ORCHESTRA: Enabling Inter-Technology Network Management in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Abstract

Modern connected devices are equipped with the ability to connect to the Internet using a variety of different wireless network technologies. Current network management solutions fail to provide a fine-grained, coordinated, and transparent answer to this heterogeneity, while the lower layers of the OSI stack simply ignore it by providing full separation of layers. To address this, we propose the ORCHESTRA framework to manage the different devices in heterogeneous wireless networks and introduce capabilities such as packet-level dynamic and intelligent handovers (both inter-and intra-technology), load balancing, replication, and scheduling. The framework is the first of its kind in providing a fine-grained packet-level control across different technologies by introducing a fully transparent virtual MAC layer and an SDN-like controller with global intelligence. Furthermore, we present a novel optimization problem formulation that can be solved to optimally configure the network. We provide a thorough evaluation through simulations and a prototype implementation. We show that our framework enables, in a real-life setting, transparent and real-time inter-technology handovers and that coordinated load balancing can double the network-wide throughput across different scenarios.

In-Band Network Monitoring Technique to Support SDN-Based Wireless Networks

“…In addition to monitoring, network needs to be (re)configured based on monitored data and its application requirements. In this context, few frameworks capable of controlling and managing wireless networks [33]- [35] exists.…”

Immersive Interconnected Virtual and Augmented Reality: A 5G and IoT Perspective

“…However, they focus mainly on reliability, reporting latencies between 10 and 20 ms. As such, their solution is not applicable to URLLC. De Schepper et al proposed the ORCHESTRA framework as an enabler for interface diversity [18]. It supports packet duplication, splitting, load balancing, and seamless inter-AP/BS (i.e., horizontal) and inter-RAT (i.e., vertical) handovers at the network layer through a central controller and virtual medium access control (MAC) abstractions.…”

Collaborative Flow Control in the DARPA Spectrum Collaboration Challenge

“…In contrast with most SDN systems however, no specific rules about routing, firewalls or load balancing are placed in a centralized server. This provides the opportunity of combining the proposed framework with a wireless SDN framework like ORCHESTRA [20], with our framework being responsible for flow control optimization, for informing nodes in the network about each other's states (using the virtual Medium Access Control (MAC) layer), and for applying flow-specific routing rules. In contrast with previously mentioned approaches, the framework developed by the SCATTER team [21] uses the proposed collaborative flow control in this article to manage and optimize the inter-network QoS and spectrum footprint, using information gathered within our network and received from external ones.…”