustainable wireless access networks. / <p>QC 20140505</p>

An unprecedented era of “connected vehicles” is becoming an imminent reality. This is driven by advances in vehicular communications, and the development of in-vehicle telematics systems supporting a plethora of applications. The diversity and multitude of such developments will, however, introduce excessive congestion across wireless infrastructure, compelling operators to expand their networks. An alternative to network expansions is to develop more efficient content delivery paradigms. In particular, alleviating Radio Access Network (RAN) congestion is important to operators as it postpones costly investments in radio equipment installations and new spectrum. Efficient RAN frameworks are therefore paramount to expediting this realm of vehicular connectivity. Fortunately, the predictability of human mobility patterns, particularly that of vehicles traversing road networks, offers unique opportunities to pursue proactive RAN transmission schemes. Knowing the routes vehicles are going to traverse enables the network to forecast spatio-temporal demands and predict service outages that specific users may face. This can be accomplished by coupling the mobility trajectories with network coverage maps to provide estimates of the future rates users will encounter along a trip. In this thesis, we investigate how this valuable contextual information can enable RANs to improve both service quality and operational efficiency. We develop a collection of methods that leverage mobility predictions to jointly optimize 1) long-term wireless resource allocation, 2) adaptive video streaming delivery, and 3) energy efficiency in RANs. Extensive simulation results indicate that our approaches provide significant user experience gains in addition to large energy savings. We emphasize the applicability of such predictive RAN mechanisms to video streaming delivery, as it is the predominant source of traffic in mobile networks, with projections of further growth. Although we focus on exploiting mobility information at the radio access level, our framework is a direction towards pursuing a predictive end-to-end content delivery architecture. / Thesis (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2014-04-30 06:15:34.31

In recent years, the ever-increasing environmental friendliness concern has made energy efficiency in telecom networks as an important theme in their operations. Meanwhile, mission-critical (MC) services and systems (such as healthcare, police, and firefighting) have been acquiring special attention from telecom designers and operators. The currently deployed MC network technologies are indigent in terms of bandwidth capacity, and thus they are not able to support the emerging MC multimedia applications. Therefore in this thesis, we first explore the possibility of provisioning the MC services over the integration of fiber-wireless (FiWi) technologies, which has been considered as a promising candidate for the deployment of high-speed and mobile broadband access networks. We then investigate the energy efficiency problem in the FiWi integration, which consists of WiMAX in the wireless plane, and of Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) - the most popular variant of the next-generation PON (NG-PON) technology, in the optical plane. In WiMAX, the energy saving protocol has been extensively investigated and standardized. Conversely, it has been recently studied in NG-PON, which currently consumes the least power among all the high-speed access networks. However, NG-PON has notably matured in the past few years and is envisioned to massively evolve in the near future. This trend will increase the power requirements of NG-PON and make it no longer coveted. Therefore we address the energy efficiency problem in NG-PON. For each of our contributions, we conduct extensive simulations to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed solutions.

No description available.

During the last three decades, the significant increase in electricity demand, and its consequences, has appeared as a serious concern for the utility companies, but no major changes have been applied to the conventional power grid infrastructure. Recently, researchers have identified efficient control and power distribution mechanisms as the immediate challenges for conventional power grids. The next step for conventional power grid towards the Smart Grid is to provide energy efficiency management along with higher reliability via smart services, in which the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is inevitable. ICT introduces powerful tools to comply with the smart grid requirements. Among various ICT properties, the telecommunication network plays a key role for providing a secure infrastructure. The two-way digital communication system provides an interaction between energy suppliers and consumers for managing, controlling and optimizing energy distribution. We can also define the smart grid as a two-way flow of energy and control information, where the electricity consumers can generate energy using green energy resources. The main objective of this thesis is to select an effective data communication infrastructure to support the smart grid services by considering a hybrid wireless and optical communication technologies. Radio-over-Fibre (RoF) networks are considered as a potential solution to provide a fast, reliable and efficient network backbone with the optical access network integration and the flexibility and mobility of the wireless network. Therefore, we adopt the integration of RoF to Passive Optical Network (PON) as a broadband access network to transmit smart grid data along with the Fiber to the Home/Building/Curb (FTTx) traffic through the shared fibre, and utilizing Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM). Finally, we present and analyze the simulation results for the aforementioned infrastructure based on our enhanced ROF-PON integration model.

Access networks have been going through many reformations to make them adapt to arising traffic trends and become better suited for many new demanding applications. To that end, incorporating fog and edge computing has become a necessity for supporting many emerging applications as well as alleviating network congestions. At the same time, energy-efficiency has become a strong imperative for access networks to reduce both their operating costs and carbon footprint. In this dissertation, we address these two challenges in long-reach optical access networks. We first study the integration of fog and edge computing with optical access networks, which is believed to form a highly capable access network by combining the huge fiber capacity with closer-to-the-edge computing and storage resources. In our study, we examine the offloading performance under different cloudlet placements when the underlying bandwidth allocation is either centralized or decentralized. We combine between analytical modeling and simulation results in order to identify the different factors that affect the offloading performance within each paradigm. To address the energy efficiency requirement, we introduce novel enhancements and modifications to both allocation paradigms that aim to enhance their network performance while conserving energy. We consider this work to be one of the first to explore the integration of fog and edge computing with optical access networks from both bandwidth allocation and energy efficiency perspectives in order to identify which allocation paradigm would be able to meet the requirements of next-generation access networks.

When it comes to their Radio Access Network (RAN) infrastructure, no two Mobile Operators, serving remote service areas, are alike. Despite situations and technologies being diverse, a well designed optimized RAN solution must adapt itself to the existing networking technologies, both with regard to legacy core networks and modern telecommunication networks in order to produce the best network which is possible subject to many constraints. There is a misconception in technical circles that an optimized internet protocol (IP) enabled RAN architecture is more theoretical than practical. On the contrary, the aforesaid is highly dependent on the technology used. Packet optimized IP- GSM Radio Access Network (GRAN) architecture is proposed in this thesis, it uses Internet Protocol (IP) rather than proprietary protocols for communication between Base Transceiver Stations (BTS), Base Station Controllers (BSC), and the Network Switching Subsystem (NSS). This architecture must deliver carrier-grade mobility, scalability, and reliability; while being optimized for efficient roaming, routing and backhauling from remote service areas. In a geographic arena that spans across the globe, classical circuit-switched networks are not cost efficient due to their integrated call control (signaling) and switching architecture. A solution to this may be soft-switching which separates the call control (Media Gateway Controller (MGC)) and switching (Media Gateway (MG)) into separate nodes. This methodology would fundamentally change the way circuit-switched services, such as traditional voice telephony, are handled. For a service provider this enables a much more efficient network, because it allows optimized equipment location for voice termination into other carrier networks. Co-location of media gateways with satellite ground stations enables local termination to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), thus offloading a great deal of the traffic from the backhaul transmission network of the mobile operator. This thesis adopts soft-switching as part of the call routing processes. The thesis considers the problem of transporting voice and signaling from-to the remote service areas, efficient routing and backhaul to the location of most suitable operator’s point of presence. The thesis explores an alternative which uses a packet switched backbone (e.g. IP based) to transport the media as close (geographically) to the dialed party as possible before terminating it at the PSTN network, thus achieving optimal routing of voice and signaling. Considering the aforesaid, the thesis describes a detailed network architecture and an operational system prototype for maritime GSM network deployment, as a befitting and challenging example of remote service area. / När det gäller deras Radio access nät, finns det inte två Mobiloperatörer, som betjänar avlägsna områden, som är lika. Trots olika omständigheter och teknologier, ett väl designat optimerat RAN måste anpassa sig till den existerande nätverks teknologin, både med avseende på äldre befintlig teknologi och på moderna telekomnät, för att kunna skapa bästa möjliga nätverk givet många begränsningar. Det är en missuppfattning i tekniska kretsar att en optimerad IP anpassad RAN arkitektur är mer teoretisk än praktisk. Å andra sidan så är det ovan sagda väldigt beroende på vilken teknologi som har använts. En paket optimerad IP-GSM Radio Access Nätverks (IPGRAN) arkitektur är föreslagen i denna masters uppsats, den baseras på Internet Protokollet (IP) snarare än något egenutvecklat proprietärt protokol för komunikation mellan Basstation (BTS), Basstationscontroller (BSC), och nätets switchade subsystem (NSS). Denna arkitektur måste leverera carrier-grade (operatörs klassad) mobilitet, skalbarhet och tillgänglighet och samtidigt vara optimerat för effektiv roaming, routing och anslutning från avlägsna områden. På ett geografiskt område som sträcker sig runt hela jordklotet är inte klassiska kretskopplade nätverk kostnadseffektiva beroende på deras integrerade signallerings och samtals arkitektur. En bättre arkitektur kan vara en sk “softswitch” lösning som separerar samtalet i en (Media Gateway Controller (MGC)) och signaleringen (Media Gateway (MG)) i separata noder. Denna metod skulle på ett fundamentalt vis ändra det sätt på vilket traditionella kretskopplade tjänster som traditionell telefoni hanteras. För en tjänsteleverantör möjliggör detta ett mycket effektivare nätverk då det möjliggör optimerad utplacering av utrustning för terminering av rösttrafik in i andra operatörers nät. Samlokalisering av media gateways (MG:s) med jordstationer för satellitkommunikation möjliggör lokal anslutning till det allmänna telenätet (PSTN), vilket kraftigt minskar den trafik som behöver transporteras genom operatörens stomnät. Denna mastersuppsats behandlar “softswitching” som en del av metoden att växla och transportera samtalstrafik. Uppsatsen behandlar problemet med att skicka samtalstrafik och signalering från avlägsna områden, effektiv routing och transport av trafiken till den operatör som har den närmaste(alt. mest optimala) anslutningspunkten. Uppsatsen undersöker ett alternativ som använder ett paketförmedlat (IP baserat) transportsätt för att transportera trafiken geografiskt sett så nära den uppringda parten som möjligt innan den termineras i det allmänna telenätet (PSTN) varvid man uppnår optimal växling (alt. routing) av rösttrafik och signalering. I beaktande av ovanstående beskriver uppsatsen en detaljerad nätverksarkitektur och en funktionsduglig systemprototyp för ett maritimt GSM nät som ett utmanande exempel på ett avlägset beläget nät.

The use of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications is growing dramatically, particularly for sharing content such as video, audio, and software. The traffic generated by these applications represents a large proportion of Internet traffic. For the broadband access network providers P2P traffic presents several problems. This thesis identifies the performance and business issues that P2P traffic has on broadband access networks employing the McCircuit separation technique. A mechanism for managing P2P within the access network is proposed. The P2P diversion algorithm aims to manage P2P traffic within the access network based on layer 2 and layer 3 information without employing intrusive layer 7 traffic detection. To solve the contention problem experienced by best effort traffic in the access network, a solution based on the diversion algorithm and on a QoS based traffic classification scheme is proposed. A business model defining the business roles and pricing schemes is presented based on the features offered by the P2P diversion algorithm introducing new opportunities for gaining revenue from P2P traffic for the network service providers and providing better services to users. / Användningen av peer-to-peer (P2P) applikationer ökar dramatiskt, speciellt för spridningen av video, musik, och mjukvara. Trafiken som skapas av dessa program utgör en stor del of trafiken på Internet. För bredbandsaccess operatörer ställer P2P trafik många problem. I detta examensarbete så identifieras både de egenskaper och affärsaspekter som P2P trafiken har på ett bredbandsaccessnät som använder McCircuit som seprationsmekanism för trafiken mellan användare och en mekanism, "peer-to-peer diversion mechansim" (P2PDA), för att hantera P2P trafiken i ett McCircuit baserat accessnät beskrivs. P2PDA algoritmen hanterar P2P trafik i accessnätet baserat på lager 2 och lager 3 information utan att ta hänsyn till applikationslagret (Lager 7). För att få en bra fördelning mellan best-effort trafik och prioriterad trafik så föreslås en lösning baserad på kombinationen av P2PDA och QoS baserad trafik klassificering. Slutligen så defineras en affärsmodell där affärsroller och olika varianter på prissättning för P2P diskuteras baserad på de egenskaper som den förslagna algoritmen medför och den ekonomiska vinst som denna lösning medger.