Vodafone (Italy)

Our prior work on single-metric near real-time anomaly detection is extended in this paper through the generalization of a model that was initially developed for the monitoring of CPU utilization anomalies in Vodafone’s Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) infrastructure. The initial generalization involves the model being adapted to other critical infrastructure KPIs, with a specific focus placed on average Network and Memory usage. Subsequently, a significant reduction in the model’s free parameters is introduced, with the original count of 13 being decreased to a single parameter. Building upon this refined single-metric model, a novel multi-metric anomaly detection model is then constructed. The quality of anomaly detection is demonstrably enhanced by this model through a substantial reduction in the incidence of both false positive and false negative classifications. Empirical results from an experiment conducted on real-world data obtained from Vodafone’s infrastructure are presented, with the superior performance of the newly developed multi-metric predictor being illustrated in comparison to its single-metric counterparts. The dataset utilized in this study, along with the corresponding labeled anomaly dataset, is released under an open data license to facilitate further research in this domain.

This paper studies the positioning capabilities offered by currently operational fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks operating in the n78 band. We consider four mobile operators in Milan, Italy, and compare their network readiness for positioning by passively measuring and analyzing the Time of Arrival (ToA) and the received power extracted from Synchronization Signal Blocks (SSBs) signals periodically broadcasted by the base stations. We focus on urban and rural areas, showing that the TOA accuracy significantly varies over the two types of areas and among network operators. Our operator-agnostic analysis reveals that the current state of network synchronization presents strong issues that hinder positioning services at present. Major efforts on synchronization protocols and technologies are required by telecommunication manufacturers and operators.

This research examines the feasibility of using synchronization signals broadcasted by currently deployed fifth generation (5G) cellular networks to determine the position of a static receiver. The main focus lies on the analysis of synchronization among the base stations of a real 5G network in Milan, Italy, as this has a major impact on the accuracy of localization based on time of arrival measurements. Understanding such properties, indeed, is fundamental to characterize the clock drifts and implement compensation strategies as well as to identify the direct communication beam. The paper shows how the clock errors, i.e., inaccurate synchronization, among 5G base stations exhibit a significant bias, which is detrimental for precise cellular positioning. By compensating the synchronization errors of devices’ clocks, we demonstrate that it is in principle possible to localize a static user with an accuracy of approximately 8–10 m in non-obstructed visibility conditions, for urban and rural scenarios, using the deployed 5G network operating at 3.68 GHz and relying on broadcast signals as defined by 5G Release 15 standard. This work has been funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) Navigation Innovation and Support Program (NAVISP) Element 2 pillar which aims at improving the competitiveness of the industry of the participating States in the global Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) market.

Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO) is widely used in the fifth generation (5G) cellular network to improve network performance at high traffic loads. When demonstrating the compliance of 5G antennas with the radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic fields standards, beamforming and MU-MIMO must be considered, since a 5G MU-MIMO antenna radiation pattern changes in both the space and time domain, adapting to changes of the user’s position. To cope with the time and space variability of the power radiated by 5G systems, mobile operators can activate automatic tools to monitor and control the transmitted power (power lock (PL) systems) to ensure that a given radiated power threshold is not exceeded. This article extends and enhances the methodology introduced by the authors in previous work, by testing and verifying PL systems in an MU-MIMO and beamforming scenario (3-D PL systems, 3DPL) through field measurements, controlling the power transmitted by each beam, i.e., in each direction. Measurement results confirm that the 3DPL feature limits the average power of the traffic channels transmitted in each direction, regardless of the configured total maximum power. More specifically, it is shown that the 3DPL reduces the maximum average transmitted power by the expected 2 dB when only one user is active (i.e., in a single-user MIMO (SU-MIMO) scenario), while it does not operate any reduction when two users are active (MU-MIMO scenario) because the power transmitted toward each user is already half (i.e., −3 dB) of the maximum power that can be transmitted.

This paper constitutes an industrial experience re-port about the use of data center optimization strategies for softwarized network services within the Vodafone resource man-agement unit for the management of virtualized network infras-tructures. The problem of optimum virtual machine placement as needed in the network operator context is detailed, and different solving strategies are proposed and discussed, including heuristics based on genetic optimization. Also, experimental results are presented that compare these strategies with one another from the standpoint of optimality and execution times, using a data-set made of some of the real problems that had to be solved in the past few years by Vodafone, in order to optimize its capacity planning decisions. The presented experimental results highlight that an optimum solver leads to excessively high computation times for large problems, whereas simple heuristics may exhibit significant loss in optimality at reduced computation times. Genetic optimization, on the other hand, constitutes a very interesting trade-off between these two extremes. The data-set used for the provided results is published under an open data license, for possible reuse in future research works on the topic.

Maximum-Power Extrapolation (MPE) for mobile telecommunication sources follows an established paradigm based on the identification and measurement of a channel that acts as a power reference. Prior to the 5G era, the role of reference channel has been played by always-on broadcast signals since they had the great advantage of being always transmitted at the maximum power level allowed for a generic signal channel. However, the beamforming implemented by 5G sources obliges us to rethink this approach. In fact, with beamforming the 5G source can transmit data traffic streams through a beam characterized by a much higher gain than the broadcast one. This implies that the detected power for traffic beams could be much higher than the corresponding power of broadcast beams. In this paper, a novel approach for 5G MPE procedure is presented, where the direct measurement of the received power of a traffic beam is used to assess the maximum exposure generated by a 5G system. An innovative specific experimental setup is also proposed, with the use of a User Equipment (UE) with the aim of forcing the traffic beam toward the measurement positions. In this way, it is possible to directly measure the power of each Resource Element (RE) transmitted by the traffic beam. As opposed to other MPE proposals for 5G, the discussed technique does not require any correction of the measured data since it relies only on the traffic beam pointing toward the measurement position, simplifying the overall MPE procedure and thus reducing the uncertainty of the MPE estimated field strength.

Robotic telesurgery is a new concept in surgical care that has gained relevance over the past two decades. Now, with the introduction of 5G mobile networks, this concept is becoming practical. Here, we report that surgeons successfully performed complex transoral laser microsurgeries on the vocal cords of an adult human cadaver located 15 km away from them. This was possible thanks to a high bandwidth and ultra-low latency 5G telecommunication system, which allowed for precise remote control of robotic instruments and full HD ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1920\times 1280$ </tex-math></inline-formula> pixels) 3D visualization of the surgical site. During the operation, the mean video transmission latency was 102±9 ms with the maximum latency being 140 ms, but this was observed during less than 1% of the operation time. This latency did not cause any deterioration in surgeons’ performance. Our results demonstrate that surgical expertise can be exploited and shared efficiently using the new 5G telecommunication standard. This is critical for highly specialized operations such as the microsurgeries demonstrated here, which require surgical expertise that are not widely available. Therefore, the possibility to operate from a distance can bring significant benefits to healthcare systems, reducing costs and enhancing treatment quality for patients. In addition, it makes telementoring a reality, allowing expert surgeons to be present virtually in multiple operating rooms to guide and train less experienced colleagues.

The increasing interest in collaborative robotics applications is mainly due to the flexibility of these robots and to the possibility of saving space on the production shopfloor. On the other hand, physical collaboration is way far from being a commonly adopted practice, and most of the applications only entails a reduced level of interaction. This work addresses the problem of synchronising human and robot activities and proposes a formal control architecture to govern the execution of collaborative application requiring some degree of coordination between the human and the robot. The control architecture is then validated in a realistic collaborative assembly demonstration.

61owPan devices are intended to be deployed in Ipv6 networks whose subnets that often will be physically disjunct and perhaps separated by large distances. A major advantage of exploiting the nearly inexhaustible address of pool available in IPv6 is the ease with which true host-to-host communication can be realised. This however amplifies the importance of security in the network. It must be warranted with nearly 100% certainty that whenever a sensor node solicits or furnishes data to another node, that the solicited node be in fact that node from which the data is required, and just importantly, that the soliciting node be true node authorised to request the data. This paper will examine the requirements for such peer-to-peer networks and discuss solutions that will fulfil them.

The evaluation of the shielding effects produced by reinforced concrete walls toward electromagnetic (EM) fields radiated by radio base stations is an important topic due to the widespread diffusion of mobile phones. In this paper, a parametric analysis of the effects of the presence of multiple reinforced concrete walls on the shielding effectiveness is performed. Such analysis is carried out in the frequency domain and provides interesting insights into the EM field attenuation properties of the reinforced concrete structures.