Intelligent DEsign of Future mobile Internet for enhanced eXperience – IDEFIX

Three innovation axes will be developed in IDEFIX. We will first revisit the way technologies are benchmarked, by proposing novel performance evaluation tools, based on the latest developments in queuing theory. This will lead to a novel network dimensioning framework that ensures an acceptable QoS with minimal
expenses. We will then propose intelligent network and service control
mechanisms that ensure constancy of QoS in time and space, while taking into account the energy consumption. Finally, we will propose a strategic investment framework, modeling the competition/cooperation between actors in view of the technical knowledge built in the project.

IDEFIX has just achieved its first year. We have so far finalized the traffic and technology scenarios and advanced in the performance evaluation framework. Works on network control and economic aspects have also started with a good synergy between both academic and industrial partners.

During the second year of IDEFIX, we plan to continue developing the performance evaluation framework, propose intelligent network and service control mechanisms as well as a strategic investment framework.

Here are some publications of the IDEFIX project:

Amal Abdel Razzac (Universite Pierre et Marie Curie), Salah Eddine Elayoubi (Orange), Tijani Chahed (Telecom SudParis) and Bachar El Hassan , Practical implementation of Mobile TV delivery in cooperative LTE/DVB networks , WiVid Workshop, 2014.

Florence Bénézit (Orange); Salah Eddine Elayoubi (Orang); Raluca Indre (Orange); Alain Simonian (Orange) , Modelling Load Balancing and Carrier Aggregation in Mobile Networks , RAWNET workshop, 2014.

Ahlem Khlass (Telecom ParisTech); Thomas Bonald (Telecom ParisTech); Salah Eddine Elayoubi (Orange) , Flow-level Modeling of Multi-User Beamforming in Mobile Networks , Rawnet Workshop, Hammamet, Tunisie , 2014.

A. Abdel-Razzak (Universite Pierre et Marie Curie), S-E. Elayoubi (Orange), T. Chahed (Telecom SudParis), B. El Hassan, Dimensioning and profit sharing in hybrid LTE/DVB systems to offer mobile TV services, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 2013.

C. Sanogo (Telecom SudParis), T. Chahed (Telecom SudParis), S-E. Elayoubi (Orange), Modeling user impatience and its impact on performance in mobile networks, PIMRC 2013, London, September 2013.
Amal Abdel Razzac (Universite Pierre et Marie Curie), Salah Eddine Elayoubi (Orange), Tijani Chahed (Telecom SudParis) and Bachar El Hassan, Comparison of LTE eMBMS and DVB-NGH mobile TV solutions from an energy consumption perspective, Green Cellular’2013, in conjunction with PIMRC 2013, London, September 2013.

I. Tunaru (CEA LETI), H. Rivano (INRIA) and F. Valois (INRIA), WSN-inspired Sleep Protocols for Heterogeneous LTE Networks. PE-WASUN - 10th ACM International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Wireless Ad Hoc, Sensor, and Ubiquitous Networks, Novembre 2013.

Mobile networks are rapidly evolving towards new technologies that are characterized by an increasingly sophisticated radio interface, always with the aim of higher bit rates and ubiquitous coverage. Although 4G network deployments are still in their beginnings, the first upgrades towards LTE-A solutions are already planned by operators and evolutions towards 5G networks are currently under research all over the world. This rapid network evolution is essentially driven by the explosion of mobile traffic; a tendency that is not only predicted, but also observed on the actual networks. In this context, many collaborative projects are proposing new architectures and technologies as key enablers for responding to this traffic boom. Among these technologies, HetNets, composed of macro cells and all kinds of small cells, and cell coordination are regarded as the most promising ones. However, although smartphones and tablets are revolutionizing the usage of mobile networks and generating new traffic profiles, industrials, but also academics, are still evaluating and benchmarking these solutions using tools adapted to classical voice or best effort services. This raises fundamental questions about the validity of the presented performance results and their pertinence in the framework of future networks. Furthermore, technology choices within 3GPP are based on simulation results produced following the commonly agreed full buffer and FTP traffic models. While the former model does not represent any traffic reality, the latter is only adapted to best effort services. The primary aim of IDEFIX project is to radically revisit the way technologies are evaluated and benchmarked by proposing novel performance evaluation tools, based on the latest developments in queuing theory, that are able to tackle the complexity of traffic profiles in future mobile networks. These tools are to be carefully adapted to the different technologies discussed within 3GPP, and then used to benchmark these technologies and perform pertinent choices among them. Furthermore, IDEFIX will not adopt a passive behavior limited to performance evaluation of technologies. It will, on the contrary, propose service and network control mechanisms that enforce Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) of users of different services. For this aim, this project puts together experts on performance evaluation tools and traffic engineering, whose world class research results are recognized in the telecommunication community. This expertise is complemented by another internationally recognized expertise on service and network control mechanisms and, for the first time in this field, by an expertise on network economy and decision-making in strategic investments. These academic and industrial experts will help two top actors in the world telecommunications industry, Alcatel Lucent and Orange, in their perpetual quest for producing the most efficient technologies and deploying networks with the best QoS.
To summarize, the following actions are planned:
- Develop a novel performance evaluation framework for future mobile networks, based on recent advances in queuing theory that considers emerging services.
- Use the developed framework for dimensioning the network under target constraints on QoS/QoE for different typical traffic scenarios (service mix and traffic intensity).
- Propose QoS control and enforcement mechanisms that take into account the environment fluctuations due to users’ mobility and network heterogeneity, while ensuring the lowest possible energy consumption. The most promising mechanisms will be tested using a testbed on small cells provided by ALU and proposed to 3GPP for inclusion in R12/R13.
- Propose a strategic investment framework that allows the operator to plan its investments taking into account the risks related to technology maturity and traffic evolution, integrating the problem of competition/cooperation between the different actors.