ALBERT

Description: Mobile broadband services have expanded considerably in recent years, driving operators to improve and densify their radio access network (RAN). It has become clear that small cells as well as macrocells must be included in a heterogeneous network, due to the scale of densification required. In order to maximize the end user experience, some level of radio coordination between these small and macrocells is needed ?? this coordination will be signaled across a mobile backhaul network. Mobile backhaul typically refers to the network between the base station site and the network controller site, but can also include interconnection between base station sites. Mobile backhaul includes a spectrum of networks and network technologies, including the RAN and core networks. There is considerable market interest on the development of small cell backhaul solutions that are an evolution of existing backhaul networks. Packet synchronisation mechanisms that are being developed are key to support the mobile backhaul application. Various standards bodies such as the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN), Small Cell Forum (SCF), Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), and Broadband Forum (BBF) are also studying what the implications would be on their defined mobile backhaul network architectures.

Description: In this article, we introduce the EstiNet OpenFlow network simulator and emulator, and present its support for testing the functions and evaluating the performances of software-defined networks?? OpenFlow controller??s application programs. EstiNet uses an unique kernel reentering simulation methodology to enable unmodified real applications to run on nodes in its simulated network. As a result, without any modification, real NOX/POX or Floodlight OpenFlow controllers can readily run on a host in an EstiNet simulated network to control thousands of simulated OpenFlow switches. EstiNet has the characteristics of a simulator and an emulator at the same time. It combines the advantages of the simulation and emulation approaches without their respective shortcomings. EstiNet uses real OpenFlow controller programs, real network application programs, and the real TCP/IP protocol stack in the Linux kernel to generate correct, accurate, and repeatable SDN application performance results. In this article, we compare EstiNet with ns-3 and Mininet regarding their capabilities, performance, and scalability.

Description: This article discusses novel wireless and optical technologies to address the radical new challenges of small cell mobile backhaul (MBH). Specifically, we examine 60 GHz and 70??80 GHz millimeter-wave technologies for high-capacity last mile and pre-aggregation backhaul, and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access passive optical networks as the optical technology complement for enabling flexible cost-efficient hybrid backhaul coverage. Flexible high-capacity hybrid millimeter wave/optical MBH network operation is next verified via network simulations in the context of a demanding, urban small-cell backhaul application. Finally, a novel software defined networking tool called the backhaul resource manager is introduced for automated dynamic resource provisioning and capacity-aware path computation that improves fairness, network utilization and end-to-end user quality of experience. The introduction of the novel wireless, optical, and software-defined technologies thus has the potential to truly revolutionize the future MBH network.

Description: In this article we discuss different technology alternatives for small cell backhaul, and we present high-frequency microwave technology as a very interesting alternative for wireless backhauling of small cells. In fact, we demonstrate that high-frequency microwave technology can be used for NLOS wireless backhauling of small cells, which opens up new applications for microwave technology. We discuss urban NLOS channel propagation at high frequencies, and we show both measurement and simulation results to validate the use of high-frequency microwave technology for NLOS small cell backhaul.

Description: Currently, online social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Foursquare have become extremely popular all over the world and play a significant role in people??s daily lives. People access OSNs using both traditional desktop PCs and new emerging mobile devices. With more than one billion users worldwide, OSNs are a new venue of innovation with many challenging research problems. In this survey, we aim to give a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art research related to user behavior in OSNs from several perspectives. First, we discuss social connectivity and interaction among users. Also, we investigate traffic activity from a network perspective. Moreover, as mobile devices become a commodity, we pay attention to the characteristics of social behaviors in mobile environments. Last but not least, we review malicious behaviors of OSN users, and discuss several solutions to detect misbehaving users. Our survey serves the important roles of both providing a systematic exploration of existing research highlights and triggering various potentially significant research in these topics.

Description: Spectrum sharing potentially holds the promise of solving the emerging spectrum crisis. However, technology innovators face the conundrum of developing spectrum sharing technologies without the ability to experiment and test with real incumbent systems. Interference with operational incumbents can prevent critical services, and the cost of deploying and operating an incumbent system can be prohibitive. Thus, the lack of incumbent systems and frequency authorization for technology incubation and demonstration has stymied spectrum sharing research. To this end, industry, academia, and regulators all require a test facility for validating hypotheses and demonstrating functionality without affecting operational incumbent systems. This article proposes a four-phase program supported by our spectrum accountability architecture. We propose that our comprehensive experimentation and testing approach for technology incubation and demonstration will accelerate the development of spectrum sharing technologies.

Description: One of the IEEE's current membership priorities is India. As of July, India has 39,814 IEEE members, the highest in any country outside of the United States. India has 11 sections. The number of student members is very large. However, retaining them after graduation is not a success story, and this is where the sections in India become involved. Recognizing the large number of IEEE Members and an active volunteer base, the IEEE India Office was opened in 2010 in Bangalore. It is poised to see further expansion. The office helps IEEE to continue its outreach efforts to representatives from academic, government, and industry, and explore additional business opportunities in India. The office encourages India's participation in global standards developments and promotes the IEEE Computer Society's software development certificate program. It also promotes continuing education and accreditation programs. These and the India sections' Communications Society (ComSoc) activities are briefly summarized.

Description: Provides a notice of upcoming conference events of interest to practitioners and researchers.

Description: Reviews the FSW SIGNAL AND SPECTRUM ANALYZER (by Rohde & Schwarz); The VECTOR SIGNAL GENERATOR SERIES (by Stanford Research Systems, Inc.); a BALANCED PHOTODETECTOR WITH 70 GHZ 3DB BANDWIDTH (from u 2 t Photonics AG); and SMALL CELL RF FORMAT FRONT-END SOLUTIONS (from Avago Technologies).

Description: In recent years, large-scale data centers have continued to be built out as the global Internet traffic has grown exponentially. These include both multi-tenant carrier-neutral ones and private data centers, and host many Internet application servers.

Description: Data center and cloud architectures continue to evolve to address the needs of large-scale multi-tenant data centers and clouds. These needs are centered around seven dimensions: scalability in computing, storage, and bandwidth, scalability in network services, efficiency in resource utilization, agility in service creation, cost efficiency, service reliability, and security. This article focuses on the first five dimensions as they pertain to networking. Large data centers are targeting support for tens of thousands of servers, exabytes of storage, terabits per second of traffic, and tens of thousands of tenants. In a data center, server and storage resources are interconnected with packet switches and routers that provide for the bandwidth and multi-tenant virtual networking needs. Data centers are interconnected across the wide area network via routing and transport technologies to provide a pool of resources, known as the cloud. High-speed optical interfaces and dense wavelength-division multiplexing optical transport are used to provide for high-capacity transport intra- and inter-datacenter. This article reviews various switching, routing, and optical transport technologies, and their applicability in addressing the networking needs of large-scale multi-tenant data centers.

Description: Six products are announced.

Description: This article surveys recent work in optical switching technologies and presents a fast optical circuit switch that intimately integrates the control electrics at the chip level using a novel wafer-scale heterogeneous integration technique.

Description: Intra-data-center traffic is estimated to be about four times global Internet traffic and is continuously increasing. Applying optical switching to data center networks will increase network bandwidth and reduce power consumption while meeting the traffic requirements. One of the major attributes of the optical switch must be scalability. The wavelength routing switch is a promising technology for the development of 1000 ?? 1000 scale large port count optical switches. Recent advances are demonstrated.

Description: Mega data centers and their interconnection networks have drawn great attention in recent years because of the rapid public adoption of cloud-based services. The unprecedented amount of data that needs to be communicated between data centers imposes new requirements and challenges to inter-data-center optical networks. In this article, we discuss the traffic growth trends and capacity demands of Google??s inter-data-center network, and how they drive the network architectures and technologies to scale capacities and operational ease on existing fiber plants. We extensively review recent research findings and emerging technologies, such as digital coherent detection and the flexgrid dense wavelength-division multiplexed channel plan, and propose practical implementations, such as C+L-band transmission, packet and optical layer integration, and a software-defined networking enabled network architecture for both capacity and operational scaling. In addition, we point out a few critical areas that require more attention and research to improve efficiency and flexibility of an inter-data-center optical network: optical regeneration, data rate mismatch between Ethernet and optical transport, and real-time optical performance monitoring.

Description: This article addresses the synchronization needs for mobile backhaul networks when deploying LTE small cells. Existing synchronization solutions for both FDD and TDD macro networks are discussed as well as the applicability of those solutions to small cells deployed in LTE TDD and LTE FDD networks. The benefits of using radio coordination features in a small cell environment and the corresponding demands placed on synchronization solutions are highlighted. Potential issues relating to synchronization of small cells are also discussed, and some additional synchronization solutions are proposed to address those issues.

Description: ompted me to reflect on ComSoc accomplishments over recent years. Consequently, I thought it would be interesting to review some pertinent published material reflecting on contributions of the six most recent Past Presidents, beginning with 2000, and running through to the end of the term of Byeong Gi Lee in 2011. Finding this material was actually easy, as the ComSoc Presidents have traditionally published a column each month in IEEE Communications Magazine. Generally, these columns were co-authored with the Vice Presidents, Directors, Committee Chairs and other contributors, providing an opportunity to share and highlight their accomplishments.

Description: As the number of wireless users and per-user bandwidth demands continue to increase, both the vendor and carrier communities agree that wireless networks must evolve toward more dense deployments. So-called heterogeneous networks are a commonly proposed evolution, whereby existing macrocellular networks are supplemented with an underlay of small cells. The placement of new small-cell sites is typically determined based on various location-dependent factors such as radio propagation calculations, user densities, and measurements of congestion and demand. The backhaul network, which can account for a significant portion of the total cost of the deployment, is then designed in reaction to the placement of small cells. In contrast, we describe a design method that first considers the locations of existing fibered and powered facilities that might be leveraged to provide inexpensive backhaul. Naturally, such a method is only feasible if the carrier has a legacy local fiber network. This article describes an efficient fiber backhaul strategy for a small-cell network, which leverages facilities associated with an existing FTTN residential access network. Once potential small-cell sites are determined from among all FTTN remote terminals, optimization techniques are used to choose the most efficient subset of sites for maximum coverage, and to design the fiber backhaul architecture.

Description: Warehouse-scale data center operators need much-higher-bandwidth intra-data center networks (DCNs) to sustain the increase of network traffic due to cloud computing and other emerging web applications. Current DCNs based on commodity switches require excessive amounts of power to face this traffic increase. Optical intra-DCN interconnection networks have recently emerged as a promising solution that can provide higher throughput while consuming less power. This article provides an update on recent developments in the field of ultra-highcapacity optical interconnects for intra-DCN communication. Several recently proposed architectures and technologies are examined and compared, while future trends and research challenges are outlined.

Description: The ubiquitous Ethernet has great potential to become an easy-to-install cost-effective backhaul solution for mobile small cells. However, limited Ethernet bandwidth is a practical constraint. Not only is small cell capacity limited by Ethernet bandwidth, but also the synchronization between cells can be substantially compromised. In this article we discuss small cells with Ethernet backhaul, focusing on two practical and important aspects: backhaul bandwidth requirements and tolerance to synchronization errors. The aspects become challenging in indoor small cell applications where the cells need to cooperatively suppress strong interference, producing a large amount of backhaul traffic. To address the challenges, we introduce a new distributed scheme of cooperative small cells over Ethernet. Exploiting a soft information combining technique, the scheme allows the signals of cooperative cells to be combined at aggregate switches along their backhaul paths, reducing backhaul traffic in Ethernet and distributing computational complexity. Our case study shows that the distributed scheme can reduce small cell backhaul traffic by 64 percent, compared to a conventional centralized approach. It is also tolerant to a large frequency error of ??4.6 ppm in a ??freerun?? state where synchronization is lost. Given the substantially reduced backhaul traffic, the new distributed scheme is able to support three times the cooperative small cells of the conventional centralized approach.

Description: Among the received eight submissions from the last call, we have accepted four of them, with one from academia, one from a national laboratory, one from industry, and one from a combined team of academia and industry. At the time of writing this editorial for these four articles, we have also finished the first-round review process of the next batch of nine submissions, and shall move to the second-round review process. Most accepted papers received the decision of major revision in the first-round review and needed to go through the second-round review. The number of submissions remains stable, and we should be able to pick at least one from product vendors, test laboratories, and test equipment vendors, which gives enough industrial flavor to this Series. The due dates remain June 1 and December 1 each year.

Description: A large body of research has recently addressed the channel assignment problem in multi-radio wireless mesh networks. In order to reduce interference, many proposals require radio interfaces to (more or less frequently) switch channels to exploit the availability of multiple orthogonal channels. However, such proposals have been almost exclusively evaluated by means of simulations and the impact of switching channels on the network performance has not been experimentally evaluated so far. In this article, we aim to fill such a gap and present the results of a thorough experimental campaign we conducted on the ORBIT wireless testbed to study the effects of switching channels in a multiradio wireless mesh network. Our experiments show that in common scenarios a channel switch causes a non-negligible interruption in the connectivity among nodes, which is on the order of 10 seconds. Also, our tests reveal that a rapid recovery from link failures caused by channel switches is prevented by a rather slow update of the advertised link quality. Inspired by the analysis of the experiments we conducted, we also propose and evaluate a preliminary technique to reduce the interruption in the delivery of packets caused by a channel switch.

Description: Circuit Switched Fallback (CSFB) is the most commonly used method to support voice services over Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks today, as the deployment of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is still in its infancy. In this article, we discuss the performance of CSFB voice traffic redirection from LTE to UMTS using data from live commercial networks. The key factors impacting CSFB call setup delay are highlighted. Data from multiple cell geometries including stationary and mobility conditions are presented for Mobile Originated (MO) calls towards landlines, Mobile Terminated (MT) calls from landlines and Mobile-to-Mobile (M2M) CSFB calls. Analysis results in well optimized deployments show that on an average, MO/MT call-setup time for CSFB from LTE to UMTS is around 1 sec greater than legacy UMTS. However, the results can vary depending on the network configuration and the conditions of the measurement. To illustrate the optimization of CSFB performance in real networks, we also highlight the principal call set up optimization and implementation factors impacting CSFB call setup delay and success rates. This article demonstrates that in well optimized networks, CSFB to UMTS call setup success rates can be very close to those achieved in the legacy UMTS systems.

Description: The evolution of centralized radio access networks is discussed from a pragmatic perspective, taking into account the network and radio requirements. The use of wavelength-division multiplexing technology to support this evolution is proposed, and the opportunities for network operators in terms of operational cost, energy efficiency, reuse of already deployed infrastructures, and network convergence are discussed.

Description: Listing of the advertisers represented in this issue.

Description: The articles in this special section focus on the optic of optical access networks.

Description: While energy conservation and reach-extension technologies are being developed for broadband access networks, this article focuses on the intersection between these two topics. Specifically, it reviews several architectural enhancements that can enable energy conservation in longreach broadband access networks using methods such as turning off idle transceivers and other network elements, shedding transmission speed, and adaptively reconfiguring itself based on current traffic characteristics.

Description: Next month, optical communications and networking professionals from around the world will once again convene at the leading event for the field, the Optical Fiber Communication/ National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC). OFC/NFOEC prides itself on staying at the forefront of innovation and this year will cover topics like virtualization and Software Defined Networks (SDN), 100G/400G network design and optimization, cloud and data center networking, flexible grid networks, space division multiplexing, beyond 1 Tb/s networking, high-speed photonic integration and optical/wireless convergence. New products, cutting-edge technology and vital research at the forefront of communications will be presented through more than 800 peer-reviewed and invited presentations, an extensive exhibit hall with more than 550 leading optical communication companies, numerous workshops, panels, short courses and other special events. OFC/NFOEC 2013 will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center March 17-21 in Anaheim, Calif.

Description: The articles in this special section focus on the topic of third generation networking Long Term Evolution standards and protocols.

Description: The growing popularity of mobile data services necessitates a rapid rise in network capacity not only on the air interface to the end user, but also in the backhaul network. The latter is quite important for the mobile operator business model, affecting capital investment, operational expenses, service deployment, and customer experience. Fiber infrastructure is inevitably the only long-term solution, and the deployment of passive optical networks presents an opportunity for a cost-effective, scalable, and future-proof solution. In this article we investigate the use of PONs for mobile backhaul and propose a resource allocation framework building on the efficiency of PONs to share resources, dynamically allocate bandwidth in real time, and enhance efficiency by improved statistical multiplexing. The main objective of this work is to exploit existing standardized technologies, and provide design and deployment guidelines regarding PON MAC operation, enabling a gradual and future-safe infrastructure upgrade of mobile backhaul systems.

Description: This paper briefly describes Internet development in the Republic of Korea (South Korea), which started research and development on computer networking in the late 1970s. Korea became one of the first countries to deploy the Internet in 1982 [1], and organized one of the first global Internet conferences in 1985 [2]. In the late 1990s, Korea put much effort into development of broadband networks, starting from a master plan in 1995. Korea became a world leader with widely available wired and wireless broadband networks. Korea also led in Internet applications including online games, search engines and social networking services. As one of the earlier Internet countries, Korea has been vulnerable to newly arising problems on the Internet such as cybersecurity, net abuse and game addiction. Korea has been trying to solve these problems in collaboration with other leading countries. Korea has also shared its Internet experience with other countries, in particular with developing countries. A book is in preparation on the early history of the Internet in Korea [3] together with another, co-authored with Internet pioneers in other countries, on the early history of the Internet in Asia.

Description: The next major step in the evolution of LTE targets the rapidly increasing demand for mobile broadband services and traffic volumes. One of the key technologies is a new carrier type, referred to in this article as a Lean Carrier, an LTE carrier with minimized control channel overhead and cell-specific reference signals. The Lean Carrier can enhance spectral efficiency, increase spectrum flexibility, and reduce energy consumption. This article provides an overview of the motivations and main use cases of the Lean Carrier. Technical challenges are highlighted, and design options are discussed; finally, a performance evaluation quantifies the benefits of the Lean Carrier.

Description: Mobile Internet applications run on devices such as smartphones and tablets, and have dramatically changed the landscape of applicationgenerated network traffic. The potent combination of millions of such applications and the instant accessibility of high-speed Internet on mobile devices through 3G and now LTE technology has also changed how users themselves interact with the Internet. Specifically, the radio states in LTE such as RRC_Connected and RRC_Idle were designed with more traditional applications such as web browsing and FTP in mind. These traditional applications typically generated traffic only during Active (Connected) state, and once the user session ended, usually the traffic ended too, thus allowing the radio to move to Inactive (Idle) state. However, newer applications such as Facebook and Twitter generate a constant stream of autonomous and/or user generated traffic at all times, thus erasing the previously clear demarcation between Active and Inactive states. This means a given mobile device (or user equipment, in LTE parlance) often ends up moving between Connected and Idle states frequently to send mostly short bursts of data, draining device battery and causing excessive signaling overhead in LTE networks. This problem has grown and attracted the research community's attention to address the negative effects of frequent back and forth transitions between LTE radio states. In this article, we first explore the traffic characteristics of these emerging mobile Internet applications and how they differ from more traditional applications. We investigate their impact on LTE device power and air interface signaling. We then present a survey of state-of-the-art solutions proposed in literature to address the problems, and analyze their merits and demerits. Lastly, we discuss the solutions adopted by 3GPP including the latest developments in Release 11 to handle these issues, and present potential future research directions in this field.

Description: These days there is a clear trend toward extending the reach of passive optical networks to cover large geographical areas, which enables reduction of the number of central offices and hence has the potential of cost saving in network operation. On the other hand, this reach extension necessitates the design of efficient dynamic bandwidth allocation schemes in order to tackle performance degradation caused by the increased propagation delay in long reach PONs. Among many existing approaches, the multithread- based DBA scheme where several bandwidth allocation processes are performed in parallel is considered one of the most effective options to improve network performance in LRPONs. We have found that without proper intercommunication between the overlapped threads, multi-thread DBA may lose efficiency and even perform worse than the conventional singlethread algorithm. With this in mind, this article reviews different inter-thread scheduling schemes for LR-PONs, and proposes a novel approach of integrating the key ideas of the existing ones. Extensive simulation results confirm that our proposed scheme can significantly improve DBA performance for LR-PONs under a variety of scenarios with consideration of different values of network load and reach.

Description: 3GPP LTE, or Long Term Evolution, the fourth generation wireless access technology, is being rolled out by many operators worldwide. Since LTE Release 10, network densification using small cells has been an important evolution direction in 3GPP to provide the necessary means to accommodate the anticipated huge traffic growth, especially for hotspot areas. Recently, LTE Release 12 has been started with more focus on small cell enhancements. This article provides the design principles and introduces the ongoing discussions on small cell enhancements in LTE Release 12, and provides views from two active operators in this area, CMCC and NTT DOCOMO.

Description: As the capacity and performance of the LTE data channels are progressively improved, the downlink control channels can potentially become the bottleneck. To address this issue, an enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH) has been introduced in 3GPP LTE Release 11. The design goals of the EPDCCH include the ability to support increased downlink control channel capacity, beamforming and improved spatial reuse, and frequency-domain intercell interference coordination, while taking into account the coexistence with legacy terminals. This article explains the principles and considerations behind the EPDCCH design in Release 11, and describes the corresponding specification support.

Description: As the number and variety of applications and workloads moving to the cloud grows, networking capabilities have become increasingly important. Over a brief period, networking support offered by both cloud service providers and cloud controller platforms has developed rapidly. In most of these cloud networking service models, however, users must configure a variety of network-layer constructs such as switches, subnets, and ACLs, which can then be used by their cloud applications. In this article, we argue for a service-level network model that provides higher- level connectivity and policy abstractions that are integral parts of cloud applications. Moreover, the emergence of the software-defined networking (SDN) paradigm provides a new opportunity to closely integrate application provisioning in the cloud with the network through programmable interfaces and automation. We describe the architecture and implementation of Meridian, an SDN controller platform that supports a service-level model for application networking in clouds. We discuss some of the key challenges in the design and implementation, including how to efficiently handle dynamic updates to virtual networks, orchestration of network tasks on a large set of devices, and how Meridian can be integrated with multiple cloud controllers.

Description: In this article, we deconstruct scalability concerns in software-defined networking and argue that they are not unique to SDN. We explore the often voiced concerns in different settings, discuss scalability trade-offs in the SDN design space, and present some recent research on SDN scalability. Moreover, we enumerate overlooked yet important opportunities and challenges in scalability beyond the commonly used performance metrics.

Description: Seamless roaming over wireless networks is highly desirable to mobile users, but ensuring the security and efficiency of this process is challenging. Although the same may be said for all communication systems, roaming services have special requirements and vulnerabilities, and therefore deserve special attention. Over the years, we have seen a variety of authentication protocols emerging to address this issue. However, which protocol is the most effective is still debatable. In this article, we first identify the challenges unique to roaming services as a set of mandatory and optional requirements. Next, we provide a brief state-of-the-art survey of existing work and point out their limitations in securing roaming services, especially in resistance against denial of service attacks, efficient authentication, flexible roaming in mobile contexts, as well as backward and forward non-linkabilities. To complement the security provided by the existing work, we then propose some mechanisms that can meet the aforementioned security and efficiency requirements. Finally, we present challenges that need to be addressed in roaming authentication.

Description: The articles in this special section focus on the optic of software defined networks.

Description: MILCOM, the premier international conference and exposition for military communications, returns to San Diego November 18-20, 2013. Gathering the leading minds of government, military, industry and academia, MILCOM offers an interactive forum to further explore, define and leverage commercial and defense technologies.

Description: The following books are reviewed: "Collaborative Enterprise Architecture" (Bente, S., et al; 2012); "Advanced Optical Communication System Networks" (Cvuetic, M. and Djordjevic, I.B.; 2013); "Security for Wireless Sensor Networks Using Identity-Based Cryptography" (Patil, H.K., et al; 2012); and "Reliability and Availability of Cloud Computing" (Bauer, E. and Adams, R.; 2012).

Description: Displays the front cover

Description: Devoted to driving innovations and technological breakthroughs in nearly every telecommunications field, IEEE GLOBECOM 2013 will hold its 56th annual event from December 9??13, 2013 at the Downtown Atlanta Hilton and Towers in Atlanta, Georgia.

Description: he IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) offers superior technical publications, conferences, educational tutorials and courses, and online options. The ComSoc marketing challenge is to package, position, price, and promote these products so that the global audience of communications engineering professionals become aware of the career benefits and advantages of ComSoc products and services. This must be done within the context of IEEE support, financial integrity of society programs, and a competitive, ever-changing global environment.

Description: he five papers in this year??s feature topic on military communications are about tactical radios and networking. To obtain the necessary quality when using commercial products in a tactical environment while obtaining speed during limited connectivity in critical maneuvers is challenging. In tactical networks, one of the challenges is to provide all soldiers with a common operational picture (COP) which provides information about where your friends and your enemies are, how to request assistance, and how to avoid a surprise attack. This COP is distributed to everybody.

Description: Information-centric networking is a communication paradigm where there is no focus on endpoint addressing; rather, it is an attempt to achieve efficient information dissemination by focusing on the content that is distributed. In this article we describe how information-centric networking can be leveraged in order to extend NATO core enterprise services (CES) into the tactical domain. The paradigm can be implemented using decentralized publish/subscribe along with content caching. We present our information-centric middleware, Mist, and perform a comparative evaluation with an existing framework called Haggle. Mist is tailored to mitigate challenges encountered in mobile ad hoc networks. As a proof of concept, we implement a gateway between Mist and WS-Notification, which is the standard used in the Publish/Subscribe CES. This shows that with little effort it is possible to create gateways from networks using Mist to Web services-enabled infrastructure networks, ensuring compatibility and interoperability with higher levels in the chain of command, and also with other nations.

Description: The Tactical Ground Reporting System (TIGR) is a cloud-based application that facilitates collaboration and information sharing at the patrol level. DARPA began development efforts in 2005, and introduced the system to a single brigade in Iraq at the beginning of 2007. Its use spread to all Army units in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Kuwait, the Philippines, South Korea, and the Horn of Africa, and it has proven to be an indispensable tool for counterinsurgency operations. The system enables collection and dissemination of fine-grained information on people, places, and events, and offers a media-rich view of the battlefield with digital photos, videos, and high-resolution geospatial imagery. In 2011 TIGR transitioned to the Army and is now managed by the Project Manager for the Joint Battle Command-Platform (PM JBC-P), where it has expanded to include vehicle-based systems and other on-themove operational scenarios. Despite the richness of its multimedia content, TIGR has successfully operated for years in multiple theaters of war with minimal impact on low-bandwidth tactical networks. This article describes the TIGR system and how it has evolved, as well as the challenges of designing and deploying a distributed system for disadvantaged networks, and the unique data dissemination architecture that has made TIGR such a success.

Description: As the WCET program has grown over the years, we have established several partnerships that are providing mutual benefits to ComSoc and to our partner organizations.

Description: The high bit rates of high-definition or 3Dservices require a huge share of the valuable terrestrial spectrum, especially when targeting wide coverage areas. This article describes how to provide future services with the state-of-the-art digital terrestrial TV technology DVB-T2 in a flexible and cost-efficient way. The combination of layered media such as the scalable and 3D extension of the H.264/AVC or emerging H.265/HEVC format with the physical layer pipes feature of DVB-T2 enables flexible broadcast of services with differentiated protection of the quality layers. This opens up new ways of service provisioning such as graceful degradation for mobile or fixed reception. This article shows how existing DVB-T2 and MPEG-2 transport stream mechanisms need to be configured for offering such services over DVB-T2. A detailed description of the setup of such services and the involved components is given.

Description: This article gives a tutorial about some critical milestones regarding the journey of tactical radios from legacy systems to cognitive radios. Although tactical radios have been in use for over 100 years, this tutorial focuses on the post- Vietnam War radios and uses examples from the U.S. Department of Defense major acquisition programs. The article considers legacy radios to be the generation of radios that was initiated by the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1970s that had spread-spectrum and frequency-hopping capabilities to resist jamming. The Link-16 system is covered in this article as a benchmark for legacy radios. Two major technological leaps came after these legacy radios. First was the software defined radios initiative, which brought about the ability to develop waveforms entirely in software in the absence of a defined hardware platform. As a result, different waveforms can be ported into the same hardware platform. This article presents the Wideband Networking Waveform, which is a complex waveform developed under a U.S. Department of Defense program, as a software-based waveform that can be downloaded into different hardware platforms. The next technological leap came with cognitive radios, which have the ability to sense their environments and adapt intelligently to the dynamics of the war theatre.

Description: Spectrum today is allocated in frequency blocks that serve either licensed or unlicensed services. This static spectrum allocation has limited resources to support the exponential increase in wireless devices. In this article, we present the IEEE 802.11af standard, which defines international specifications for spectrum sharing among unlicensed white space devices (WSDs) and licensed services in the TV white space band. Spectrum sharing is conducted through the regulation of unlicensed WSDs by a geolocation database (GDB), the implementation of which differs among regulatory domains. The main difference between regulatory domains is the timescale in which WSDs are controlled by the GDB, resulting in different TVWS availability and WSD operating parameters. The IEEE 802.11af standard provides a common operating architecture and mechanisms for WSDs to satisfy multiple regulatory domains. This standard opens a new approach to treat spectrum as a single entity shared seamlessly by heterogeneous services.

Description: ITU-T has been developing smart ubiquitous networks (SUN) as a near-term realization of future networks. This article introduces key concepts and frameworks of SUN as telecommunication infrastructures for emerging smart and ubiquitous environments in terms of capabilities and architectures. As a challenge for SUN development, we identify context awareness as a key capability for providing ??smartness,?? and propose methodologies and operational processes to support context-aware networking including a functional model. Finally, we illustrate a use case of SUN considering a smart city, and discuss future work and open issues for SUN standardization in ITU-T.

Description: In this issue of the Integrated Circuits for Communications Series, we continue the theme of integrated circuit design for multi-standard radios. We have selected two papers covering this area, which is drawing significant attention from industry as well as research communities worldwide.

Description: The increasing adoption of COTS hardware and software technologies in tactical scenarios raises the issue of supporting the deployment of legacy and COTS applications in extremely dynamic and challenging environments such as tactical edge networks (TENs). COTS applications adopt standards devised for wired Internet environments or corporate networks, such as service oriented architectures, and TCP and UDP, thus exhibiting severe reliability and performance problems on TENs. To support the reuse and deployment of COTS applications in TENs, there is the need to develop solutions that mediate the application requirements with the communication semantics of TENs. This article presents an overview of the challenges in deploying COTS applications in TENs and presents NetProxy, a state-of-the-art solution explicitly designed to address them.

Description: The advancement of the process technology, especially CMOS technology, has played a major role in the miniaturization of the mobile device as well as extending its battery life. As digital logic continues to shrink in size and increase in density, implementing RF/analog functions digitally becomes increasingly more attractive. RF/analog digitization not only allows the design blocks to benefit from process scaling, but also enables a more complete system-on-chip integration. In this article, several digitally enhanced CMOS transmitter implementations are discussed, and their trade-offs are analyzed. A digital quadrature transmitter that is process-scaling-friendly and multimode-capable is presented at the end. The chip is implemented in 40 nm CMOS process and can easily be integrated with digital baseband processors.

Description: Compressive sensing offers an alternative to Nyquist sampling in applications where taking a complete set of measurements is impractical due to either length of time required or the volume of data produced. Here we focus on applying compressive sensing theory to RF signal environments (which will be referred to as the "signal"). For multi-gigahertz bandwidth signals, using Nyquist sampling requires billions of samples per second resulting in data rates of tens of billions of bits per second. This is the cost of being able to capture any arbitrary signal. Compressive sensing exploits the fact that man-made signals are structured and non-arbitrary to greatly reduce the number of samples required for signal capture. The compressibility of a signal is measured by its sparsity, which can be thought of as the number of parameters needed to describe the signal. Compressive sensing can reduce sample rate by more than an order of magnitude.

Description: The increased usage of net-centric IP applications at the tactical edge has pushed DoD communications systems to maximize bandwidth efficiency amid a limited availability of RF spectrum. One method of increasing bandwidth efficiency (especially with the desire to move to IPv6), is the use of IP header compression (IPHC) to compress headers from the network layer and above into small identifiers before sending to the link layer. Although widely used in cell phone technology, the tactical edge provides some unique challenges to traditional IPHC techniques including highly dynamic links and link conditions due to potential jamming threats and difficult environments, multi-hop scenarios due to lack of infrastructure, and a highly diverse set of radio systems lacking interoperability. In this article, we examine two common IP header compression schemes, Robust Header Compression (RFC 5225) and IP Header Compression (RFC 2507) and one experimental scheme, MANET IP header compression, and identify their current use and applicability in the tactical edge. Furthermore, we identify some challenges in implementing header compression schemes in emerging systems.

Description: The papers selected for this Series present various standards that assist in meeting the explosive demand for content delivery by efficient use of network resources. The first article, "Efficient HDTV and 3DTV Services over DVB-T2 using Multiple PLPs with Layered Media," by Hellge et al., describes how DVB-T2 can be adapted to the high transmission rates of future High Definition TV (HDTV) services including three dimensional digital TV (3DTV) services. The DVB-T2 standard from the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) consortium is designed to reuse the transmission infrastructure of the first generation digital TV but improves throughput and allocates the bandwidth and frequency resources in a flexible manner [1].

Description: We investigate the challenges in designing the network architecture for running EPON (Ethernet Passive Optical Network) Protocol over Coax, or EPoC in short. EPoC is the transparent extension of EPON over a cable operator??s Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) network, and uses a hybrid of optical and coaxial technologies to carry traffic to and from end-users and the Internet backbone. For managing and controlling such a hybrid network, a network operator will prefer to have a unified scheduling, management, and quality-of-service (QoS) environment that includes both the optical and coax portions of the network. This can be achieved by extending the EPON Medium Access Control (MAC) to run over the coax physical layer, to have a centralized end-to-end network control from the cable head-end to the end-users?? premises. The use of the coax portion of the network is transparent to EPON protocol operation in the headend, as the same MAC runs over the entire network. In this article, we describe the architecture of EPoC, and outline how the EPON MAC Control, i.e., the EPON Multi-Point Control Protocol (MPCP) can be extended for designing an end-to-end Multi-Point MAC Control for EPoC. We explain the design of several MAC functions and their operation, including framing for coax, Ethernet frame fragmentation, generation of upstream and downstream Media Allocation Plans, and automatic discovery and registration of user equipment. With strong backing from both service operators and equipment vendors, EPoC is set to become a rapidlyevolving standard within the next few years, and the creation of the IEEE 802.3bn Task Force for EPoC is a major step in that direction.

Description: Wireless communications technologies play an essential role to support the Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) operational needs. The current Private/Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) technologies used for PPDR communications offer a rich set of voice-centric services but have very limited data transmission capabilities, which are unable to handle the increasing PPDR community demand for a wider range of data-centric services. Though some efforts have been devoted to upgrade PMR technologies with better data transfer capabilities, the progression towards an enhanced mobile broadband PMR standardized solution still lags behind the achievements made in the commercial wireless industry, which recently culminated in Long- Term Evolution (LTE) technology. Because of this contrasting progress, the adoption of commercial mainstream LTE technology to satisfy the PPDR community?????????s data communication needs is gaining momentum and offers significant opportunities to create and exploit the synergies between the commercial and PPDR domains, which have remained almost entirely separate to date. In this context, this paper first discusses the suitability of LTE and related technologies for mobile broadband PPDR service provisioning. Next, it presents the argument that the most plausible future scenarios to deliver the increasingly data-intensive applications demanded by the PPDR agencies are expected to rely on the use of both dedicated and commercial LTE-based mobile networks. From this basis, the paper proposes a system architecture solution for PPDR service provisioning that enables PPDR service access through dedicated and commercial networks in a secure and interoperable manner and ensures proper allocation of the networks????????? capacity to PPDR applications through the dynamic management of prioritization policies. In addition, the spectrumrelated issues that are central to the proposed PPDR service provisioning solution are addressed, and a solution based - n the joint exploitation of dedicated and shared spectra is proposed.

Description: The road to easy service creation environments in telecommunication has been paved with good intentions. The telecommunications industry has sought to provide easy to use, graphical, and visual service creation environments, complete with interpreters and domain-specific languages for a long time.

Description: In this article, we propose a novel abstraction layer for application service implementation compliant with the Java Call Control (JCC) specifications. It simplifies creation of multimedia services using SIP and the Media Gateway Control Protocol. In order to show its effectiveness, we have implemented a JCC resource adaptor for a JAIN service logic execution environment (JSLEE), using the Mobicents application server, which is the only existing open source JSLEE implementation. Experimental results obtained by implementing a complex VoIP service show both a significant simplification of service implementation and improved performance over legacy solutions.

Description: Interference in wireless communications is traditionally treated as a cause of performance degradation. Whilst from a statistical viewpoint this is entirely justified, this article discusses scenarios where the interfering signal enhances the desired signal??s useful power on an instantaneous basis and provides an unexplored source of additional signal power. The potential of harvesting this energy, which naturally exists in the communication system, is shown to be readily available in downlink systems where interference can be predicted. The main concept discussed is that instead of using knowledge of the interference to cancel, eliminate or avoid it, it is potentially more fruitful to use this knowledge to manipulate and make use of the interference towards the system??s advantage. A significant source of useful signal power, which with conventional transmission techniques is left unexploited, can be used to improve the radio systems?? performance and achieve reliable power-efficient communications where performance benefits are yielded without the need to increase the average transmitted power.

Description: The IEEE 802.11ac amendment has been proposed to enhance the throughput of IEEE 802.11n beyond gigabit-per-second rates. In this article we present an overview of the most important features proposed in the 802.11ac amendment, including channel bonding mechanisms and multi-user MIMO.

Description: Wireless spectrum is very valuable but currently heavily under-utilized. Cooperative spectrum trading encourages primary licensed users and secondary unlicensed users to exchange money or resources to achieve a win-win situation, and can significantly increase the utilization of wireless spectrum. In this article, we discuss various market mechanisms that facilitate cooperative spectrum trading with incomplete network information. We introduce mechanisms including pricing, bargaining, contract, and auction, and demonstrate the applicability using a concrete example of resource-exchange cooperative spectrum trading. We also outline various open issues in this emerging interdisciplinary research area.

Description: The Wireless-Optical Broadband Access Network (WOBAN) is a promising access architecture that combines the high performance of optical networks with the ubiquity and convenience of wireless technologies. This article proposes a network-based mobility framework that is specially tailored for WOBANs. The proposed architecture is based on Proxy Mobile IPv6 and IEEE 802.21 mobility management protocols, but it also defines a number of optimizations that enable the seamless handover of mobile nodes. In particular, the hierarchical architecture together with the broadcast-and-select nature of the optical part of the WOBAN are leveraged to: optimize the mobility of users with respect to the overall network resources, both at the wireless access and optical distribution parts, remove the overhead of IP-in-IP tunneling between the PMIPv6 entities, and perform an efficient bicasting during the handover process to minimize packet loss.

Description: The goal of the European ICT Project EARTH is to enhance energy efficiency of current LTE cellular networks by 50 percent, enabling operators to provide more extensive coverage, namely to less densely populated areas, while ensuring high levels of efficiency, hence, reducing the carbon footprint. In order to achieve this objective, different strategies, at different levels, are being addressed. Energy efficient transmission techniques for LTE, proposed within the framework of EARTH, are addressed and discussed, with an emphasis on beamforming and MIMO. It is concluded that the strategic objective of EARTH is achievable. Combined MIMO mode selection, resource allocation, scheduling and precoding strategies will allow an energy consumption reduction of more than 50 percent in macro-cells. A reduction in MIMO power consumption of 91.7 percent (factor of 12) can be achieved in pico-cells.

Description: Long Term Evolution ?? Advanced (LTEAdvanced) is a prominent cellular network technology designed to meet the International Mobile Telecommunications ?? Advanced (IMTAdvanced) requirements for enhanced wireless communications, offering high data rates under an all-Internet Protocol (IP) packet network. The dominant supporter of this effort is the significant improvement in spatial spectrum utilization and indoor coverage expected to be achieved through the penetration of femtocells inside the conventional macrocell areas. However, taking into account that femtocells will spatially reuse the spectrum assigned to macrocells in an unplanned deployment manner, the mitigation of the generated interferences becomes a major challenge. The problem is more severe in the case of closed subscriber group (CSG) femtocells, which serve only a limited set of subscribed users, and interfere with both data and control channels of non-subscribed users. Since deteriorated control channels can lead victim users to radio link or access failure, this article studies the problem of control channel interference in LTE-Advanced networks overlaid by CSG femtocells. Focusing on the downlink interference perceived by macrocell users, a categorization and a performance comparison of the fundamental and emerging control channel interference management schemes are provided.

Description: Cloud services are exploding, and organizations are converging their data centers in order to take advantage of the predictability, continuity, and quality of service delivered by virtualization technologies. In parallel, energy-efficient and high-security networking is of increasing importance. Network operators, and service and product providers require a new network solution to efficiently tackle the increasing demands of this changing network landscape. Softwaredefined networking has emerged as an efficient network technology capable of supporting the dynamic nature of future network functions and intelligent applications while lowering operating costs through simplified hardware, software, and management. In this article, the question of how to achieve a successful carrier grade network with software-defined networking is raised. Specific focus is placed on the challenges of network performance, scalability, security, and interoperability with the proposal of potential solution directions.

Description: Dedicated to the next stage of wireless communications and networking advancements, IEEE WCNC 2013 successfully tied together culture and visionary research with its latest annual conference hosted in the magnificent city of Shanghai. Recognized globally as mainland China's 'showpiece' cultural, technological and financial center as well as the most populated city worldwide, Shanghai also marked the first IEEE WCNC to be held in the country, which has rapidly grown into the planet's largest mobile communications marketplace

Description: Firewalls are important network security devices that protect networks by blocking unwanted traffic based on filtering policies. However, the structure of firewall policies has a major impact on firewall security and performance. In this article, we classify, describe, and compare traffic-aware firewall policy management techniques based on their objectives, schemes, complexity, applicability, and limitations. We classify traffic-aware firewall policy techniques into two categories based on their goals: matching optimization and early rejection optimization schemes. Matching optimization techniques try to minimize the matching time of normal network traffic. Early rejection techniques create a minimum set of policy preamble rules (constraints) that can potentially filter out the maximum amount of denied traffic. Both categories are self-adaptive to ensure that the performance gain will always supersede the dynamic management maintenance overhead. We believe that our work provides important insights on the operation and use of trafficaware filtering.

Description: This article presents a survey of cellular network sharing, which is a key building block for virtualizing future mobile carrier networks in order to address the explosive capacity demand of mobile traffic, and reduce the CAPEX and OPEX burden faced by operators to handle this demand. We start by reviewing the 3GPP network sharing standardized functionality followed by a discussion on emerging business models calling for additional features. Then an overview of the RAN sharing enhancements currently being considered by the 3GPP RSE Study Item is presented. Based on the developing network sharing needs, a summary of the state of the art of mobile carrier network virtualization is provided, encompassing RAN sharing as well as a higher level of base station programmability and customization for the sharing entities. As an example of RAN virtualization techniques feasibility, a solution based on spectrum sharing is presented: the network virtualization substrate (NVS), which can be natively implemented in base stations. NVS performance is evaluated in an LTE network by means of simulation, showing that it can meet the needs of future virtualized mobile carrier networks in terms of isolation, utilization, and customization.

Description: As the specification of Release 11 of the LTE standards is approaching its completion, 3GPP is gradually moving its focus toward the next major step in the evolution of LTE. The drivers of the LTE evolution include the increasing demand for mobile broadband services and traffic volumes as well as emerging usage scenarios involving short-range and machine-type communications. In this article we provide an overview of the key technology areas/components that are currently considered by 3GPP for Rel-12, including support for further enhanced local area access by tight interaction between the wide area and local area layers, signaling solutions for wireless local area network integration, multi-antenna enhancements, improved support for massive MTC, and direct device-to-device communications.

Description: This article presents a contemporary overview of underwater acoustic communication (UWAC) and investigates physical layer aspects on cooperative transmission techniques for future UWAC systems. Taking advantage of the broadcast nature of wireless transmission, cooperative communication realizes spatial diversity advantages in a distributed manner. The current literature on cooperative communication focuses on terrestrial wireless systems at radio frequencies with sporadic results on cooperative UWAC. In this article, we summarize initial results on cooperative UWAC and investigate the performance of a multicarrier cooperative UWAC considering the inherent unique characteristics of the underwater channel. Our simulation results demonstrate the superiority of cooperative UWAC systems over their point-to-point counterparts.

Description: Wireless communications is a field that experiences continuous and often rapid change. New technology developments, new and revised standards and procedures, changes in the regulatory environment, more demanding customer expectations - all of these and more continually transform the industry.

Description: Although a huge amount of private and public research funds have been spent on future network technologies, very few research results on next generation networks are available in the literature to cater to the responsibilities of a critical communication infrastructure for future Internet with seamless mobility. Future carrier networks need to be able to scale to billions of nodes, interconnect billions of devices, and, especially, provide support for the diversified requirements of carrier grade next-generation services. The original architecture of information communications and technology (ICT) networks, and their networking protocols were not designed for supporting such requirements. Moreover, the usage context for which the mobile and fixed networks were planned has changed considerably. For instance, some of the fundamental characteristics of future carrier networks are: low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities; interoperability and federation of cloud networks with full end-to-end service level agreement (SLA) negotiations; network openness, with the possibilities of integrating network services with computing platforms and higher layers applications (e.g., over the top, OTT); and support new business models, such as network as a service (NaaS), data as a service (DaaS), and knowledge as a service (KaaS). As of today, we have adapted to the new necessities through mere incremental improvements of original architectures, pushing data traffic through infrastructures that were supposed to carry voice and real-time communication services through networks that were meant for data traffic only.

Description: Provides a notice of upcoming conference events of interest to practitioners and researchers.

Description: Mobile carrier networks follow an architecture where network elements and their interfaces are defined in detail through standardization, but provide limited ways to develop new network features once deployed. In recent years we have witnessed rapid growth in over-the-top mobile applications and a 10-fold increase in subscriber traffic while ground-breaking network innovation took a back seat. We argue that carrier networks can benefit from advances in computer science and pertinent technology trends by incorporating a new way of thinking in their current toolbox. This article introduces a blueprint for implementing current as well as future network architectures based on a software-defined networking approach. Our architecture enables operators to capitalize on a flow-based forwarding model and fosters a rich environment for innovation inside the mobile network. In this article, we validate this concept in our wireless network research laboratory, demonstrate the programmability and flexibility of the architecture, and provide implementation and experimentation details.

Description: This article addresses the potential impact of emerging technologies and solutions, such as software defined networking and network function virtualization, on carriers' network evolution. It is argued that standard hardware advances and these emerging paradigms can bring the most impactful disruption at the network's edge, enabling the deployment of clouds of nodes using standard hardware: it will be possible to virtualize network and service functions, which are provided today by expensive middleboxes, and move them to the edge, as close as possible to users. Specifically, this article identifies some of key technical challenges behind this vision, such as dynamic allocation, migration, and orchestration of ensembles of virtual machines across wide areas of interconnected edge networks. This evolution of the network will profoundly affect the value chain: it will create new roles and business opportunities, reshaping the entire ICT world.

Description: This is the 15th issue of the series on Network and Service Management, which is published twice a year. Until last year it was published in July and December, but from this year on it will be published in July and January; as such there will not be a December 2013 issue but a January 2014 one. The series provides articles on the latest developments in this well established discipline, highlighting recent research achievements, and providing insight into both theoretical and practical issues related to the evolution of the discipline from different perspectives. The series provides a forum for the publication of both academic and industrial research, addressing the state of the art, theory, and practice in network and service management.

Description: Freescale Semiconductor has introduced a new enhancement-mode pHEMT low noise amplifier (LNA) based on GaAs process technology and designed to optimize receiver performance for a broad array of wireless systems operating between 700 and 1400 MHz. Typical applications include small cell and macrocell transceivers, as well as a range of applications requiring extremely low noise figures, high linearity, and high RF output power.

Description: We propose a signaling architecture for network traffic authorization, called Permission- Based Sending (PBS), aiming to prevent DoS attacks and other forms of unauthorized traffic. Toward this goal, PBS takes a hybrid approach: a proactive approach of explicit permissions and a reactive approach of monitoring and countering attacks. PBS uses a concept similar to existing capability-based systems in the manner in which the sender should get authorization (permission) from a receiver for flows. However, PBS introduces new and practical approaches to overcome the deficiencies (the difficulty of obtaining permission and incompatibility with current network architecture) of those systems. On-path signaling enables easy installation and management of the permission state. Working on current network protocols supports compatibility and allows PBS to be deployed in existing networks. In addition, a monitoring mechanism provides a second line of defense against attacks. Our analysis and performance evaluation show that PBS is an effective and scalable solution to prevent several kinds of attacks, and improves the resilience of the system against network failure by using soft-state mechanisms.

Description: Social interaction is one of the basic components of human life that impacts thoughts, emotions, decisions, and the overall wellbeing of individuals. In this regard, monitoring social activity constitutes an important factor in a number of disciplines, particularly those related to social and health sciences. Sensor-based social interaction data collection has been seen as a groundbreaking tool, having the potential to overcome the drawbacks of traditional self-reporting methods and revolutionize social behavior analysis. However, monitoring of social interactions typically implies a trade-off between the quality of collected data and the levels of unobtrusiveness and privacy respect, aspects that can affect spontaneity in subjects?? behavior. In this article we discuss the challenges of automatic monitoring of social interactions; then we provide an overview of the current automatic monitoring concepts and the associated trade-offs. We finally present our approach of using non-visual and non-auditory mobile sources that mitigate privacy concerns and do not interfere with individuals?? daily routines, while providing a reliable platform for social interaction data collection.

Description: Future wireless networks are expected to provide high bandwidth multimedia services in extended areas with homogeneous quality of service levels. Conventional cellular architectures might not be able to satisfy these requirements due to the effect of surrounding obstacles and the signal attenuation with distance, in particular under non-line-of-sight propagation conditions. Recent studies have investigated the potential of multihop cellular networks (MCNs) to overcome the traditional cellular architecture limitations through the integration of cellular and ad hoc networking technologies. However, these studies are generally analytical or simulation-based. On the other hand, this article reports the first experimental field tests, which validate and quantify the benefits MCNs using mobile relays can provide over traditional cellular systems.

Description: DVB-NGH (Digital Video Broadcasting - Next Generation Handheld) is the next generation technology for mobile TV broadcasting, which has been developed by the DVB project with the most advanced transmission technologies. DVB-NGH is the first broadcasting standard to incorporate multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) as the key technology to overcome the Shannon limit of single antenna communications. MIMO techniques can be used to improve the robustness of the transmitted signal by exploiting the spatial diversity of the MIMO channel, but also to achieve increased data rates through spatial multiplexing. This article describes the benefits of MIMO that motivated its incorporation in DVB-NGH, reviews the MIMO schemes adopted, and discusses some aspects related to the deployment of MIMO networks in DVB-NGH. The article also provides a feature comparison with the multi-antenna techniques for 3GGP's LTE/LTE-Advanced for cellular networks. Finally, physical layer simulation results calibrated within the DVB-NGH standardization process are provided to illustrate the gain of MIMO for the next generation of mobile TV broadcasting.

Description: The IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC 2013) was held on January 11-14, 2013 at the Las Vegas Flamingo Hotel. The conference started on the last day of CES 2013, at which, for the first time, a new, consolidated IEEE booth highlighted innovation and scholarship in various engineering disciplines relevant to consumer electronics. IEEE ComSoc's part of the booth featured selected research prototype demonstrations from IEEE CCNC demonstration session participants, as well as samples of publications and calls for papers of our conferences, and information on IEEE ComSoc sponsored standards and standardization projects.

Description: The first meeting of the IEEE Technical Activities Board (TAB) this year was held in Austin, Texas during 14-16 February, and I would like to share some items of interest to you. But before doing so, I would like to inform you about the IEEE ComSoc 60th Anniversary Video contest.

Description: Provides a listing of upcoming conference events of interest to practitioners and researchers.

Description: The article summarizes our experience on development of open innovations cooperation framework in the field of ICT between Finland and Russia. This project is financially support by KA-179 grant of ENPI Karelia CBC programme1 and targeted in development of regional open innovations ecosystem by using help and best practices of FRUCT Association2.

Description: Recent advances in radio, network, mobile, and cloud technologies have supported the development of the first generation Internet of Things (IoT) services and products. IoT promises to connect various physical and digital objects to the Internet and thus enable a plethora of new innovative applications that enhance society and quality of life [1-3]. IoT and ubiquitous computing [4] extend the current mobile computing revolution by reaching beyond the current four billion mobile phones, connecting the phones, sensors, and other devices with the Internet. The resulting communications network is exponentially larger and more complex than the current Internet with potentially trillions of identifiers and communicating endpoints. This IoT revolution creates both technological and societal challenges that need to be addressed.

Description: Software defined networking (SDN) is a broad term used to describe dynamic control of discrete computing, storage, switching, routing and/or transport devices to create an optimized network configuration for a given application or amount of traffic. SDN allows the network to automatically react to ever changing demands using a shared pool of resources, rather than relying on static designs to improve scalability and resiliency, while reducing cost. This separation of the control plane from the data plane provides the means to orchestrate a wide variety of network resources across multiple layers and multiple domains to achieve optimal utilization. This Feature Topic focuses on how SDN is being applied to the optical transport layer both within and between data centers, thus extending the work that until now has only been discussed at the upper network layers. Some of its enabling key technologies are also discussed.

Description: The economic landscape where trends of computing and networking are diverging creates motivation for new engineering paradigms. One emerging paradigm is software defined networking, whose attributes include separation of control from forwarding, enabling joint optimization of computing and networking deployments, software-defined functions at a number of layers, including the transport (i.e., optical and TDM) layer, enabling simpler interworking of different administrative and technology domains, and application-aware transport network resources. This column provides some background on the aspects of SDN related to transport networking, summarizes major drivers, trends, and issues to be addressed, and concludes by discussing areas of potential research and development for transport-related future SDN work.

Description: Software defined networks are based on the principle of a centralized control plane separated from the network forwarding or switching plane that it controls. The switching plane can be heterogeneous, composed of network elements from multiple vendors, and it can provide distinct services with different characteristics, configurations, and control at the packet and/or optical layers. Abstracting the control plane from the network elements allows network-platform- specific characteristics and differences that do not affect services to be hidden. In addition, software defined networking (SDN) is based on the principle that applications can request needed resources from the network via interfaces to the control plane. Through these interfaces, applications can dynamically request network resources or network information that may span disparate technologies. For instance, the application layer can dynamically request and obtain network resources at the packet flow, circuit, or even optical level based on application layer requirements. Current SDN implementations focus on Ethernet switching primarily for data center resource optimization. This article reviews the benefits and challenges of extending SDN concepts to various transport network architectures that include optical wavelength and fiber switches, circuit switches, and sub-wavelength optical burst switches. Control plane implementations for optical networks are more complex since they must account for physical constraints including optical signal reachability, bandwidth availability and granularity, light path routing, and light path reconfiguration speed. The longterm goal is to apply SDN concepts across multi-layer multivendor networks in order to support a unified control structure.