Radio Resource Management across UMTS Radio Network Subsystems

UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System), esimerkkinä kolmannen sukupolven matkapuhelinjärjestelmästä pyrkii toistamaan GSM:n (Global System for Mobile Communications) menestyksen. UMTS:n kaupallinen toiminta on parhaillaan alkamassa ja ensimmäinen kaupallinen verkko on jo aloittanut toimintansa Japanissa. Tämä diplomityö antaa yleiskuvan UMTS:stä keskittyen radioverkkojärjestelmän (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network,UTRAN) radioresurssien hallintaan (Radio Resource Management, RRM). Työssä kuvataan radiorajapintojen toimintaa, mutta diplomityön pääaiheena on kuitenkin radioresurssien hallinta UMTS radioaliverkkojärjestelmien ylitse. Radioresurssien hallinta pitää sisällään joukon proseduureja, jotka vaikuttavat koko UTRAN:in rakenteen lävitse. On hyvin tärkeää saavuttaa oikea toiminnallisuus hajautettujen radioresurssien hallintaan jotta voitaisiin saavuttaa paras yhteyden laatu loppukäyttäjälle. Työssä käydään yksityiskohtaisesti lävitse radioresurssien hallinnan perusperiaatteet ja joukko proseduureja. RNSAP (Radio Network Subsystem Application Part) protokollaa tarkastellaan työssä esimerkkinä protokollasta joka osallistuu radioresurssien hallintaprosessiin.

Transport Resource Management within UMTS Radio Network Subsystem

Tällä hetkellä haastavin telekommunikaatioteollisuuden tutkimus – ja kehitystoiminta on keskittynyt kolmannen sukupolven matkapuhelinjärjestelmien ympärille. Järjestelmien standardointityössä on saatu aikaiseksi ensimmäiset vakaat spesifikaatioversiot ja kaupallista toimintaa ollaan parhaillaan aloittelemassa Japanissa ja Euroopassa. Eräs kolmannen sukupolven järjestelmistä on UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System). Tämä diplomityö antaa yleiskuvan UMTS järjestelmästä ja sen eri verkkoelementtien toiminnallisuuksista. Päähuomio on kiinnitetty radioverkkojärjestelmään (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network) ja erityisesti sen radioaliverkkojärjestelmään (Radio Network Subsystem), joka koostuu radioverkonohjaimesta (Radio Network Controller) ja joukosta siihen kuuluvia tukiasemia (Node B). Radioverkonohjain ja tukiasemat on yhdistetty avoimen rajapinnan kautta jota kutsutaan Iub -rajapinnaksi. Rajapinta tarjoaa radioverkonohjaimelle mahdollisuuden kontrolloida tukiasemia signalointiviestien avulla ja mahdollistaa tehokkaan ja luotettavan käyttäjätiedon siirron radioaliverkkojärjestelmän sisällä. Tämän diplomityön pääasiallinen sisältö on siirtoresurssien hallinta Iub -rajapinnan ylitse. Työssä esitellään ja selitetään siirtoverkon arkkitehtuuri. Myös kaikki Iub:ssä sijaitsevat protokollat ja toiminnalliset yksiköt jotka vaikuttavat siirtoresurssien hallintaan esitellään ja kuvataan yksityiskohtaisesti. Päähuomio on kiinnitetty sovellusprotokolliin sekä rajapinnan siirtoverkko- että radioverkkokerroksella sekä näiden protokollien väliseen vuorovaikutukseen. Kyseiset protokollat ovat Node B Application Part (NBAP) ja Access Link Control Application Part (ALCAP). Työn toteutusosassa käydään lävitse NBAP –protokollan prototyypin ja Node B Manager –toiminnallisen yksikön prototyypin implementaatio.

Design and Test of a High QoS Radio Network for CBTC Systems in Subway Tunnels

Communications Based Train Control Systems require high quality radio data communications for train signaling and control. Actually most of these systems use 2.4GHz band with proprietary radio transceivers and leaky feeder as distribution system. All them demand a high QoS radio network to improve the efficiency of railway networks. We present narrow band, broad band and data correlated measurements taken in Madrid underground with a transmission system at 2.4 GHz in a test network of 2 km length in subway tunnels. The architecture proposed has a strong overlap in between cells to improve reliability and QoS. The radio planning of the network is carefully described and modeled with narrow band and broadband measurements and statistics. The result is a network with 99.7% of packets transmitted correctly and average propagation delay of 20ms. These results fulfill the specifications QoS of CBTC systems.

Neighbour list optimization for real LTE radio network

With the increasing complexity of current networks, it became evident the need for Self-Organizing Networks (SON), which aims to automate most of the associated radio planning and optimization tasks. Within SON, this paper aims to optimize the Neighbour Cell List (NCL) for Long Term Evolution (LTE) evolved NodeBs (eNBs). An algorithm composed by three decisions were were developed: distance-based, Radio Frequency (RF) measurement-based and Handover (HO) stats-based. The distance-based decision, proposes a new NCL taking account the eNB location and interference tiers, based in the quadrants method. The last two algorithms consider signal strength measurements and HO statistics, respectively; they also define a ranking to each eNB and neighbour relation addition/removal based on user defined constraints. The algorithms were developed and implemented over an already existent radio network optimization professional tool. Several case studies were produced using real data from a Portuguese LTE mobile operator. © 2014 IEEE.

Biblio-MetReS: A bibliometric network reconstruction application and server

Background: Reconstruction of genes and/or protein networks from automated analysis of the literature is one of the current targets of text mining in biomedical research. Some user-friendly tools already perform this analysis on precompiled databases of abstracts of scientific papers. Other tools allow expert users to elaborate and analyze the full content of a corpus of scientific documents. However, to our knowledge, no user friendly tool that simultaneously analyzes the latest set of scientific documents available on line and reconstructs the set of genes referenced in those documents is available. Results: This article presents such a tool, Biblio-MetReS, and compares its functioning and results to those of other user-friendly applications (iHOP, STRING) that are widely used. Under similar conditions, Biblio-MetReS creates networks that are comparable to those of other user friendly tools. Furthermore, analysis of full text documents provides more complete reconstructions than those that result from using only the abstract of the document. Conclusions: Literature-based automated network reconstruction is still far from providing complete reconstructions of molecular networks. However, its value as an auxiliary tool is high and it will increase as standards for reporting biological entities and relationships become more widely accepted and enforced. Biblio- MetReS is an application that can be downloaded from http://metres.udl.cat/. It provides an easy to use environment for researchers to reconstruct their networks of interest from an always up to date set of scientific documents.

Distributed acceleration of mobile radio network optimisation algorithms

The past decade has witnessed explosive growth of mobile subscribers and services. With the purpose of providing better-swifter-cheaper services, radio network optimisation plays a crucial role but faces enormous challenges. The concept of Dynamic Network Optimisation (DNO), therefore, has been introduced to optimally and continuously adjust network configurations, in response to changes in network conditions and traffic. However, the realization of DNO has been seriously hindered by the bottleneck of optimisation speed performance. An advanced distributed parallel solution is presented in this paper, as to bridge the gap by accelerating the sophisticated proprietary network optimisation algorithm, while maintaining the optimisation quality and numerical consistency. The ariesoACP product from Arieso Ltd serves as the main platform for acceleration. This solution has been prototyped, implemented and tested. Real-project based results exhibit a high scalability and substantial acceleration at an average speed-up of 2.5, 4.9 and 6.1 on a distributed 5-core, 9-core and 16-core system, respectively. This significantly outperforms other parallel solutions such as multi-threading. Furthermore, augmented optimisation outcome, alongside high correctness and self-consistency, have also been fulfilled. Overall, this is a breakthrough towards the realization of DNO.

Acceleration of radio network optimisation algorithms

The increasing demand for cheaper-faster-better services anytime and anywhere has made radio network optimisation much more complex than ever before. In order to dynamically optimise the serving network, Dynamic Network Optimisation (DNO), is proposed as the ultimate solution and future trend. The realization of DNO, however, has been hindered by a significant bottleneck of the optimisation speed as the network complexity grows. This paper presents a multi-threaded parallel solution to accelerate complicated proprietary network optimisation algorithms, under a rigid condition of numerical consistency. ariesoACP product from Arieso Ltd serves as the platform for parallelisation. This parallel solution has been benchmarked and results exhibit a high scalability and a run-time reduction by 11% to 42% based on the technology, subscriber density and blocking rate of a given network in comparison with the original version. Further, it is highly essential that the parallel version produces equivalent optimisation quality in terms of identical optimisation outputs.

Concentric characterization and classification of complex network nodes: Application to an institutional collaboration network

Differently from theoretical scale-free networks, most real networks present multi-scale behavior, with nodes structured in different types of functional groups and communities. While the majority of approaches for classification of nodes in a complex network has relied on local measurements of the topology/connectivity around each node, valuable information about node functionality can be obtained by concentric (or hierarchical) measurements. This paper extends previous methodologies based on concentric measurements, by studying the possibility of using agglomerative clustering methods, in order to obtain a set of functional groups of nodes, considering particular institutional collaboration network nodes, including various known communities (departments of the University of Sao Paulo). Among the interesting obtained findings, we emphasize the scale-free nature of the network obtained, as well as identification of different patterns of authorship emerging from different areas (e.g. human and exact sciences). Another interesting result concerns the relatively uniform distribution of hubs along concentric levels, contrariwise to the non-uniform pattern found in theoretical scale-free networks such as the BA model. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

WCDMA HSPA performance counters for monitoring 3G-radio access network

The objective of this project was to gather all the counters which are used on HSPA performance monitoring. The main purpose was to create a compact packet of HSPA performance counters and radio network monitoring which Ericsson's employees can then use in their daily work. The study includes a short introduction to the architecture of the 3G-radio access network. The HSPA technology and HSPA performance are presented including a functional description of performance counters and KPIs, which are used for performance management and monitoring. The theory part of the study also covers an overview of performance management in OSS-RC. The final part of the study covers an overview of the performance management tools, in-troducing how the counters are represented in these interfaces. MOShell and OSS-RC are tools used in this study. Tools were selected because the MOShell is Ericsson's inter-nal management tool and OSS-RC is a tool designed for customers.

The evolution of user mobility on the Eduroam network

The emergence of smartphones with Wireless LAN (WiFi) network interfaces brought new challenges to application developers. The expected increase of users connectivity will impact their expectations for example on the performance of background applications. Unfortunately, the number and breadth of the studies on the new patterns of user mobility and connectivity that result from the emergence of smartphones is still insufficient to support this claim. This paper contributes with preliminary results on a large scale study of the usage pattern of about 49000 devices and 31000 users who accessed at least one access point of the eduroam WiFi network on the campuses of the Lisbon Polytechnic Institute. Results confirm that the increasing number of smartphones resulted in significant changes to the pattern of use, with impact on the amount of traffic and users connection time.

GPRS/EDGE Session Tracing and Analysis in Abis and AGPRS Interfaces

Efficient problem solving in cellular networks is important when enhancing the network performance and liability. Analysis of calls and packet switched sessions in protocol level between the network elements is an important part of this process. They can provide very detailed information about error situations which otherwise would be difficult to recognise. In this thesis we seek solutions for monitoring GPRS/EDGE sessions in two specific interfaces simultaneously in such manner that all information important to the users will be provided in easily understandable form. This thesis focuses on Abis and AGPRS interfaces of GSM radio network and introduces a solution for managing the correlation between these interfaces by using signalling messages and common parameters as linking elements. ~: Finally this thesis presents an implementation of GPRS/EDGE session monitoring application for Abis and AGPRS interfaces and evaluates its benefits to the end users. Application is implemented as a part of Windows based 3G/GSM network analyser.

A Packet/Frame sync detector based on statistical mode with application to wireless-USB

Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs) are offering high data rates suitable for interconnecting high bandwidth personal consumer devices (Wireless HD streaming, Wireless-USB and Bluetooth EDR). ECMA-368 is the Physical (PHY) and Media Access Control (MAC) backbone of many of these wireless devices. WPAN devices tend to operate in an ad-hoc based network and therefore it is important to successfully latch onto the network and become part of one of the available piconets. This paper presents a new algorithm for detecting the Packet/Fame Sync (PFS) signal in ECMA-368 to identify piconets and aid symbol timing. The algorithm is based on correlating the received PFS symbols with the expected locally stored symbols over the 24 or 12 PFS symbols, but selecting the likely TFC based on the highest statistical mode from the 24 or 12 best correlation results. The results are very favorable showing an improvement margin in the order of 11.5dB in reference sensitivity tests between the required performance using this algorithm and the performance of comparable systems.

The exchange of radiotherapy data as part of an electronic patient-referral system

PURPOSE: To describe the implementation and use of an electronic patient-referral system as an aid to the efficient referral of patients to a remote and specialized treatment center. METHODS AND MATERIALS: A system for the exchange of radiotherapy data between different commercial planning systems and a specially developed planning system for proton therapy has been developed through the use of the PAPYRUS diagnostic image standard as an intermediate format. To ensure the cooperation of the different TPS manufacturers, the number of data sets defined for transfer has been restricted to the three core data sets of CT, VOIs, and three-dimensional dose distributions. As a complement to the exchange of data, network-wide application-sharing (video-conferencing) technologies have been adopted to provide methods for the interactive discussion and assessment of treatments plans with one or more partner clinics. RESULTS: Through the use of evaluation plans based on the exchanged data, referring clinics can accurately assess the advantages offered by proton therapy on a patient-by-patient basis, while the practicality or otherwise of the proposed treatments can simultaneously be assessed by the proton therapy center. Such a system, along with the interactive capabilities provided by video-conferencing methods, has been found to be an efficient solution to the problem of patient assessment and selection at a specialized treatment center, and is a necessary first step toward the full electronic integration of such centers with their remotely situated referral centers.

BatNet: a 6LoWPAN-based sensors and actuators network

Improving energy efficiency in buildings is one of the goals of the Smart City initiatives and a challenge for the European Union. This paper presents a 6LoWPAN wireless transducer network (BatNet) as part of an open energy management system. This network has been designed to operate in buildings, to collect environmental information (temperature, humidity, illumination and presence) and electrical consumption in real time (voltage, current and power factor). The system has been implemented and tested in the Energy Efficiency Research Facility at CeDInt-UPM.