Arijit Banerjee

SMORE: software-defined networking mobile offloading architecture

We present our Software-defined network Mobile Offloading aRchitecturE (SMORE). SMORE realizes traffic offloading in mobile networks without requiring any changes to the functionality of existing mobile network nodes. At the same time, it is fully aware of mobile network functionality, including mobility.

MOCA: a lightweight mobile cloud offloading architecture

We present our work on MOCA, a lightweight Mobile Cloud Offloading Architecture, which uses an in-network cloud platform to provide offloading resources. MOCA integrates with existing mobile network architectures without requiring significant changes, and utilizes software defined networking techniques in the data plane to redirect appropriate traffic to and from the cloud platform. We show the feasibility of MOCA by a prototype implementation using a LTE/EPC mobile testbed.

Scaling the LTE control-plane for future mobile access

In addition to growth of data traffic, mobile networks are bracing for a significant rise in the control-plane signaling. While a complete re-design of the network to overcome inefficiencies may help alleviate the effects of signaling, our goal is to improve the design of the current platform to better manage the signaling. To meet our goal, we combine two key trends. Firstly, mobile operators are keen to transform their networks with the adoption of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) to ensure economies of scales. Secondly, growing popularity of cloud computing has led to advances in distributed systems. In bringing these trends together, we solve several challenges specific to the context of telecom networks. We present SCALE - A framework for effectively virtualizing the MME (Mobility Management Entity), a key control-plane element in LTE. SCALE is fully compatible with the 3GPP protocols, ensuring that it can be readily deployed in todays networks. SCALE enables (i) computational scaling with load and number of devices, and (ii) computational multiplexing across data centers, thereby reducing both, the latencies for control-plane processing, and the VM provisioning costs. Using an LTE prototype implementation and large-scale simulations, we show the efficacy of SCALE.

PhantomNet: Research Infrastructure for Mobile Networking, Cloud Computing and Software-Defined Networking

The PhantomNet facility allows experimenters to combine mobile networking, cloud computing and software-defined networking in a single environment. It is an end-to-end testbed, meaning that it supports experiments not just with mobile end-user devices but also with a cellular core network that can be configured and extended with new technologies. This article introduces PhantomNet and presents a road map for its future development. The current PhantomNet prototype is available now at no cost to researchers and educational users.

Detecting malicious nodes in RSS-based localization

Measurements of received signal strength (RSS) on wireless links provide position information in various localization systems, including multilateration-based and fingerprint-based positioning systems, and device-free localization systems. Existing localization schemes assume a fixed or known transmit power. Therefore, any variation in transmit power can result in error in location estimate. In this paper, we present a generic framework for detecting power attacks and identifying the source of such transmit power variation. Our results show that we can achieve close to zero missed detections and false alarms with RSS measurements of only 50 transmissions. We also present an analysis of trade-off between accuracy and latency of detection for our method.

Efficient, adaptive and scalable device activation for M2M communications

When traffic arrives from the network for an idled mobile device, the network executes device activation procedures to wake the device up. Current device activation mechanisms are ill suited to support the expected growth of machine-to-machine (M2M) devices and traffic. We propose an adaptive device activation architecture for LTE/EPC cellular networks that adapts to network conditions and M2M application requirements to realize scalable device activation without increasing the resources used for this purpose. Our evaluation shows that our adaptive approach enables the network to handle M2M applications with a large number of devices without negatively impacting existing human-to-human (H2H) and human-to-machine (H2M) traffic.

P2P Offloading in Mobile Networks using SDN

The peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture and the mobile network architecture have conflicting designs. P2P can take advantage of peers being in close proximity to decrease latency. However, the mobile network is hierarchical as routing is directed through centralized gateways. Because of network state needed to establish connections in the mobile network, user equipments traffic needs to travel up the hierarchy before being redirected back down to a nearby peering device. The inherent delay and the additional network state strip P2P applications of their primary advantages over client-server applications. We have developed an SDN architecture to offload and redirect peering traffic before reaching the core of the mobile network. Our implementation allows for any P2P communication independent of the mobile provider and the peering application. We have evaluated our design and demonstrate that there is a decrease in latency by approximately a factor of two with our method compared to a standard P2P procedure between smartphones in the same mobile network.

Orchestrating the Data-Plane of Virtual LTE Core Networks

Growing demand for data and increasing number of devices are drastically changing the scale of operation in mobile networks. Future services and business models require efficient provisioning with enhanced traffic management. It is hard to meet these requirements on todays mobile networks that are deployed over specialized hardware. While operators are keen to adopt NFV (Network Function Virtualization) to virtualize their networks, virtualized mobile network deployments face a few technical barriers. To address these challenges, we design SCOPE that effectively applies concepts from SDN and distributed systems to realize NFV-based LTE core networks. Using centralized allocation, SCOPE effectively manages the resources across multiple telecom data-centers in a way to meet the traffic requirements. To enforce the computed al- locations, SCOPE includes flexible and efficient mechanisms to configure the data-plane. With full compliance to 3GPP- based protocols, SCOPE ensures faster and cost-effective deployments. The efficacy of SCOPE is shown using a prototype implementation and large-scale simulations.

Detecting receiver attacks in VRTI-based device free localization

Variance-based Radio Tomographic Imaging (VRTI) is an emerging technology that locates moving objects in areas surrounded by simple and inexpensive wireless sensor nodes. VRTI uses human motion induced variation in RSS and spatial correlation between link variations to locate and track people. An artificially induced power variations in the deployed network by an adversary can introduce unprecedented errors in localization process of VRTI and, given the critical applications of VRTI, can potentially lead to serious consequences including loss of human lives. In this paper, we tackle the problem of detecting malicious receivers that report false RSS values to induce artificial power variations in a VRTI system. We use the term “Receiver Attack” to refer to such malicious power changes. We use a combination of statistical hypothesis testing and heuristics to develop real-time methods to detect receiver attack in a VRTI system. Our results show that we can detect receiver attacks of reasonable intensity and identify the source(s) of malicious activity with very high accuracy.