Marco Ruffini - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Marco Ruffini

Cornell University - arXiv, Aug 23, 2022

We propose a mechanism to support URLLC Open-RAN ultra-low latency over a MESH-PON, serving dense... more We propose a mechanism to support URLLC Open-RAN ultra-low latency over a MESH-PON, serving dense deployment of small cell and MEC nodes in an access network. We show the possibility, under given assumptions, to achieve application-to-application end-to-end latency below 1ms.

2017 International Conference on Optical Network Design and Modeling (ONDM), 2017

The worldwide installation of Fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) access network solutions is hindered b... more The worldwide installation of Fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) access network solutions is hindered by the high upfront cost of deploying ubiquitous fiber infrastructure. While passive optical networks can provide lower cost compared to point-topoint solutions, their total cost of ownership is still high for most operators to justify a mass scale deployment. Sharing passive optical network (PON) infrastructure has thus been proposed as a solution for network operators to reduce the cost of running FTTP services. In addition, the ability for operators to offer business services (including for example mobile backhaul) in addition to residential services, is crucial to increase the overall PON network revenue. However running services with highly diverse requirements over a physical infrastructure shared among multiple operators (which we now refer to as virtual network operators-VNOs) requires VNOs to have a tight control over PON capacity scheduling. In this paper, we introduce a novel upstream PON capacity sharing algorithm called Frame Level Sharing (FLS). FLS is based on the idea of virtual Dynamic Bandwidth Assignment (vDBA), and allows sharing the upstream frame among multiple VNOs to maximize bandwidth utilization, minimize latency, and provide a high level of service isolation among the VNOs sharing the PON. Our simulation results show that FLS outperforms other benchmark algorithms proposed in the literature.

2020 IEEE 45th Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN), 2020

Recently, the use of heterogeneous small-cell networks to offload traffic from existing cellular ... more Recently, the use of heterogeneous small-cell networks to offload traffic from existing cellular systems has attracted considerable attention. One of the significant challenges in heterogeneous networks (HetNet) is cross-tier interference, which becomes significant when macro-cell users (MUE) are in the vicinity of femtocell base stations (FBS). Indeed, the femtocell will cause significant interference to MUEs on the macrocell downlink (DL) while MUEs will induce hefty interference to the femtocell on the macrocell uplink (UL). Substantial work has focused on offloading and interference mitigation in HetNets; yet, none of them has considered the impact of cross-tier interference on quality of service (QoS), quality of experience (QoE). This paper proposes the Quality Efficient Femtocell Offloading Scheme (QEFOS) that selects the users most affected by the interference encountered and offloads them to nearby FBSs. QEFOS testing shows substantial improvements in terms of QoS and QoE perceived by users in heavy cross-tier interference scenarios in comparison with alternative approaches. In particular QEFOS’s impact on throughput, packet loss ratio (PLR), peak-to-signal-noise ratio (PSNR), and structural similarity identity matrix (SSIM) was assessed.

To provide, in particular a central data processing unit, for example, the relay control box and ... more To provide, in particular a central data processing unit, for example, the relay control box and method; between, in particular a controller unit (40, 40) for controlling the communication between vehicles mobile node (10, 12, 14, 16) each node (10, 12, 14, 16) a message (22), in particular for at least one of the Hello message, and / or at least one message, for example, is designed to receive and transmit at least one alert message, the mobile nodes (10, 12, 14, 16) the interference of the messages (22) transmitted between is minimized, the overall local network throughput is maximized, at least one determination unit (482; 482 ') is the received message (22 ) at least one information of the at least one by treating at least a portion of the by treating at least a part, in particular the reaching Hello message, for example, the messages 22 are each neighbor node (12, 14, 16) to be transmitted by processing the message to be transmitted ( For at least a part of 22), particularly for each data message to be transmitted, transmission parameters, in particular data rate and selecting all of the transmission power, in particular been proposed to calculate, selection of the transmission parameters is, of the message (22) the interface is minimized, and the entire local network traffic is achieved to be maximized.

Optical Fiber Technology, 2015

IEEE Photonics Technology Letters

Quality of Transmission (QoT) metrics are used to predict and evaluate optical transmission perfo... more Quality of Transmission (QoT) metrics are used to predict and evaluate optical transmission performance, and have received much attention due to recent interest in real-time software defined networking (SDN) control and the challenges posed by open, disaggregated optical systems. In this letter, we address the QoT-estimation (QoT-E) issue, by focusing on real-time operations, where a dynamic control plane improves path performance estimation accuracy by interrogating optical performance monitoring (OPM) devices in the network. We also recognize the difficulty in testing such control plane procedures over large scale systems, which is a necessary step to validate control plane scalability before it is implemented in real systems. Accordingly, we have developed an optical network simulation system that incorporates physical transmission modeling into the Mininet packet-network emulator to enable the development and evaluation of optical control plane processes that depend on optical transmission performance. In this letter, we use this new tool, Mininet-Optical, to evaluate a SDN QoT-E procedure based on the deployment of emulated OPM nodes at periodic locations in an optical transmission system, which are interrogated by a SDN controller in real-time. Through this new capability, we observe behavior that manifests across a large scale system of 70 in line amplifiers and 15 ROADM nodes and are able show improvements in QoT accuracy up to 3 dB.

2017 IEEE 28th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), 2017

As the capacity of the optical access networks increases, the case for sharing this capacity amon... more As the capacity of the optical access networks increases, the case for sharing this capacity amongst multiple operators becomes stronger. In addition to the capital and operating expenditure savings that infrastructure sharing can provide for the operators, providing a higher degree of infrastructure customization will be a strong motivator for operators to participate in the sharing ecosystem. Thanks to the network virtualization technologies, the higher degree of control over the infrastructure can be a motivator for the new virtual operators to join. Given this control, each operator will make decisions for their share of the resources according to their policies. However, when it comes to the infrastructure provider to aggregate all these decisions, ensuring trust becomes vital. It is essential to study the incentives of all the operators and design a sharing mechanism that incentivizes truthfulness. In this paper, we propose such an auction mechanism to monetize the exchange of excess capacity between network operators to increase resource efficiency. The proposed market design is based on a sealed-bid VCG auction for homogeneous multi-item goods with a reserve price. Through market simulations, we show that our proposed market design can achieve all the fundamental economic properties of a market including, truthful value announcing, individual rationality and weak budget balance.

2017 European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC), 2017

The convergence of multiple service demands and different user types on a single physical layer c... more The convergence of multiple service demands and different user types on a single physical layer can be enabled by dynamically reconfigurable time-division multiplexing (TDM) dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) long-reach passive optical networks (PONs). In this paper we demonstrate two TDM-DWDM PON designs, the first one for densely populated urban areas and the second one better suited for rural deployment. Heterogeneous services and modulation formats, i.e. residential 10G PON channels, business 100G dedicated channel and wireless fronthaul are demonstrated experimentally coexisting on long reach TDM-DWDM PON systems, with at least 100km reach, 1024 users and emulated system load of 40 channels. End-to-end software defined networking (SDN) management of the access and core network elements is also implemented and integrated with the PON physical layer in order to demonstrate two service use cases: a fast protection mechanism with end-to-end service restoration in the cas...

2017 IEEE Photonics Conference (IPC), 2017

Metro-scale TDM-DWDM PONs can enable consolidation of network resources and the convergence of mu... more Metro-scale TDM-DWDM PONs can enable consolidation of network resources and the convergence of multiple service types on the same infrastructure. Two different SDN enabled metro-scale PON configurations are reported, for densely and sparsely populated areas, supporting 10G PON channels, wireless fronthaul and 100G enterprise services.

Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) 2021, 2021

We present a novel dual-DBA allocation, with a fast P4-enabled scheduler to provide low latency u... more We present a novel dual-DBA allocation, with a fast P4-enabled scheduler to provide low latency upstream grant allocations. We show latency reduction of 37% and 43%, respectively, compared to standard and virtual PONs.

Optical and Wireless Convergence for 5G Networks, 2019

Journal of Lightwave Technology

The recent increase in data rates for Free space optics (FSO) transmission technology, means they... more The recent increase in data rates for Free space optics (FSO) transmission technology, means they could be used for designing the backhaul/fronthaul for 5G and beyond cellular networks. The flexibility and cost-effectiveness provided by FSO are the primary reasons for the mobile operators to investigate the potential of the technology as a mobile backhaul/fronthaul. Unfortunately, the reliability of FSO links is weather dependent, especially if the link covers considerable distance. Optical fibers, on the other hand, are expensive but more reliable. Hence, optimally designing a hybrid network consisting of both fiber and FSO connections can bring in the cost-effectiveness of FSO as well as the robustness of fibers. In such a design, the more important links are connected using fibers while the links with higher tolerance towards failure are designed using FSO. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a hybrid FSO/fiber backhaul/fronthauling methodology for connecting wireless base stations (BSs) to the network core. We first formulate a mixed integer non-linear program (MINLP) for determining the number of splitter/FSO distribution points required in the network that optimally provide connectivity to the BSs. The MINLP is designed to identify the locations of the splitters/FSO distribution points as well. Thereafter, we solve the MINLP with the help of particle swarm optimisation (PSO) and mixed integer linear programming (MILP) techniques. We also derive a heuristic for solving the MILP. Finally, we propose another method for determining the number of splitters required in a relatively shorter time: K-means cluster based method. The results verify that the hybrid network is cost-effective while conforming to the data rate and reliability requirements of the links. The proposal allows evaluation of a seamless design solution of the hybrid network with practical time-complexity.

ICC 2022 - IEEE International Conference on Communications

The recently proposed open-radio access network (O-RAN) architecture embraces cloudification and ... more The recently proposed open-radio access network (O-RAN) architecture embraces cloudification and network function virtualization techniques to perform the base-band function processing by dis-aggregated radio units (RUs), distributed units (DUs), and centralized units (CUs). This enables the cloud-RAN vision in full, where mobile network operators (MNOs) could install their own RUs, but then lease on-demand computational resources for the processing of DU and CU functions from commonly available open-cloud (O-Cloud) servers via open xhaul interfaces due to variation of load over the day. This creates a multi-tenant scenario where multiple MNOs share networking as well as computational resources. In this paper, we propose a framework that dynamically allocates x-haul and DU/CU resources in a multi-tenant O-RAN ecosystem with min-max fairness guarantees. This framework ensures that a maximum number of RUs get sufficient resources while minimizing the OPEX for their MNOs. Moreover, in order to provide an access network architecture capable of sustaining low-latency and high capacity between RUs and edge-computing devices, we consider time-wavelength division multiplexed (TWDM) passive optical network (PON)-based x-haul interfaces where the PON virtualization technique is used to provide a direct optical connection between end-points. This creates a virtual mesh interconnection among all the nodes such that the RUs can be connected to the Edge-Clouds at macro-cell RU locations as well as to the O-Cloud servers at the central office locations. Furthermore, we analyze the system performance with our proposed framework and show that MNOs can operate with a better cost-efficiency than baseline greedy resource allocation with uniform cost-sharing. Index Terms-Min-max fairness, multi-tenant networks, openradio access networks, resource allocation, TWDM-PON.

2017 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC Workshops), 2017

Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) is one of the most promising network architectures for next-ge... more Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) is one of the most promising network architectures for next-generation mobile communication. Integrating multiple Base Band Units (BBUs) for signal processing in centralized BBU pools provides the opportunity to manage the utilization of processing resources more flexibly and in a more energy-efficient way. This paper demonstrates two approaches for dynamic energy saving in heterogeneous C-RAN networks by switching BBUs from sleep mode to operational mode, depending on changes in data traffic demand. To wake up BBUs, Wake-on-LAN (WoL) packets are sent either by the Remote Radio Head (RRH) in the first approach or by the controller in a BBU pool in the second approach. We implement and compare, in terms of wake-up latency, experimental prototypes using Software Defined Radio (SDR) for both approaches. Aiming at compliance to current LTE standards, the design and implementation of these prototypes has the potential to be applied to a larger scale C-RAN architecture in next-generation commercial mobile networks, including, but not limited to, 5G networks.

2019 IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps), 2019

In this paper, we propose a distributed market mechanism powered by the blockchain technology add... more In this paper, we propose a distributed market mechanism powered by the blockchain technology addressing network ownership models in multiple telecommunications networks use cases. The proposed model is based on the smart contract technology and enables transparent and trusted bilateral trades, where trust among the network operators does not exist, and there is no impartial third-party entity who is trusted by all of the participants. We use an open source permissioned blockchain framework called Hyperledger Fabric to investigate the performance of the distributed market mechanism in cloud environments. After running experiments on Hyperledger Fabric, we discuss the practical feasibility and possible design choices of our blockchain approach based on latency, throughput and resource consumption analysis.

2018 26th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), 2018

One of the main research directions for 5G mobile networks is resource virtualisation and slicing... more One of the main research directions for 5G mobile networks is resource virtualisation and slicing. Towards this goal, the Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) architecture offers mobile operators a flexible and dynamic framework for managing resources and processing data. This paper proposes a dynamic allocation approach for processing resources in a C-RAN supported by the concept of Network Function Vitualisation (NFV). To achieve this objective, we virtualised the Baseband Unit (BBU) resources for Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile network into a BBU pool supported by Linux Container (LXC) technology. We report on experiments conducted in the Iris testbed with highdefinition video streaming by implementing Software-Defined Radio (SDR)-based LTE functionality with the virtualised BBU pool. Our results show a significant improvement in the quality of the video transmission with this dynamic allocation approach.

Optical Fiber Communication Conference, 2018

Delivery 2 lecture and 1 tutorial hour per week Aims Effective wireless communication is the key ... more Delivery 2 lecture and 1 tutorial hour per week Aims Effective wireless communication is the key enabling technology for realising the emerging ubiquitous computing vision. Mobile Communications is a final year option module which imbues the next generation of graduates with a cognisance and awareness of both the capabilities and limitations of modern mobile devices. In this module students being by learning about the underlying principles of wireless transmission and how these underpin the design of wireless communication networks. This material forms a platform for the subsequent analysis, assessment and implementation of a wide variety of modern wireless communication systems.

Abstract: We present a novel network architecture that establishes dynamic optical paths by analy... more Abstract: We present a novel network architecture that establishes dynamic optical paths by analyzing local network traffic. We demonstrate its feasibility and effectiveness through a network analysis using real traces collected from the pan-European GÈANT network.