Tiia Ojanpera

Bio: Tiia Ojanpera is an academic researcher from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The author has contributed to research in topics: Testbed & Quality of service. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 20 publications receiving 110 citations.

Use Cases and Communications Architecture for 5G-Enabled Road Safety Services

Abstract: Efficient and safe road network is an essential requirement for a modern society. This paper presents use cases and architecture for novel 5G-enabled road safety services. The use cases aim at preventing traffic accidents, optimizing road maintenance, and enabling autonomous driving by delivering focused time-critical services to vehicles and their drivers as well as to road operators and 3rd party organizations. The services rely on real-time sensor and IoT data collected from the vehicles and roadside infrastructure. The paper proposes a generic system architecture for the realization of the use cases and studies the implementation of vehicular data communications within the architecture. The resulting data management framework is evaluated by comparing selected protocol implementations in order to find the best practices for its realization.

Application Synchronization Among Multiple MEC Servers in Connected Vehicle Scenarios

Abstract: Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is an emerging technology aimed to improve the communication latency and scalability e.g. of cloud-based connected vehicle applications and services. This is accomplished by bringing services closer to the end users, that is, to the network edge. In a high-mobility scenario, such as one involving vehicles, there will be a need for handovers between different MEC servers in order to maintain the required communication latency. Part of the application data may also be relevant to multiple MEC servers, covering overlapping geographical areas or being hosted by different network operators. This paper focuses on these situations and studies the problem of maintaining service continuity and synchronization of relevant data among multiple MEC servers to support vehicular applications. The analysis is conducted in the context of two example applications with different requirements, namely platoon management and shared world model, with promising results regarding their suitability for future implementation.

Distributed decision engine — An information management architecture for autonomie wireless networking

Abstract: With wireless networks becoming ever more ubiquitous and the capabilities of the devices connected to them rivalling those of desktop computers, there is an acute need for the communications in these networks to be managed as efficiently and autonomously as possible. Moreover, as the number of connected devices is rapidly increasing, the problem is becoming all the more complex and the amount of up-to-date status information needed for the management is multiplying. In order to meet the needs of future network management in terms of knowledge building and dissemination, this paper presents an architecture for collecting, processing, and disseminating vast amounts of network management information efficiently in wireless networks. The information may originate from the different layers of the networking protocol stack either on the wireless clients or network devices, and the architecture facilitates its signalling within a distributed network management system. Also, as described in this paper with practical examples, the architecture has been validated in a laboratory with real devices in the context of multiple use cases ranging from enhanced multimedia delivery for mobile clients to balancing the workload of network nodes. In addition, this paper evaluates the performance of the Event Cache prototype in terms of its capability of handling event dissemination in a real testbed environment.

Cognitive Network Management Framework and Approach for Video Streaming Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks

Abstract: The future Internet will be highly heterogeneous in supporting a multitude of access technologies and networks with overlapping coverages. Optimization of network operations like management of resources, mobility or Quality of Service in order to ensure smooth network operation and high user satisfaction will be very challenging in the future networks. Cognitive network management can provide a solution of managing such complex systems. This paper studies cognitive network management in the context of optimizing video streaming performance in heterogeneous multi-access networks. The paper proposes a network management framework that relies on cognitive decision techniques in the joint optimization of network and video service performance. The proposed solution is also implemented and validated in part in a testbed environment. The results attest the feasibility of the solution as well as the benefits of cognitive decision techniques over non-learning or non-adaptive approaches.

Always Best Connected

Abstract: This chapter contains sections titled: Product Definition for Broadband Wireless Systems Technology Drivers Evolving Wireless Broadband Market Segments Open Systems and Intelligence at the Edge Radio Network System Engineering References

Review of latest advances in 3GPP standardization: D2D communication in 5G systems and its energy consumption models

Abstract: Device-to-device (D2D) communication is an essential part of the future fifth generation (5G) system that can be seen as a “network of networks,” consisting of multiple seamlessly-integrated radio access technologies (RATs). Public safety communications, autonomous driving, socially-aware networking, and infotainment services are example use cases of D2D technology. High data rate communications and use of several active air interfaces in the described network create energy consumption challenges for both base stations and the end user devices. In this paper, we review the status of 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standardization, which is the most important standardization body for 5G systems. We define a set of application scenarios for D2D communications in 5G networks. We use the recent models of 3GPP long term evolution (LTE) and WiFi interfaces in analyzing the power consumption from both the infrastructure and user device perspectives. The results indicate that with the latest radio interfaces, the best option for energy saving is the minimization of active interfaces and sending the data with the best possible data rate. Multiple recommendations on how to exploit the results in future networks are given.

Low-Latency Scheduling in MPTCP

Abstract: The demand for mobile communication is continuously increasing, and mobile devices are now the communication device of choice for many people. To guarantee connectivity and performance, mobile devices are typically equipped with multiple interfaces. To this end, exploiting multiple available interfaces is also a crucial aspect of the upcoming 5G standard for reducing costs, easing network management, and providing a good user experience. Multi-path protocols, such as multi-path TCP (MPTCP), can be used to provide performance optimization through load-balancing and resilience to coverage drops and link failures, however, they do not automatically guarantee better performance. For instance, low-latency communication has been proven hard to achieve when a device has network interfaces with asymmetric capacity and delay (e.g., LTE and WLAN). For multi-path communication, the data scheduler is vital to provide low latency, since it decides over which network interface to send individual data segments. In this paper, we focus on the MPTCP scheduler with the goal of providing a good user experience for latency-sensitive applications when interface quality is asymmetric. After an initial assessment of existing scheduling algorithms, we present two novel scheduling techniques: the block estimation (BLEST) scheduler and the shortest transmission time first (STTF) scheduler. BLEST and STTF are compared with existing schedulers in both emulated and real-world environments and are shown to reduce web object transmission times with up to 51% and provide 45% faster communication for interactive applications, compared with MPTCP’s default scheduler.