Vincenzo Suraci

OMEGA ICT project: Towards convergent Gigabit home networks

Gigabit home networks represent a key technology to make the future Internet success a reality. The OMEGA European project aims to define and demonstrate such networks. Consumers will require networks to be simple to install, without the need of any new wire. To achieve this, gigabit radio links and wireless optics communications will provide wireless connectivity within the home and its surroundings. Power-line communications potentially combined with robust RF will provides a home backbone ldquowithout new wires.rdquo To make this network ubiquitous, seamless and robust a technology-independent MAC layer will ensure its global control and provide connectivities to any number of devices the user wishes to connect to it in any room in a house or a flat. In order to make this vision come true, substantial progress is required in the fields of optical-wireless and RF physical layers, in protocol design, and in systems architectures.

Context-aware Semantic Service Discovery

In the last few years telecommunications and Internet have spread all over the world, in a pervasive way, connecting millions of devices, people, sensors and services without a planned strategy. In such scenario the discovery of services represent still an open challenging research field. To address that problem this paper proposes a context-aware semantic service discovery architecture designed to perform distributed service discovery in heterogeneous networks. This novel architecture is technology independent and compatible with most of the existent service discovery protocols; it inherits and extends the results of the last research groups in the field of context-aware service discovery based on the use of semantic languages. The present work presents the first results of the service discovery design activity which has been carried out within DAIDALOS II (Designing Advanced network Interfaces for the Delivery and Administration of Location independent, Optimised personal Services), a project granted in the European 6th Framework Research Programme, within the IST (Information Society and Technology) thematic area.

A dynamic load balancing algorithm for Quality of Service and mobility management in next generation home networks

Heterogeneity of connection technologies and nodes mobility open new challenges in home networks control strategies. Moreover, user’s needs are changing towards applications requiring high transmission speeds such as 3D gaming, enhanced interactivity and high definition video. Each of those applications puts several constraints on the network capabilities to guarantee requirements on the Quality of Service. In this paper we introduce an innovative concept based on fast load balancing algorithm operating on top of a convergence layer, in order to rapidly react to network changes and contemporaneously to satisfy strict application demands. We formulated the load balancing problem as a Multi-Commodity Flow and resolved it with a column generation approach using Lagrangian Relaxation and Dijkstra algorithm. The load balancing problem computational complexity is decreased with respect to state of the art load balancing solutions based on linear programming techniques. Proof of concept simulation results are reported.

A cognitive future internet architecture

This Chapter proposes a novel Cognitive Framework as reference architecture for the Future Internet (FI), which is based on so-called Cognitive Managers. The objective of the proposed architecture is twofold. On one hand, it aims at achieving a full interoperation among the different entities constituting the ICT environment, by means of the introduction of Semantic Virtualization Enablers, in charge of virtualizing the heterogeneous entities interfacing the FI framework. On the other hand, it aims at achieving an inter-network and inter-layer cross-optimization by means of a set of so-called Cognitive Enablers, which are in charge of taking consistent and coordinated decisions according to a fully cognitive approach, availing of information coming from both the transport and the service/content layers of all networks. Preliminary test studies, realized in a home environment, confirm the potentialities of the proposed solution.

Improving Resilience of Interdependent Critical Infrastructures via an On-Line Alerting System

This paper illustrates the activities under development within the FP7 EU MICIE project. The project is devotedto design and implement an on-line alerting system, able toevaluate, in real time, the level of risk of interdependent Critical Infrastructures (CIs). Such a risk is generated by undesired events and by the high level of interconnection of the different infrastructures. Heterogeneous models are under development to perform short term predictions of the Quality of Service (QoS) of each CI according to the QoS of the others, to the level of interdependency among the Infrastructures, and according to the undesired events identified in the reference scenario.

An Inter-MAC architecture for heterogeneous gigabit home networks

The home network of the near future will be a heterogeneous broadband network supporting the use of wired as well as wireless transmission technologies. The variety of services will range from HDTV via gaming to emergency services in the telemedicine area. In this paper, we introduce a technology-independent protocol layer called Inter-MAC which provides a common infrastructure to all home networking devices. The Inter-MAC can establish a connection via different transmission technologies while ensuring appropriate QoS. Key to this is the capability to correctly interpret technology-dependent PHY and MAC parameters for determining QoS when selecting initial and alternative paths, as well as the feature of admission control. Our simulations indicate clearly that the Inter-MAC approach can cope with varying loads, for instance, the time the jitter needed to stabilize was as short as 4 s. The reduced QoS was not noticeable by the user since the jitter introduced by handling additional HDTV flows was less than 0.2 ms for the existing and less than 0.7 ms for the new flow.

A Resource Allocation Algorithm of Multi-cloud Resources Based on Markov Decision Process

Cloud technologies can nowadays be considered as commodities. The possibility of getting access to storage, computing and networking virtual resources empowers any business that needs dynamic IT capabilities. The Cloud Management Broker (CMB) plays a crucial role to handle heterogeneous virtualized cloud resources in order to offer a unique set of interfaces to the cloud users. Moreover, the CMB is in charge of optimizing the usage of the cloud resources, satisfying the requirements declared by the users. This paper proposes a novel multi-cloud resource allocation algorithm, based on a Markov Decision Process (MDP), capable of dynamically assigning the resources requests to a set of IT resources (storage or computing resources), with the aim of maximizing the expected CMB revenue. Simulation results show the feasibility and the higher performances obtained by the proposed algorithm, compared to a greedy approach.

On the use of semantic technologies to model and control security, privacy and dependability in complex systems

In this paper a semantic approach is presented to model and control Security, Privacy and Dependability (SPD) in complex interconnected environment composed by heterogeneous Embedded Systems. Usually, only the individual properties are locally considered to obtain desired functionalities and this could result in sub-optimal solutions. With the use of modern semantic technologies (like OWL or reasoning engines) it is possible to model not only the individual parameters but also the relations between the different (and dynamically changing) parts of the systems, thus providing enriched knowledge and more useful information that could feed control algorithms. The model presented in this paper is based on the results obtained during the first phase of the pSHIELD1 project (conceived and lead by Finmeccanica) and it is focused on a concrete application coming from a critical scenario in railway environment: the monitoring of freight trains transporting hazardous material.

Admission Control and Drop strategies in a UPnP-QoS controlled home network

The spread of novel multimedia services such as audio and video streaming, HDTV and online gaming have become a ordinary in the home networks. Therefore, the possibility to manage the Quality of Service (QoS) within an home environment becomes a crucial factor for the satisfaction of the user. In this paper we propose an enhanced Admission Control and Drop strategies for a UPnP-QoS controlled home network to guarantee QoS for multiple concurrent services. The UPnP-QoS architecture works well in the case of moderate traffic loads, but may fail whenever the network becomes overloaded. The paper demonstrates how the combined use of the proposed admission control and drop solutions with the UPnP-QoS framework avoids network congestion and guarantees QoS to all the admitted traffic streams. A proof of concept Java implementation has been developed to demonstrate the expected results in a real home environment.

Convergence in Home Gigabit Networks: Implementation of the inter-MAC layer as a pluggable kernel module

Many new broadband, emerging applications such as high definition 3D video streaming or on-line gaming are going to be part of the future home. Current home networks are still not capable to cope with the tight requirements asked by these kind of applications. Moreover, many underlying wired and wireless transmission technologies are available, but no solution to reach a convergent framework is available. In this paper, we present a preliminary software implementation of a novel solution, called Inter-MAC, that realizes the convergence at MAC layer enabling a reliable and high performance delivery of application data and services. Our results show how it is possible to split flows onto different technologies when the overloading of a single link would cause unacceptable delay and packet loss results. This is done in a plug and play fashion: loading a kernel module in a running Linux machine.