Smart Ubiquitous Networks for future telecommunication environments
Introduction
Telecommunication infrastructures have been changed significantly during the last two decades, vastly impacted by the use of IP, the development of mobile and the deployment of broadband. IP has been used for realizing a connected world by providing end-to-end connectivity over any transport networks. Mobile technologies provide connectivity to anyone at any place over the air, using wireless accesses. Broadband development is providing transport pipes for the delivery of information, over fixed or mobile networks. Combining these three developments is becoming the most important elements for building today's communication infrastructures, which form the basis of the information society.
Today, people live in the fully connected environment: most people are connected using mobile as well as fixed devices, without restriction from time, place and devices; most information available on-line, and therefore accessible over the networks also at any time and any place with any devices [1], [2]. Combining these with mass deployment on broadband over fixed and mobile networks, the quality of on-line information is being developed in diverse ways: higher quality multimedia with higher resolution of videos (including 3D), personalization to fit individual's requirements and preferences, and finally information formed as knowledge and provided to the consumer. In addition, higher quality multimedia information over the huge number of fixed and mobile devices with various networking technologies such as broadcasting and peer to peer places requirements for operation of networks as well as effective and efficient delivery of services considering investments to the telecommunication infrastructures.
The information society resulting from Information Communication Technology (ICT) developments places demands for better features of information infrastructures, especially considering the diversity of various services, applications, end user devices through personalization with knowledge rather than just delivery of information. Recently “Smartness” by smart devices, smart networks and smart services is becoming an important subject for further enhancement of the information society.
ITU-T Study Group (SG) 13 [3] is developing global standards for telecommunication network infrastructures of the information society with a title “Future Networks (FNs) including cloud computing, mobile and Next Generation Networks (NGN)”. SG13 has been involved with the developments of standards on various telecommunication networks and services such as IP-based networks, NGN [4], fixed mobile convergence and IPTV [5]. One of the main subjects in SG13 has been NGN since 2004 initiated by the first ITU-T Focus Group on NGN (FG-NGN) [6]. While NGN kept a major stream until the 2010, new initiatives have come to SG13, such as “FNs [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]”, “Internet of Things (IoT) [12], [13], [14]” and “Cloud Computing [15]”.
Considering emerging trends and requirements for smart telecommunication networks, this article introduces the key concepts of “Smart Ubiquitous Networks (SUN)” and provides a high-level architecture of the SUN with relevant capabilities. SUN is a new initiative being developed by ITU-T SG13 since 2011 covering limited parts of FNs but those expect to be realized soon. This article highlights on context awareness and smart resource management for smart telecommunications networks. As challenges for SUN development, we propose methodologies and operational processes to support context awareness with other networking capabilities and new fine granularity of traffic for smart resource management. Finally we illustrate a use case of SUN considering traffic accident management in a smart city to show how SUN capabilities contributed to build smart and ubiquitous communication environments.
The remainder of this article is organized as follows. Section 2 identifies future telecommunication environments impacted from ICT developments and telecommunications operations. Section 3 introduces SUN as a telecommunication infrastructure for providing a solution for the environments identified in Section 2. Thus, Section 3 presents a framework of SUN covering requirements, capabilities, functional architectures and relevant key functions. In Section 4, we present further challenges for smart telecommunications networks in the course of SUN developments focusing on new fine granularity of traffic for smart resource management. Section 5 introduces how SUN capabilities are applied to telecommunications through a use case. Section 6 provides a conclusion.
Section snippets
Impacts from ICT developments
The feature-rich capabilities provided to customers are the result of end-user devices, networks and services benefiting from ICT developments. To maintain the pace of technological change, telecommunication infrastructures have been continuously improved to extend capabilities and functions. In this section, we show that impacts of ICT developments featured “Smart and Ubiquity” which is an important phenomena in emerging trends.
Definition of SUN
To support the above identified telecommunication environments, telecommunications infrastructures should be enhanced for better utilization of knowledge about networks, services, end users and their devices without limitation (or minimum limitation) of various access connection use. SUN, proposed by ITU-T SG13, tries to meet these requirements with the following definition [8]: Smart Ubiquitous Networks (SUN) are IP-based packet networks that can provide transport and delivery of a wide range
Further challenges for being smart telecom operation
We recognize that providing smartness is an important challenge for the SUN development. Now we identify that context awareness and a new fine traffic classification are urgent issues between standard and research community.
Use case of SUN
As an aid to better understanding of SUN, an analysis with use cases is provided. There are various cases, which need smart communications supported over various different connections, for example, e-health, COP, smart city and others. This article explains how SUN works in the case of smart city (see Fig. 8 for further details):
- (1)
Configuration of smart city service networks: A user can request emerging services on the existing networking environment. To support flexible service provisioning, SUN
Conclusion
Using diverse services and applications with better quality requires more capabilities and resources not only in end user devices but also in networks. Especially considering the cases when such services and applications are available over the fixed and wireless accesses with ubiquity (e.g., without serious restriction of place, time and devices), the situation for providing services as well as better operation of networks requires more attention.
In this article, we have introduced a way to use
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (grant number: 2012007452).
Chae Sub Lee is involved in the global standard developments since 1987 based on ITU and now he serves in ITU-T as a chairman of Study Group (SG13) responsible for the developments of networks architectures since 2009. He was the chairman of Focus Group on NGN leading global standard developments of NGN. He worked at Korea Telecom (KT) in the area of network architecture developments since 1986 and moved into Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) as an inviting researcher
References (30)
- et al.
The Internet of things: a survey
Comput. Netw.
(2010) European Research Cluster on the Internet of Things, Internet of Things. Pan European Research and Innovation Vision
ITU-T SG13 Website
- et al.
Next generation network standards in ITU-T
- et al.
Functional architecture for NGN-based personalized IPTV services
IEEE Trans. Broadcast.
(2009) - et al.
Introduction to the ITU-T NGN focus group release 1: target environment, services, and capabilities
IEEE Commun. Mag.
(2005) A new generation network: beyond the Internet and NGN
IEEE Commun. Mag.
(2009)- et al.
A survey of the research on future Internet architecture
IEEE Commun. Mag.
(2011) Future Networks: Objectives and Design Goals
(May 2011)- et al.
Network virtualization: state of the art and research challenges
IEEE Commun. Mag.
(2009)
An ID/locator split architecture for future networks
IEEE Commun. Mag.
The Internet of Things
ITU-T Focus Group on M2M Service Layer (FG-M2M) Website
Overview of Internet of Things
ITU-T Focus Group on Cloud Computing (FG-Cloud) Website
Cited by (13)
A novel framework for data acquisition and ubiquitous communication provisioning in smart cities
2019, Future Generation Computer SystemsCitation Excerpt :They proposed a classification of traffic based on bandwidth and duration of connectivity. But this classification of traffic is still an emerging subject and needs further improvement for better management of resources [16]. Researchers [17] proposed an architecture consist of independent layers.
Performance analysis of power line communication in industrial power distribution network
2015, Computer Standards and InterfacesCitation Excerpt :The control and monitoring systems for grid management, also known as Smart Grid technologies, are not largely diffused in industry [1]. On the contrary, the Smart Grid approach is widely adopted in power transmission and distribution grid [2–5], as one of the communication media adopted from the network infrastructure [6,7], and it is becoming appealing also for home automation [8], as confirmed by the plurality of available international standards [9,10]. There are many reasons for industry delay in Smart Grid development.
State of the art and trends of Vehicle Communication: Overview
2019, 27th Telecommunications Forum, TELFOR 2019Applying scheduling mechanisms over 5G cellular network packets traffic
2019, Advances in Intelligent Systems and ComputingA survey of security and privacy issues in IoT for smart cities
2018, 2017 5th International Conference on Aerospace Science and Engineering, ICASE 2017Measurement and classification of smart systems data traffic over 5g mobile networks
2017, Technology for Smart Futures
Chae Sub Lee is involved in the global standard developments since 1987 based on ITU and now he serves in ITU-T as a chairman of Study Group (SG13) responsible for the developments of networks architectures since 2009. He was the chairman of Focus Group on NGN leading global standard developments of NGN. He worked at Korea Telecom (KT) in the area of network architecture developments since 1986 and moved into Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) as an inviting researcher at 2004. He recently joined the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) as an inviting researcher studying for the future of networks.
Gyu Myoung Lee holds a Ph.D. degree from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He is an associate professor with the Institute Mines-Telecom, Telecom SudParis, France and the KAIST, Korea. He was an invited researching staff at the Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Korea for international standardization and also worked as a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA. His research interests include future networks, Internet of Things, multimedia services, and energy saving networks including Smart Grid. He has actively contributed for standardization in ITU-T as a Rapporteur and IETF. He was an editor of draft recommendations for SUN under developing in the ITU-T.
Woo Seop Rhee received B.S. degree in computer science from Hong Ik University, Seoul, Korea, in 1983 and M.S., and Ph.D. degree in 1995 and 2003, respectively, in computer science from Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Korea. From 1983 to 2005, he was with the Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (ETRI). He was involved in the development of TDX switching system, HANbit ACE ATM switching system and Optical access system as a project leader. In 2005, he joined Hanbat National University, Daejeon, Korea and is currently an associate professor of Information and Communication engineering department. His research interests are concerned with Web of object, semantic sensor Web, semantic reasoning mechanism, and quality of service in Internet. He is an active member of ITU-T SG13 as Editor and member of KICS, KOCON in Korea and IEEE.