SEcure Network Coding for Reduced Energy nexT generation Mobile Small cells

Project Information

SECRET

Grant agreement ID: 722424

DOI

10.3030/722424

Project closed

EC signature date 29 August 2016

Start date 1 January 2017

End date 31 December 2020

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 3 274 857,72

EU contribution

€ 3 274 857,72

Coordinated by

INSTITUTO DE TELECOMUNICACOES
Portugal

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SECRET (SEcure Network Coding for Reduced Energy nexT generation Mobile Small cells)

Reporting period: 2019-01-01 to 2020-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Current cellular paradigms exploit virtualization and small cell technology for enabling very high speed, low latency, effective network management. However, they lack in terms of cell offloading, energy efficient data dissemination, task offloading capability. SECRET aims to research, design, implement, showcase a new networking topology that delivers ubiquitous mobile small cell (MSC) access to support future emerging enhanced broadband services based on exploiting disruptive technologies such as network coding and cooperation in synergy with a security framework and energy-aware smart front-end. These small cell hotspots will form a wireless-network-of-mobile small cells, set-up on demand, where user/mobile devices can emulate small cell functionality that will control access to the SECRET network or act as forwarding device over the small cell network.

Specific project objectives are:
O1: New radio architectures for enabling mobile small cells for reduced-cost high-speed and energy-efficient connectivity on demand
O2: Network Coded Cooperation (NCC) for mobile small cells to ensure high error resiliency and efficient spectrum
O3: Secure network coding and intrusion detection for mobile small cells
O4: Energy efficient and multi-standard RF front-end for next generation multi-homing handsets
O5: Enabling mobile Small Cells through network virtualization

SECRET will help current mobile standards move from classical non-cooperative paradigm towards a more cooperative approach, more user-network centric where resources of all devices are seen as a “pool” to be used as vehicle for effective use of the mobile network leading towards enhanced spectral and energy efficiency.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work performed within each objective is as follows:

O1:
- Developed SECRET scenario, system architecture and requirements to accommodate research challenges (output “Secure Virtual Mobile Small Cells: A Stepping Stone Towards 6G” to be published in IEEE Comms Standards)
O2:
-Energy efficient content distribution mechanism over small cells based on NCC.
-Game theory for cooperative radio resource management for 5G small cell networks
-Novel tasks resource allocation methods for task offloading based on cooperative small cells and task dependency
-Novel Uplink reference signal (UL RS) based HO (handover) scheme proposed where measurement reports are eliminated and replaced by sounding signaling messages
-Characterising ultra-dense small cell network performance based on stochastic geometry to provide new insights towards creation, placement, management of MSC networks within an urban area.
O3:
-Lightweight blockchain-based integrity schemes to guard against data pollution attacks for network-coded small cell networks
-Novel key management design (DISTANT) for securing NC-MSC technology based on decentralised trust authority. Performance evaluation showed DISTANT is highly competitive with 50% reduction in communication complexity overhead compared to legacy baseline schemes.
-Novel IDLP mechanism for NC-MSC applications, that not only detects pollution attacks at the earliest possible opportunity but is able to locate attacker's exact position and isolate them from the network
O4:
-2-stage MMIC Class-AB Power Amplifier design based on 0.25-μm InGaAs/GaAs pHEMT technology suited for 5G mobile handsets operating over 11-12.4 GHz frequency ban
-Two compact load modulation Doherty amplifiers (12W,70W) for 5G base stations fabricated, targeting 3.4-3.8 GHz bandwidth where both amplifiers achieve high efficiency at back-off.
-Tunable and reconfigurable compact filters for next generation multimode handsets (4G,5G-3.4-3.7 GHz) including Combline technology; trisection and 4-pole microstrip; mixed-coupled quint-wideband ASIR bandpass; Open Ring and Trisection Resonators, including microstrip design; varactor-based tuneable bandpass filter.
-Advanced massive MIMO antennas (18-30 GHz) including simultaneous tuning; 8×8 MIMO with dual-polarization, coupled with radiation pattern diversity; beam-steerable array; phased array designs by employing eight dielectric-insensitive radiators, 28-element sub-arrays including horizontally polarized end-fire dipole antennas and vertically polarized end-fire slot antennas.
O5:
-Testbed for MSC integrating new architecture design with provision for multihop, cooperative clusters with multiple points of access to overlay network implemented. Two use-cases were demonstrated pertaining to energy efficient dissemination and cell offloading based on small-to-small connectivity.
-Advanced energy efficient and self-organised resource management approach (network sharing) harnessing the flexibility of virtualization and software defined networking, two prominent paradigms that will play a pivotal role in 5G networking. Two energy efficient resource allocation (EE-RA) solutions were addressed: i) group based RRH (Remote Radio Head)-BBU (Base Band Unit) mapping (RGBM) considering the level of interference in the network, meeting the user QoS (Quality of Service) requirements within the C(Cloud)-RAN deployment; ii) EE-RA from a holistic resource management perspective, considering a 2-stage resource allocation process that covers both admission control and RRH-BBU mapping. Simulation results have provided viable evidence the 2 proposed solutions are able to inject significant power saving and energy efficiency gain within the C-RAN architecture coupled with improvement in users' desired signal.

Efforts in fully achieving SECRET objectives have resulted in: 180 peer-reviewed papers (103 conf., 77 journal); 22 exploitation items incl. 2 project grants, 4 experimental testbeds, 5 potential products, 3 new liaisons.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Legacy 4G networks have several limitations that detracts their use for future emerging services. The need for increasingly higher data rates means current cell sizes are too large to support very high-speed connectivity. On the other hand, network deployment is planned and too rigid to adapt to dynamic variation in traffic that may be perceived on a daily/seasonal level. SECRET goes beyond state-of-the-art by introducing cooperative mobile small cells, with physical propagation distance between transmitter and receiver providing a platform for ultra-high speed data rates. Moreover, SECRET envisages MSC able to cooperate forming wireless-network-of-mobile small cells covering the urban landscape, virtual in nature since they can be set up on demand at any place any time on any device coordinated by SECRET enabled mobile handsets. SECRET will allow end-user to experience a plethora of 5G broadband services at low cost irrespective of underlying communication infrastructure with reduced impact on mobile battery lifetime, so that prosumers at the cell edge or in traditional low coverage area can have access to high speed networking, whilst providing additional leverage to network operators to handle greater cell offloading capability.
SECRET will harness ongoing trends in 5G standardization to ensure complementarity and market relevance and represents a unique opportunity to break rigid constraints of fixed networking deployments and non-cooperative paradigms by proposing i) a new architecture that is able to provide new cell offloading opportunities by enabling multi-hop D2D connectivity on demand, ii) with potential to reduce the energy consumption in the network through the use of NCC technology, and cooperative virtual small cells.

SECRET Scenario