Network testing plays an important role in the iterative process of developing new communication protocols and algorithms. However, test environments have to keep up with the evolution of technology and require continuous update and redesign. In this article, we propose COINS, a framework that can be used by wireless technology developers to enable CI practices in their testbed infrastructure. As a proof-of-concept, we provide a reference architecture and implementation of COINS for controlled testing of multi-technology 5G MTC networks. The implementation upgrades an existing wireless experimentation testbed with new software and hardware functionalities. It blends web service technology and operating system virtualization technologies with emerging Internet of Things technologies enabling CI for wireless networks. Moreover, we also extend an existing qualitative methodology for comparing similar frameworks and identify and discuss open challenges for wider use of CI practices in wireless technology development.
While we did not find any other framework addressing wireless experimentation with CI support, we have identified three existing frameworks that are to some extent similar to COINS, i.e., the control and Management Framework (OMF) @cite_7 , the Network Implementation Testbed Laboratory (NITOS) @cite_2 and the Berlin Open Wireless Lab (BOWL) @cite_14 . We performed a feature-wise comparison of these frameworks and summarized it in Table ,.
@cite_14 @cite_7 @cite_2
2311523047 2167264214 2611421367 1967754176
The Berlin Open Wireless Lab (BOWL) project at Technische Universitat Berlin (TUB) maintains an outdoor WiFi network which is used both for Internet access and as a testbed for wireless research. From the very beginning of the BOWL project, we experienced several development and operations challenges to keep Internet users and researchers happy. Development challenges included allowing multiple researchers with very different requirements to run experiments in the network while maintaining reliable Internet access. On the operations side, one of the recent issues we faced was authentication of users from different domains, which required us to integrate with various external authentication services. In this paper, we present our experience in handling these challenges on both development and operations sides and the lessons we learned. Wireless networks are increasingly used to carry applications with QoS constraints. Two problems arise when dealing with traffic with QoS constraints. One is admission control, which consists of determining whether it is possible to fulfill the demands of a set of clients. The other is finding an optimal scheduling policy to meet the demands of all clients. In this paper, we propose a framework for jointly addressing three QoS criteria: delay, delivery ratio, and channel reliability. We analytically prove the necessary and sufficient condition for a set of clients to be feasible with respect to the above three criteria. We then establish an efficient algorithm for admission control to decide whether a set of clients is feasible. We further propose two scheduling policies and prove that they are feasibility optimal in the sense that they can meet the demands of every feasible set of clients. In addition, we show that these policies are easily implementable on the IEEE 802.11 mechanisms. We also present the results of simulation studies that appear to confirm the theoretical studies and suggest that the proposed policies outperform others tested under a variety of settings. In this paper, a novel framework is proposed for optimizing the operation and performance of a large-scale multi-hop millimeter wave (mmW) backhaul within a wireless small cell network having multiple mobile network operators (MNOs). The proposed framework enables the small base stations to jointly decide on forming the multi-hop, mmW links over backhaul infrastructure that belongs to multiple, independent MNOs, while properly allocating resources across those links. In this regard, the problem is addressed using a novel framework based on matching theory composed of two, highly inter-related stages: a multi-hop network formation stage and a resource management stage. One unique feature of this framework is that it jointly accounts for both wireless channel characteristics and economic factors during both network formation and resource management. The multi-hop network formation stage is formulated as a one-to-many matching game, which is solved using a novel algorithm, that builds on the so-called deferred acceptance algorithm and is shown to yield a stable and Pareto optimal multi-hop mmW backhaul network. Then, a one-to-many matching game is formulated to enable proper resource allocation across the formed multi-hop network. This game is then shown to exhibit peer effects and, as such, a novel algorithm is developed to find a stable and optimal resource management solution that can properly cope with these peer effects. Simulation results show that, with manageable complexity, the proposed framework yields substantial gains, in terms of the average sum rate, reaching up to 27 and 54 , respectively, compared with a non-cooperative scheme in which inter-operator sharing is not allowed and a random allocation approach. The results also show that our framework improves the statistics of the backhaul sum rate and provides insights on how to manage pricing and the cost of the cooperative mmW backhaul network for the MNOs. Experimental research on wireless communication protocols frequently requires full access to all protocol layers, down to and including the physical layer. Software Defined Radio (SDR) hardware platforms, together with real-time signal processing frameworks, offer a basis to implement transceivers that can allow such experimentation and sophisticated measurements. We present a complete Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) receiver implemented in GNU Radio and fitted for operation with an Ettus USRP N210. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first prototype of a GNU Radio based OFDM receiver for this technology. Our receiver comprises all layers up to parsing the MAC header and extracting the payload of IEEE 802.11a g p networks. It supports both WiFi with a bandwidth of 20 MHz and IEEE 802.11p DSRC with a bandwidth of 10 MHz. We validated and verified our implementation by means of interoperability tests, and present representative performance measurements. By making the code available as Open Source we provide an easy-to-access system that can be readily used for experimenting with novel signal processing algorithms.