In this paper, we present a practical solution to support the adaptable and automated deployment of applications of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SUAVs). Our solution is based on virtualization technologies, and considers SUAVs as programmable network platforms capable of executing virtual functions and services, which may be dynamically selected according to the requirements specified by the operator of the aerial vehicles. This way, SUAVs can be flexibly and rapidly adapted to different missions with heterogeneous objectives. The design of our solution is based on Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies, developed under the umbrella of the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G), as well as on existing Internet protocol standards, including flying ad hoc network routing protocols. We implemented a functional prototype of our solution using well-known open source technologies, and we demonstrated its practical feasibility with the execution of an IP telephony service. This service was implemented as a set of virtualized network functions, which were automatically deployed and interconnected over an infrastructure of SUAVs, being the telephony service tested with real voice-over-IP terminals.

SUMMARYDuring these last years the Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service and the different peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies have generated an increasing interest for the developers and the research community that find in them the solution to deal with the scalability problem of media streaming and reducing costs at the same time. However, despite of the benefits obtained in Internet-based applications and the growing deployment of commercial IPTV systems, there has been a little effort in combining them both. With the advent of the next-generation-network platforms such as the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), which advocates for an open and inter-operable service infrastructure, P2P emerges as a possible solution in situations where the traditional streaming mechanisms are not possible or not economically feasible.In this paper, we propose an IPTV service architecture for the IMS that combines a centralized control layer and a distributed, P2P-like, media layer that relies on the IMS devices or peers located in the customers' premises to act as streaming forwarding nodes. We extend the existing IMS IPTV standardization work that has already been done in 3GPP and ETSI TISPAN in order to require a minimum number of architectural changes. The objective is to obtain a system with a similar performance to the one in currently deployed systems and with the flexibility of P2P. One of the main challenges is to achieve comparable response times to user actions such as changing and tuning into channels, as well as providing a fast recovery mechanism when streaming nodes leave. To accomplish this we introduce the idea of foster peers as peers having inactive multimedia sessions and reserved resources. These peers are on stand-by until their functionality is required and at that moment, they are able to accept downstream peers at short notice for events requiring urgent treatment like channel changing and recovery.

The fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) is expected to provide diverse and stringent improvements such as greater connectivity, bandwidth, throughput, availability, improved coverage, and lower latency. Considering this, drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices are perfect examples of existing technology that can take advantage of the capabilities provided by 5G technology. In particular, UAVs are expected to be an important component of 5G networks implementations and support different communication requirements and applications. UAVs working together with 5G can potentially facilitate the deployment of standalone or complementary communications infrastructures, and, due to its rapid deployment, these solutions are suitable candidates to provide network services in emergency scenarios, natural disasters, and search and rescue missions. An important consideration in the deployment of a programmable drone fleet is to guarantee the reliability and performance of the services through consistent monitoring, control, and management scheme. In this regard, the Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) paradigm, a key technology within the 5G ecosystem, can be used to perform automation, management, and orchestration tasks. In addition, to ensure the coordination and reliability in the communications systems, considering that the UAVs have a finite lifetime and that eventually they must be replaced, a scheduling scheme is needed to guarantee the availability of services and efficient resource utilization. To this end, in this paper is presented an UAV scheduling scheme which leverages the potential offered by NFV. The proposed strategy, based on a brute-force search combinatorial algorithm, allows obtaining the optimal scheduling of UAVs in time, in order to efficiently deploy network services. Simulation results validate the performance of the proposed strategy, by providing the number of drones needed to meet certain levels of service availability. Furthermore, the strategy allows knowing the sequence of replacement of UAVs to ensure the optimal resource utilization.

Abstract-The concurrent use of multiple paths through a communications network has the potential to provide many benefits, including better utilisation of the network and increased robustness. A key part of a multipath network architecture is the ability for routing protocols to install multiple routes over multiple paths in the routing table. In this paper we propose changes to local BGP processing that allow a BGP router to use multiple paths concurrently without compromising loop-freeness.

This article addresses one of the main challenges related to the practical deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions: the coordinated operation of entities at different infrastructures to support the automated orchestration of end-to-end Internet of Things services. This idea is referred to as “Internet of Things slicing” and is based on the network slicing concept already defined for the Fifth Generation (5G) of mobile networks. In this context, we present the architectural design of a slice orchestrator addressing the aforementioned challenge, based on well-known standard technologies and protocols. The proposed solution is able to integrate existing technologies, like cloud computing, with other more recent technologies like edge computing and network slicing. In addition, a functional prototype of the proposed orchestrator has been implemented, using open-source software and microservice platforms. As a first step to prove the practical feasibility of our solution, the implementation of the orchestrator considers cloud and edge domains. The validation results obtained from the prototype prove the feasibility of the solution from a functional perspective, verifying its capacity to deploy Internet of Things related functions even on resource constrained platforms. This approach enables new application models where these Internet of Things related functions can be onboarded on small unmanned aerial vehicles, offering a flexible and cost-effective solution to deploy these functions at the network edge. In addition, this proposal can also be used on commercial cloud platforms, like the Google Compute Engine, showing that it can take advantage of the benefits of edge and cloud computing respectively.