Current network technologies, mainly represented by the Internet, have demonstrated little capacity to evolve because of the strict binding of communications to identifiers and locators. While locator namespaces represent the position of communication participants in the graph of a specific protocol, unstructured/plain identifiers represent the position of communications participants in the global network graph. Although they are valid for forwarding packets along communication paths, both views fail to fully represent the actual entities behind communications beyond a simple vertex. In this paper we introduce and evaluate an identity-based control plane that resolves these problems by abstracting communications from identifiers and locators and by using identities to achieve enhanced security, and mobility management operations. This identity-based control plane can then be integrated into different network architectures in order to incorporate the features it provides. This facilitates the evolution capacity of those architectures that separate the information transmission concerns (networking, routing), from end-to-end aspects like security and mobility management.

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Using “clean-slate approach” to redesign the Internet has attracted considerable attention. ZNA (Z Network Architecture) is one of clean-slate network architectures based on the layered model. The major features of ZNA are as follows: (1) introducing the session layer to provide the applications with sophisticated communication services, (2) employing inter-node cross-layer cooperation to adapt to the dynamically changing network conditions, (3) splitting the node identifier and the node locator for mobility, multi-homing, and heterogeneity of network layer protocols, (4) splitting the data plane and the control plane for high manageability, and (5) introducing a recursive layered model to support network virtualization. This paper focuses on the first three topics as well as the basic design of ZNA.

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This paper proposes a name-based routing mechanism called Routing Guidance Name (RGN) that offers new routing management functionalities within the basic characteristics of CCN. The proposed mechanism names each CCN router. Each router becomes a Data Provider for its name. When a CCN Interest specifies a router's name, it is forwarded to the target router according to the standard mechanism of CCN. Upon receiving an Interest, each router reacts to it according to RGN. This paper introduces a new type of node called a Scheduler which calculates the best routes based on link state information collected from routers. The scheduler performs its functions based on RGN. This paper discusses how the proposed system builds CCN FIB (Forwarding Information Base) in routers. The results of experiments reveal that RGN is more efficient than the standard CCN scheme. It is also shown that the proposal provides mobility support with short delay time. We explain a practical mobile scenario to illustrate the advantages of the proposal.

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This article introduces a self-organizing model which builds the topology of a DHT mapping system for ICN. Due to its self-organizing operation and low average degree of maintenance, the management overhead of the system is reduced dramatically, which yields inherent scalability. The proposed model can improve latency by around 10% compared to an existing approach which has a near optimal average distance when the number of nodes and degree are given. In particular, its operation is simple which eases maintenance concerns. Moreover, we analyze the model theoretically to provide a deeper understanding of the proposal.

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As a promising future network architecture, Information-centric networking (ICN) has attracted much attention, its ubiquitous in-network caching is one of the key technologies to optimize the dissemination of information. However, considering the diversity of contents and the limitation of cache resources in the Internet, it is usually difficult to find a one-fit-all caching strategy. How to manage the ubiquitous in-network cache in ICN has become an important problem. In this paper, we explore ways to improve cache performance from the three perspectives of spatiality, temporality and availability, based on which we further propose an in-network cache management strategy to support differentiated service. We divide contents requested in the network into different levels and the selection of caching strategies depends on the content level. Furthermore, the corresponding models of utilizing cache resources in spatiality, temporality and availability are also derived for comparison and analysis. Simulation verifies that our differentiated service based cache management strategy can optimize the utilization of cache resources and get higher overall cache performance.

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This paper presents an optimal cooperative routing protocol (OCRP) aiming to improve the in-network cache utilization of the Content-Centric Networking (CCN). The objective of OCRP is to selectively aggregate the multiple flows of interest messages onto the same path in order to improve the cache utilization while mitigating the cache contention of the Content Stores (CSs) of CCN routers on the routing path. The proposed routing protocol consists of three processes: (1) Prefix Popularity Observation; (2) Prefix Group (Un)Subscription; and (3) Forwarding Information Base (FIB) Reconstruction. Prefix Popularity Observation observes the popularly cited prefixes to activate a prefix group (un)subscription function, which lets the Designated Router (DR) know which requester router wants to either join or leave a prefix group. Prefix Group (Un)Subscription lets the DR know which requester router is demanding to join or leave which prefix group. FIB Reconstruction reconstructs the FIB entries of the CCN routers involved in the newly computed optimal cooperative path of all prefix groups. The optimal routing path is obtained by binary linear optimization under a flow conservation constraint, cache contention mitigating constraint, and path length constraint. Two metrics of server load and round-trip hop distance are used to measure the performance of the proposed routing protocol. Simulation results from various network scenarios and various settings show advantages over the shortest path routing and our previously proposed cooperative routing schemes.

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Because of the popularity of rich content, such as video files, the amount of traffic on the Internet continues to grow every year. Not only is the overall traffic increasing, but also the temporal fluctuations in traffic are increasing, and differences in the amounts of traffic between peak and off-peak periods are becoming very large. Consequently, efficient use of link bandwidth is becoming more challenging. In this paper, we propose a new system for content distribution: storage aware routing (SAR). With SAR, routers having large storage capacities can exploit those links that are underutilized. Our performance evaluations show that SAR can smooth the fluctuations in link utilization.

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Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file distribution systems can efficiently disseminate massive contents, such as disk images of operating systems, from a server to many users in a piece-by-piece manner. In particular, the BitTorrent protocol optimizes each peer's download speed by applying the tit-for-tat (TFT) strategy, where each peer preferentially uploads piece(s) to peer(s) from which it can download missing pieces faster. To the best of our knowledge, however, the optimality of TFT-based P2P file distribution has not been studied sufficiently. In this paper, we aim to understand the optimal scheduling in TFT-based P2P file distribution. First, we develop a discrete-time model of TFT-based P2P file distribution and formulate its optimal scheduling as a two-step integer linear programming problem. The first step is to minimize the average file retrieval time among peers, and the second step is to improve fairness among peers. We analyze the optimal solution obtained by the existing solver and reveal the characteristics of the optimal scheduling. Specifically, we show that it is crucial to distribute pieces from the server indirectly to peers with large upload capacity via those with small upload capacity.

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Tenant network provisioning in multi-tenancy data centers is time-consuming and error-prone due to the need to configure network devices with hundreds of parameter values (e.g., VLAN ID, IP address) determined according to complicated operational rules. Past works have aimed to automate such operational rule-based provisioning processes by implementing data center-specific provisioning programs, but a crucial problem is the high cost of adapting the programs to suit multiple data centers. In this paper, we aim to solve this problem by enabling to describe the provisioning processing, which has been hard-coded programs in conventional approaches, in easy-to-edit “provisioning template” files. The key component of the provisioning template is the parameter decision rule, which is a declarative abstract representation of parameter dependency and parameter assignment. We design the provisioning template so that it can handle various configuration items while preserving its editability for tenant provisioning. We design and implement the provisioning platform, and the evaluation based on a production data center shows that the provisioning platform can adopt multiple data centers with a single program, leading to less development cost compared to past approaches (i.e., program development for each data center).

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The mobile cloud computing (MCC) paradigm is aimed at integrating mobile devices with cloud computing. In the client-server architecture of MCC, mobile devices offload tasks to the cloud to utilize the computation and storage resources of data centers. However, due to the rapid increase in the traffic demand and complexity of mobile applications, service providers have to continuously upgrade their infrastructures at great expense. At the same time, modern mobile devices have greater resources (communication, computation, and sensing), and these resources are not always fully utilized by device users. Therefore, mobile devices, from time to time, encounter other devices that could provide resources to them. Because the amount of such resources has increased with the number of mobile devices, researchers have begun to consider making use of these resources, located at the “edge” of mobile networks, to increase the scalability of future information networks. This has led to a cooperation based architecture of MCC. This paper reports the concept and design of an resource sharing mechanism that utilize resources in mobile devices through opportunistic contacts between them. Theoretical models and formal definitions of problems are presented. The efficiency of the proposed mechanism is validated through formal proofs and extensive simulation.

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As the quantity of mobile application traffic keeps increasing, operators are facing the scalability limits of VoIP protocols. Higher queuing delays at the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) server create significantly more retransmissions in the network. When the message arrival rate including retransmissions exceeds the message serving capacity of a SIP server, the queue size increases and eventually the SIP server can crash. Our analysis demonstrates that server crash can be prevented if the buffer size of the SIP server is limited. However, having smaller buffer sizes yields side effects such as lower successful transaction ratio for bursty traffic. In this paper, we propose a new SIP server scheduling mechanism in which the original incoming SIP requests have strict priority over the retransmitted requests. The priority based scheduling mechanism provides network administrator with the ability to configure the buffer size of a SIP server to a moderately high value. We implement the proposed priority-based scheduling mechanism in the JAIN-SIP stack and confirm that the implementation requires minimal changes to the SIP standard. Numerical experiments show that the proposed scheduling mechanism provides significantly and consistently better scalability at high buffer sizes compared to the heavily used first-in-first-out scheduling, thus enabling us to avoid server overloads.

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Interoperability is one of the fundamental functions of a home network because such networks must support many different types of devices and services. Interoperability can be realized by converting messages among different middleware with rules. However, it is very difficult to define common rules to accommodate all differences among various middleware. In addition, most interoperability approaches only address the conversion of the message format and schema, and occasionally these are not enough for a semantic conversion. In this paper, we propose a systematic approach to solve the interoperability problem. For this, we classify three interoperability types, i.e., schema, profile, and procedure, and define the rules for each type. We called this interoperability scheme the Multiple stage Approach for Home network Interoperability (MAHI). In this paper, we present the design and implementation of MAHI for a three-stage conversion process. Finally, we illustrate some experimental and quantitative results. In the experiments, MAHI can provide efficient interoperability among different middleware and MAHI will be a method to deal with a complex home network interoperability.

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We propose a cyclic sleep control technique for backup resources in reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) systems to simultaneously achieve power savings and high-speed recovery from failures. Processes to check the reliability of backup resources, backup transponders and paths, are also provided in the control technique. The proposed technique uses sleep mode where backup transponders are powered down to minimize power for power savings. At least one of the backup transponders is always activated after self-checking using the loopback fiber connection in the ROADM and it becomes a shared backup for working transponders to enable high-speed recovery from failures. This activated backup transponder is powered down again after the next transponder is activated. These state transitions are cyclically applied to each backup transponder. This “cyclic” aspect of operation enables network operators to continuously monitor the reliability for all backup resources with the sleep mode. The activated backup transponders at both ends of the path are used in checking the reliability of backup paths. Therefore, all backup resources, both transponders and paths, can be regularly checked with the sleep mode to ensure data are stably forwarded. We estimated the power consumption with this technique under various conditions and found a trade-off between power reduction and the recovery capabilities from failures. We achieved more than 34% power saving of backup transponders maintaining the failure recovery time within 50ms in experiments. Furthermore, we confirmed the reliability of backup paths in experiments using backup transponders with the cyclic sleep control technique. These results indicated that the proposed control technique is promising in dramatically and reliably reducing the power consumption of backup resources.

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We have proposed a novel call admission control (CAC) method for maximizing total user satisfaction in a heterogeneous traffic network and showed their effectiveness by using the optimal threshold from numerical analysis [1],[2]. With these CAC methods, it is assumed that only selfish users exist in a network. However, we need to consider the possibility that some cooperative users exist who would agree to reduce their requested bandwidth to improve another user's Quality of Service (QoS). Under this assumption, conventional CAC may not be optimal. If there are cooperative users in the network, we need control methods that encourage such user cooperation. However, such “encourage” control methods have not yet been proposed. Therefore, in this paper, we propose novel CAC methods for cooperative users by using queueing theory. Numerical analyses show their effectiveness. We also analyze the characteristics of the optimal control parameter of the threshold.

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In this paper, we present a new mathematical framework based on point process theory for a type of four-way handshake-based medium access control schemes which have so far only been studied by simulation. The theoretical model we present takes into account time-varying channel impairments, the interference inherent to large networks, different decoding requirements for each packet and the influence of the routing protocol. Moreover, in contrast with the majority of the literature, the influence of imperfect feedback is also considered in the analysis. Throughout the paper, we derive in closed forms the average link outage probability as well as the Average Spatial Density of Transport (ASDT) in a mobile multi-hop ad hoc network. All results are confirmed by comparison to simulated data and lead to two general conclusions. In the presence of fading uncorrelated between traffic and control handshakes, we observe the following. 1) Optimal contention is achieved by designing control packets that are decodable even in the presence of strong interference. 2) The impact of imperfect feedback on performance in an interference-limited mobile ad hoc network is not negligible.

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The energy consumption of the Internet has a huge impact on the world economy and it is likely to increase every year. In present backbone networks, pairs of nodes are connected by “bundles” of multiple physical cables that form one logical link and energy saving can be achieved by shutting down unused network resources. The hose model can support traffic demand variations among node pairs in different time periods because it accommodates multiple traffic matrices unlike the pipe model which supports only one traffic matrix. This paper proposes an OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) link weight optimization scheme to reduce the network resources used for the hose model considering single link failures. The proposed scheme employs a heuristic algorithm based on simulated annealing to determine a suitable set of link weights to reduce the worst-case total network resources used, and considering any single link failure preemptively. It efficiently selects the worst-case performance link-failure topology and searches for a link weight set that reduces the worst-case total network resources used. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme is more effective in the reduction of worst-case total network resources used than the conventional schemes, Start-time Optimization and minimum hop routing.

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This paper presents an electrically small and circularly polarized antenna with an omnidirectional radiation pattern. The antenna consists of a horizontal loop element enclosed by two U-shaped elements and a vertical element from the feeding point. The radiation pattern of the circular polarization is omnidirectional and has a maximum gain of -2dBic in parallel to the ground plane at the 900MHz band. The antenna dimensions are 48 × 20 × 13.8mm (0.14λ × 0.06λ × 0.04λ) with ka =0.476 (i.e. < 0.5), where k is the wavenumber at the resonant frequency and a is the radius of a sphere surrounding the antenna. The dimension corresponds to the definition of an electrically small antenna. The omnidirectional circularly polarized pattern of a prototype antenna shows good agreement with that of the simulation. In addition, this paper introduces a mechanism that generates omnidirectional circular polarization from electrically small antennas.

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Although multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MI-MO) systems provide high data rate transmission, they may suffer from interference. Block diagonalization and eigenbeam-space division multiplexing (E-SDM) can suppress interference. The transmitter needs to determine beamforming weights from channel state information (CSI) to use these techniques. However, MIMO channels change in time-varying environments during the time intervals between when transmission parameters are determined and actual MIMO transmission occurs. The outdated CSI causes interference and seriously degrades the quality of transmission. Channel prediction schemes have been developed to mitigate the effects of outdated CSI. We evaluated the accuracy of prediction of autoregressive (AR)-model-based prediction and Lagrange extrapolation in the presence of channel estimation error. We found that Lagrange extrapolation was easy to implement and that it provided performance comparable to that obtained with the AR-model-based technique.

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This study proposes a novel method for evaluating the transmission characteristics of a three-phase filter using the “Fortescue-mode S-parameters,” which are S-parameters whose variables are transformed into symmetrical coordinates (i.e., zero-/positive-/negative-phase sequences). The behavior of the filter under three-phase current, including its non-symmetry, can be represented by these S-parameters, without regard to frequency. This paper also describes a methodology for creating modal equivalent circuits that reflect Fortescue-mode S-parameters allowing the effects of circuit components on filter characteristics to be estimated. Thus, this method is useful not only for the measurement and evaluation but also for the analysis and design of a three-phase filter. In addition, the physical interpretation of asymmetrical/symmetrical insertion losses and the conversion method based on Fortescue-mode S-parameters are clarified.

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This paper investigates the performance of an overloaded multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system with a repetition code. It has been demonstrated that diversity with block coding prevents the performance degradation induced by signal multiplexing. However, the computational complexity of a joint decoding scheme increases exponentially with the number of multiplexed signal streams. Thus, this paper proposes the use of a repetition code in the overloaded MIMO-OFDM system. In addition, QR decomposition with M-algorithm (QRM) maximum likelihood decoding (MLD) is applied to the decoding of the repetition code. QRM-MLD significantly reduces the amount of joint decoding complexity. In addition, virtual antennas are employed in order to increase the throughput that is reduced by the repetition code. It is shown that the proposed scheme reduces the complexity by about 1/48 for 6 signal streams with QPSK modulation while the BER degradation is less than 0.1dB at the BER of 10^-3.

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The development of high data rate wireless communications systems using Multiple Input — Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna techniques requires detectors with reduced complexity and good Bit Error Rate (BER) performance. In this paper, we present the Semi-fixed Complexity Sphere Decoder (SCSD), which executes the process of detection in MIMO systems with a significantly lower computation cost than the high-performance/reduced-complexity detectors: Sphere Decoder (SD), K-best, Fixed Complexity Sphere Decoder (FSD) and Adaptive Set Partitioning (ASP). Simulation results show that when the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) is less than 15dB, the SCSD reduces the complexity by up to 90% with respect to SD, up to 60% with respect to K-best or ASP and by up to 90% with respect to FSD. In the proposed algorithm, the BER performance does not show significant degradation and therefore, can be considered as a complexity reduction scheme suitable for implementing in MIMO detectors.

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The joint power allocation (PA) issue is studied in multi-user three-cell systems under the degree-of-freedom (DoF) based transmission protocol. This protocol makes all the interferences received at each user orthogonal to the useful signal at the same user by Jafar's topological interference management through index coding, which is proved to offer full DoF. Under this protocol, we formulate the joint power allocations problem based on the objective of energy efficiency under the required quality-of-service constraint. Due to the highly complicated Lagrangian equation, the properties of Lambert function are widely exploited to solve the problem using a closed-form expression. It is discovered that the relationship among the optimal power coefficients are completely different from that of the well-known water-filling method. Simulations demonstrate the energy efficiency of the designed scheme.

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Cognitive radio has been developed recently as a promising solution to tackle the spectrum related issues such as spectrum scarcity and spectrum underutilization. Cognitive spectrum assignment is necessary for allocating spectrum bands to secondary users in order to avoid conflicts among secondary users and maximize the total network performance under a given set of conditions. In most spectrum assignment schemes, throughput is considered as the main criterion for spectrum selection or spectrum assignment. In this paper, we propose a distortion-aware channel allocation scheme for multiple secondary users who compete for primary channels to transmit multimedia data. In the proposed scheme, idle spectrum bands are assigned to the multimedia secondary users that attain the highest video distortion reduction. The scheme is expected to mitigate the selfish behaviors of users in competing channels. The performance effectiveness of our proposed channel allocation scheme is demonstrated through simulation by comparing with a benchmark of two reference spectrum assignment schemes.

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Subcarrier pairing (SP) and power allocation (PA) can improve the channel capacity of the OFDM multi-hop relay system. Due to limitations of processing complexity and energy consumption, symbol-level relaying, which only regenerates the constellation symbols at relay nodes, is more practical than code-level relaying that requires full decoding and encoding. By modeling multi-hop symbol-level relaying as a multi-staged parallel binary symmetric channel, this paper introduces a jointly optimal SP and PA scheme which maximizes the end to end data rate. Analytical arguments are given to reveal the structures and properties of the optimal solution, and simulation results are presented to illustrate and justify the optimality.

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To support the processing of spatial window queries efficiently in a non-flat wireless data broadcasting system, we propose a Two-Tier Spatial Index (TTSI) that uses a two tier data space to distinguish hot and regular data items. Unlike an existing index which repeats regular data items located near hot items at the same time as the hot data items during the broadcast cycle, TTSI makes it possible to repeat only hot data items during a cycle. Simulations show that the proposed TTSI outperforms the existing scheme with respect to access time and energy consumption.

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Radar systems using ultra-wideband (UWB) signals have definitive advantages in high range resolution. These are suitable for accurate 3-dimensional (3-D) sensing by rescue robots operating in disaster zone settings, where optical sensing is not applicable because of thick smog or high-density gas. For such applications, where no a priori information of target shape and position is given, an accurate method for 3-D imaging and motion estimation is strongly required for effective target recognition. In addressing this issue, we have already proposed a non-parametric 2-dimensional (2-D) imaging method for a target with arbitrary target shape and motion including rotation and translation being tracked using a multi-static radar system. This is based on matching target boundary points obtained using the range points migration (RPM) method extended to the multi-static radar system. Whereas this method accomplishes accurate imaging and motion estimation for single targets, accuracy is degraded severely for multiple targets, due to interference effects. For a solution of this difficulty, this paper proposes a method based on a novel matching scheme using not only target points but also normal vectors on the target boundary estimated by the Envelope method; interference effects are effectively suppressed when incorporating the RPM approach. Results from numerical simulations for both 2-D and 3-D models show that the proposed method simultaneously achieves accurate target imaging and motion tracking, even for multiple moving targets.

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