An NFV system to support service provisioning on UAV networks
Abstract
In this presentation, we will first describe the designand implementation of an NFV system capable ofdeploying moderately complex network services over awireless ad-hoc network of resource-constrained computenodes. The system design targets aerial networks built byUnmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and it relies oncontainer virtualization to support the execution ofnetwork functions within constrained environments, aswell as on mobile ad-hoc networking to support theunderlying end-to-end network communications [1]. Thepresentation will also cover the implementation experiencefrom developing this NFV system, which is based onrelevant and widely-adopted open-source technologies inthe NFV arena such as ETSI Open-Source MANO (OSM)and OpenStack.In addition, we will present the details concerning theintegration of this system into a distributed NFV testbedspanning three different remote sites in Spain, i.e.,Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), UniversidadPolitécnica de Cataluña (UPC), and Universidad del PaísVasco (UPV-EHU). The goal of this testbed is to exploresynergies among NFV, UAVs, and 5G vertical services,following a practical approach primarily governed byexperimentation. To showcase the potential of this testbedto support vertical services, we will present three differentuse cases that have been realized as part of our priorresearch work: i) the automated deployment of an IPtelephony service on a delimited geographic area, using anetwork of interconnected UAVs [2] (noteworthily, thiswork was awarded by ETSI as the best proof-of-conceptdemonstration with OSM during the OSM Release Eightcycle [3]); ii) the realization of a smart farming verticalservice [4]; and iii) a public-safety vertical use case, whichuses aerial and vehicular NFV infrastructures to monitortraffic conditions and handle emergency situations [5].This latter involves an international collaboration with theInstituto de Telecomunicações of Aveiro, which operatesa vehicular NFV infrastructure.Finally, the presentation will tackle the standardizationchallenges related with the future view of a decentralizedand flexible MANO framework, capable of supporting theoperation of cost-effective, reliable services beyond theedge of the telecommunication operator infrastructures. Inthis view, multiple stakeholders would collaborativelyprovide a wide range of heterogeneous compute-connectdevices (e.g., end-user terminals, CPEs, or UAV swarms).These devices might exist and be opportunistically used,or they could otherwise be deployed on-demand by thosestakeholders, contributing to the availability of apotentially unlimited pool of network, computing, andstorage resources beyond the network edge. This viewintroduces several standardization challenges to the NFVMANO framework in terms of interoperation, flexibility,robustness, and security. These challenges have beenpresented at the NFV Evolution1 event organized by ETSI,and will build the basis of our future work in this researchline.