The fifth-generation mobile network presents a wide range of services which have different requirements in terms of performance, bandwidth, reliability, and latency. The legacy networks are not capable to handle these diverse services with the same physical infrastructure. In this way, network virtualization presents a reliable solution named network slicing that supports service heterogeneity and provides differentiated resources to each service. Network slicing enables network operators to create multiple logical networks over a common physical infrastructure. In this research article, we have designed and implemented an intent-based network slicing system that can slice and manage the core network and radio access network (RAN) resources efficiently. It is an automated system, where users just need to provide higher-level network configurations in the form of intents/contracts for a network slice, and in return, our system deploys and configures the requested resources accordingly. Further, our system grants the automation of the network configurations process and reduces the manual effort. It has an intent-based networking (IBN) tool which can control, manage, and monitor the network slice resources properly. Moreover, a deep learning model, the generative adversarial neural network (GAN), has been used for the management of network resources. Several tests have been carried out with our system by creating three slices, which shows better performance in terms of bandwidth and latency.

Nowadays, the continuously increasing demand for high data traffic and providing different quality of services (QoS) to the customer are very challenging tasks for all network operators. In the last few years, mobile data traffic is increased to a significant extent and half of the traffic is provided through WiFi technology which is known as WiFi offloading. To overcome the increasing traffic demand, WiFi offloading is the best option to reduce the burden of cellular networks. So, by aggregating existing indoor WiFi technology to the cellular network increases the network capacity and provides better QoS to customers. In this article, we propose and implement the LTE-WiFi aggregation system where eNodeB is responsible for the aggregation of the WiFi access point without modifying the core network. Furthermore, the proposed system is integrated with the mobile-CORD (M-CORD) platform which leverages software defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV), and cloud technologies for providing a 5G environment. M-CORD platform has three main modules: service orchestrator (XOS), SDN controller ONOS, and OpenStack. One of the important features of M-CORD is to provide virtualized core network functions that enable the users to automatically customize, monitor, and control the resources of the network. Due to ONOS controller support, we can easily scale up the network instances by giving the configurations to service orchestrator XOS of the M-CORD. The implementation of the proposed system is based on the OpenAirInterface (OAI) platform which provides open sources implementation of core and access networks. The aggregation of both LTE and WiFi technologies is done at the PDCP layer in a very tight coupling way. Moreover, we test our proposed system with three kinds of policies for UDP and TCP traffic: LTE only, WiFi only, and LTE-WiFi aggregated. The experimental results show that our proposed LTE-WiFi aggregated system gives better performance and provides high bandwidth as compared to the LTE network.

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Cement is a binding material that is used to bind different aggregate (coarse and fine) through a chemical process known as hydration in the presence of moisture. This research work is planned with the purpose to determine the most appropriate and efficient proportions of admixture i.e. fly ash so as to modify the strength properties of concrete. By adding this admixture strength properties of cement and concrete can be enhanced. Cement be replaced with different percentages levels of Fly ash as 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% by weight of cement. To work out the strength properties and the variation pattern due mixing in different proportions of fly ash for different tests such as compressive and tensile strength are planned to be performed after 7, 14, 21 and 28 days curing. These experiments were conducted at Laboratory scale. Addition of fly ash as an admixture in replacement of cement enhanced strength properties of cement and concrete up to a limit. At 10% fly ash cured for 28 days maximum compressive and tensile strength was achieved i.e. 1170 psi and 66 psi respectively. Furthermore, addition of fly ash as cement replacement showed gradual reduction in the strength properties i.e. minimum compressive and tensile strength was found to be for 50% fly ash sample cured for 7 days. As an outcome of this research fly ash is concluded to be an effective replacement of cement for non-loading constructions.

On-demand service is the main feature of the 5G network, and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) provides it by virtualizing the existing 5G network infrastructure. NFV crafts various virtual networks on a shared physical network, but one of the core challenges in future 5G networks is to automate the modeling of Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) and end-to-end Network Service (NS) orchestration with less human interaction. Traditionally, the descriptor of VNF and NS is created manually, which requires expert-level skills. This manual approach has a big threat of human error, which can be avoided by using the Intent-Based Networking (IBN) approach. The IBN approach eliminates the requirement of expertise for designing VNFs and NS by taking users’ intentions as an input. In this paper, the proposed system presents the Intent Management System for VNF modeling and end-to-end NS orchestration for multi-platforms. This system takes the high-level information related to a specific service, configures it accordingly, and converts it into the selected platform. The proposed system is tested using Mobile Central Office Re-architected as Data Center (M-CORD) and Open-Source Management and Orchestration (OSM) orchestrators. The results section shows that the proposed system reduces the effort of the end-user in creating network slices and provides seamless end-to-end service orchestration.