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Molecular communications (MC) broadly defines information exchange using (bio-)chemical signals over multiple scales. The research in this area addresses various fields where MC plays an important role. Notable examples include 1) the modeling of living systems, which aims to gain new insights into biological systems; 2) their interface with the outer world, aiming to develop techniques to control biological systems; and 3) synthetic MC, focusing on the design, analysis, and implementation of human-made MC systems at different scales.

The hyperviscosity syndrome consists of an excessive viscosity of the blood. It has to be timely detected, since it significantly increases the risk of many cardiovascular diseases. It can manifest essentially in two different ways, depending on the capability of the cardiocirculatory system to compensate the increased resistance experienced by the blood in vessels. In case of compensation, the blood flow velocity remains nearly unaltered; otherwise a significant decrease can occur. In this paper, we propose a blood viscosity monitoring system based on molecular communications. It could be used in risky patients for continuous monitoring and can detect blood hyperviscosity both in case of compensation, even partial, and in case of uncompensated cardiocirculatory systems. This proposal results to be both simple and effective for real time estimating the blood viscosity level, without any need of resorting to invasive blood analyses. The main idea is to leverage the statistics of particle dispersion and absorption in a blood vessel as a function of blood viscosity. Viscosity is estimated by processing the statistics of the received signal molecules, which are easy to collect. These features open the way to the implementation of the proposed solution in a simple and cheap device.

Due to the growing number of devices accessing the Internet through wireless networks, the radio spectrum has become a highly contended resource. The availability of low cost radio spectrum monitoring sensors enables a geographically distributed, real-time observation of the spectrum to spot inefficiencies and to develop new strategies for its utilization. The potentially large number of sensors to be deployed and the intrinsic nature of data make this task a Big Data problem. In this work we design, implement, and validate a hardware and software architecture for wideband radio spectrum monitoring inspired to the Lambda architecture. This system offers Spectrum Sensing as a Service to let end users easily access and process radio spectrum data. To minimize the latency of services offered by the platform, we fine tune the data processing chain. From the analysis of sensor data characteristics, we design the data models for MongoDB and Cassandra, two popular NoSQL databases. A MapReduce job for spectrum visualization has been developed to show the potential of our approach and to identify the challenges in processing spectrum sensor data. We experimentally evaluate and compare the performance of the two databases in terms of application processing time for different types of queries applied on data streams with heterogeneous generation rate. Our experiments show that Cassandra outperforms MongoDB in most cases, with some exceptions depending on data stream rate.

The complexity of molecular communications system, involving a massive number of interacting entities, makes scalability a fundamental property of simulators and modeling tools. A typical scenario is that of targeted drug delivery systems, which makes use of biological nanomachines close to a biological target, able to release molecules in the diseased area. In this paper, we propose a simple but reliable receiver model for diffusion-based molecular communication systems tackling the time needed for analyzing such a system. The proposed model consists of using an equivalent markovian queuing model, which reproduces the aggregate behavior of thousands of receptors spread over the receiver surface. It takes into account not only the fact that the absorption of molecules can occur only through receptors, but also that absorption is not an instantaneous process and may require a significant time during which the receptor is not available to bind to other molecules. Our results, expressed in terms of number of absorbed molecules and average number of busy receptors, demonstrate that the proposed approach is in good agreement with results obtained through particle-based simulations of a large number of receptors, although the time taken for obtaining the results with the proposed model is an order of magnitudes lower than the simulation time. We believe that this model can be the precursor of novel class of models based on similar principles that allow realizing reliable simulations of much larger systems.

Network caching is a technique used to speed-up user access to frequently requested contents in complex data networks. This paper presents a two-layer overlay network caching system for content distribution. It is used to define some caching scenarios with increasing complexity, which refers to real situations, including mobile 5G connectivity. For each scenario our aim is to maximize the hit ratio, which leads to the formulation of NP-complete optimization problems. The heuristic solutions proposed are based on the theory of the maximization of monotone submodular functions under matroid constraints. After the determination of the approximation ratio of the greedy heuristic algorithms proposed, a numerical performance analysis is shown. This analysis includes a comparison with the Least-Frequently Used (LFU) eviction strategy adapted to the analyzed systems. Results show very good performance, under the hypotheses of either known or unknown popularity of contents.

The 5G technology includes innovative network services that allow vertical players to boost their service portfolio in critical application areas currently not suitably addressed by 4G systems. However, these improvements in both flexibility and performance have some consequences in terms of complexity. Indeed, 5G networks are quite complex systems, and require specific skills on network virtualization and cloud services for taking full advantage of their potential. This may represent a hard entrance barrier for vertical stakeholders willing to deploy new services on 5G networks. Thus, it becomes necessary to introduce some simplified approaches for implementing and deploying services in 5G edge clouds. We propose a solution based on the usage of simple yet flexible service templates, named blueprints. Such templates can be easily filled by vertical players by specifying just the main entities of their service. Each template allows specifying not only the raw structure of a service running in a virtualized infrastructure, but also how to test it in a variety of realistic network conditions. Our proposed tool processes blueprints and translates them into detailed network configuration. This way, verticals are unaware of the underlying operations, saving a significant amount of programming effort. In order to show the effectiveness of our solution and to ease the understanding of technical details, we make use of a vertical service related to the area of pedestrian traffic monitoring in smart cities as a running example. We express the effort saving by means of the well-known COCOMO model, which shows a reduction of about 70% or even more of the programming effort from the vertical.

The 5G EVE is a 5G PPP phase 3 Infrastructure project aimed at building a European 5G validation platform for extensive trials. One of the main objectives of 5G EVE is to offer an accessible and fully operational 5G end-to-end infrastructure, flexible enough to support a plethora of tests for different vertical industries, distributed among several sites. When executing the declared tests, vertical industries with expertise deploying such services may state the operational key performance indicators, and the platform will provide an analysis of the results. This paper presents the design and results of the first 5G end to end experiment deployed on the 5G EVE infrastructure. In particular, we present the 5G EVE architecture, all the steps required to design and execute a simple experiment. Finally, this paper also provides an analysis and discussion of the results provided by our platform.

The particle motion in diffusion-based molecular communication systems is typically modeled by using Brownian processes. In particular, this model is used to characterize the propagation of signal molecules after their release from the transmitter. This motion cannot include directionality in the propagating signal and translates into omnidirectional broadcast communications. In order to make such molecular communications system suitable for supporting communications protocols at the molecular scales, we propose to improve the receiver capabilities by introducing a form of directionality while receiving biological signals. Inspired by the directionality introduced in electromagnetic communications by means of directional antennas, we designed a nanomachine receiver having directionality properties. Our aim is to increase the average concentration of signal molecules, also referred to as carriers, in the area around the receiver surface. In this way, it is possible to increase the signal strength at the receiver. For this purpose, we propose to use a purely reflecting shell to be placed at a configurable distance from the receiver surface. The shape of the shell can be modeled as either a spherical cap or a cylinder with an empty basis. The presence of this surface causes a number of signal molecules to remain trapped in a region close to the receiver surface for a sufficiently long time. In this way, the probability of assimilating additional carriers by the compliant receptors present on the receiver surface increases. By means of an extensive simulation campaign, we identified the most suitable configuration able to provide a significant advantage with respect to those not adopting the proposed solution. The resulting approach can be regarded as an enabler of protocols for diffusive molecular communications taking advantage of directionality properties at the receiver site. It can result in an increased communication range or in improved capabilities of discriminating signals of coexisting molecular communication systems.

5G technology offers innovative network services to vertical players, able to boost their service portfolio in critical areas that could not be fully addressed with 4G systems. However, 5G networks are complex systems, massively relying on the virtualization of network and computing resources, which requires specific skills to fully exploit their potential. This may represent a hard barrier for vertical stakeholders to effectively test and use innovative services on 5G networks. Our solution addresses this issue, by simplifying the way vertical players approach 5G services though simple yet flexible service templates that allow not only to specify and deploy a service, but also to test it in a variety of realistic conditions. Vertical players interact with these templates named Experiment Blueprints, which are manipulated by our tool and then translated into network service descriptors to be deployed by a service orchestrator, keeping unaware the vertical experimenter of the underlying operations. We use a vertical service in the area of Industry 4.0 as a running example to ease the understanding of the proposed approach.

The recent research activities on molecular communications systems highlighted impressive potentials for realizing new services in many fields. They include biomedical systems, nanotechnologies, food production and many others. Since the nature of such areas may be extremely different, in terms of geometrical scale, information delivery media, and related technologies, the proposed molecular communication systems include different reception techniques, adapted to the operating environment. In this survey, we focus on systems based on diffusion of signaling molecules, and analyze the main components running in a receiver, namely the reception process and the information decoding mechanism. For each of them, we review the most popular techniques proposed in literature, and discuss the feasibility of using these models to realize receivers based on living cells. In more detail, for the reception process, we discuss the matching between literature models and real reception mechanism. As for the information decoding mechanism, we review and critically discuss its possible implementation through transcriptional elements, which is the main way of implementing processing elements in living cells, highlighting feasibility in term of complexity and decoding time.

Diffusion-based molecular communication (DMC) with interacting carrier molecules allows exploring a variety of new communication paradigms. Simulating these interactions on a network scale is however hard from an analytic point of view, and continuous detection of which couples of particles may interact is a computationally expensive task. This work proposes different algorithms that allow detecting which particles are interacting. Hierarchical grid based approaches are explored and designed to maximally exploit the parallelism offered by multiple-graphics processing units (multi-GPU) systems. An implementation of the proposed algorithm is compared to some of our previous work in this domain and to a state-of-the-art collision detection library and nanosimulator. Performance tests indicate a speedup of up to a factor 100 compared to the collision detection algorithm implemented in the nanosimulator, and a factor 77 relative to the collision detection library.

Hyperviscosity syndrome can significant increase the risk of many cardiovascular diseases. In this paper we propose a molecular communication system having the purpose of monitoring the blood viscosity. This system results to be both simple and effective for real time estimating the blood viscosity level without the need of resorting to invasive blood analyses. The essential idea is to leverage the statistics of the particle dispersion in a blood vessel as a function of blood viscosity. The viscosity estimation is essentially based on the measure the time needed to cover a given propagation range.

The network function virtualization (NFV) paradigm decouples service functions (SFs) from the physical equipment where they are executed, thus increasing the efficiency of resource utilization, and makes networks and services more scalable and flexible. However, in order to efficiently manage and chain SFs to build network service slices in 5G networks, it is necessary to localize (virtualized) SFs together with their current status, which includes their load, attached virtual links status, configuration parameters, etc. To this aim, we propose a monitoring architecture able to track the network location and the current status of distributed and virtualized SFs, by using agents responsible to monitor the status of co-located SFs, both physical and virtual ones. The monitoring agents exchange their information by means of a gossip protocol to increase the reliability of the process and to build a distributed service monitoring architecture. In this way, it is possible to keep service decisions as local as possible, limiting the interactions with a centralized orchestrator, and thus increasing network scalability. We show that the network overhead of the distributed monitoring process is negligible.

This paper considers the scenario of a targeted drug delivery system, which consists of deploying a number of biological nanomachines close to a biological target (e.g., a tumor), able to deliver drug molecules in the diseased area. Suitably located transmitters are designed to release a continuous flow of drug molecules in the surrounding environment, where they diffuse and reach the target. These molecules are received when they chemically react with compliant receptors deployed on the receiver surface. In these conditions, if the release rate is relatively high and the drug absorption time is significant, congestion may happen, essentially at the receiver site. This phenomenon limits the drug absorption rate and makes the signal transmission ineffective, with an undesired diffusion of drug molecules elsewhere in the body. The original contribution of this paper consists of a theoretical analysis of the causes of congestion in diffusion-based molecular communications. For this purpose, it is proposed a reception model consisting of a set of pure loss queuing systems. The proposed model exhibits an excellent agreement with the results of a simulation campaign made by using the Biological and Nano-Scale communication simulator version 2 (BiNS2), a well-known simulator for molecular communications, whose reliability has been assessed through in vitro experiments. The obtained results can be used in rate control algorithms to optimally determine the optimal release rate of molecules in drug delivery applications.

This paper shows a codebook-based proposal for identifying simultaneous faults in data networks. It includes three main contributions. The first consists of the probabilitstic reduced search space heuristic (PRSSH), which aims to significantly reduce the cardinality of the candidate set of solutions through a so-called compatibility filtering. It is applied to the codebook optimized by the second contribution, which is a solution of the codebook optimization problem. It is built on the weighted set covering optimization problem and consists of a heuristic, named minimum Hamming distance increment maximization heuristic (MHDIM-HEU). Performance has been evaluated both by applying the proposed techniques to some sample networks, simulated by using the end-to-end connectivity service model, and by using an experimental codebook generated by using data collected from a real, nation-wide, next generation network. This codebook has been used to simulate fault effects, which were used to analyze the proposal. We compared the PRSSH approach with a previous proposal, named incremental hypothesis update (IHU), and the MHDIM-HEU with a random heuristic and an optimal branch and bound solution (only for very small network size). Results show the effectiveness of our proposals: PRSSH can decrease the false positive rate up to 66% with respect to IHU, with a significantly reduced processing time (two orders of magnitude). As for MHDIM-HEU, for the same target minimum Hamming distance it requires about half of the symptoms of the random heuristic, with performance very close to the optimal approach. As a third contribution, we evaluated the performance of the PRSSH approach over the codebook optimized by means of MHDIM-HEU, in order to evaluate the impact of the codebook compression on the fault localization performance. Numerical results confirm the goodness of the joint application of both approaches.

Diffusion-based molecular communication (DMC) with interacting carrier molecules allow to explore a variety of new communication paradigms. However, simulating these interactions on a network scale is hard from an analytic point of view, and a computationally challenging task which may easily become a bottleneck. This paper studies different techniques that allow to detect which particles are interacting. Recursive and hierarchical grid based approaches are proposed and a multithreaded CPU and GPU implementation respectively are evaluated and compared to a state-of-the-art collision detection library and nanosimulator.

This paper provides a global picture about the deployment of networked processing services for genomic data sets. Many current research make an extensive use genomic data, which are massive and rapidly increasing over time. They are typically stored in remote databases, accessible by using Internet. For this reason, a significant issue for effectively handling genomic data through data networks consists of the available network services. A first contribution of this paper consists of identifying the still unexploited features of genomic data that could allow optimizing their networked management. The second and main contribution of this survey consists of a methodological classification of computing and networking alternatives which can be used to offer what we call the Genomic-as-a-Service (GaaS) paradigm. In more detail, we analyze the main genomic processing applications, and classify not only the main computing alternatives to run genomics workflows in either a local machine or a distributed cloud environment, but also the main software technologies available to develop genomic processing services. Since an analysis encompassing only the computing aspects would provide only a partial view of the issues for deploying GaaS system, we present also the main networking technologies that are available to efficiently support a GaaS solution. We first focus on existing service platforms, and analyze them in terms of service features, such as scalability, flexibility, and efficiency. Then, we present a taxonomy for both wide area and datacenter network technologies that may fit the GaaS requirements. It emerges that virtualization, both in computing and networking, is the key for a successful large-scale exploitation of genomic data, by pushing ahead the adoption of the GaaS paradigm. Finally, the paper illustrates a short and long-term vision on future research challenges in the field., Comment: Journal publication

Cognitive radio has emerged as a promising candidate solution to improve spectrum utilization in next-generation wireless networks. A crucial requirement for future cognitive radio networks is the wideband spectrum sensing, which allows detecting spectral opportunities across a wide frequency range. On the other hand, the Internet of Things concept has revolutionized the usage of sensors and of the relevant data. Connecting sensors to cloud computing infrastructure enables the so-called paradigm of Sensing as a Service (S2aaS). In this paper, we present an S2aaS architecture to offer the Spectrum Sensing as a Service (S3aaS), by exploiting the flexibility of software-defined radio. We believe that S3aaS is a crucial step to simplify the implementation of spectrum sensing in cognitive radio. We illustrate the system components for the S3aaS, highlighting the system design choices, especially for the management and processing of the large amount of data coming from the spectrum sensors. We analyze the connectivity requirements between the sensors and the processing platform, and evaluate the trade-offs between required bandwidth and target service delay. Finally, we show the implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype, used for assessing the effectiveness of the whole system in operation with respect to a legacy processing architecture.

This paper shows a proposal for making the price of cloud services clear and subject to optimization. The proposal is tailored to Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications based on big data management. The basic assumption of our analysis is that the emerging IoT applications do not simply make use of the information collected by few sensors. The expected volume of information generated by sensors, the different nature of sensors, the different information delivery techniques, and the variable nature of applications make the system management a real 5-V big data problem. In this paper, we identify the key features that characterize a cloud-based, sensing-as-a-service IoT application, we map each feature into a specific cost function, and we suitably combine these cost functions. This way, we obtain a pricing strategy sufficiently simple for it to be applied in operation, depending on all the identified features, and flexible enough for being updated for any new introduced IoT service in the cloud infrastructure.

The management of network infrastructures has become increasingly complex over time, which is mainly attributed to the introduction of new functionality to support emerging services and applications. To address this important issue, research efforts in the last few years focused on developing software-defined networking solutions. While initial work proposed centralized architectures, their scalability limitations have led researchers to investigate a distributed control plane. Controller placement algorithms and mechanisms for building a logically centralized network view are some examples of challenges addressed in this context. A critical issue that requires specific attention concerns the communication between distributed entities involved in decision-making processes. To this end, we propose SigMA, a signaling framework that supports communication between the different entities of a decentralized management and control system. We also define the communication primitives and interfaces involved in such a decentralized environment. The benefits of SigMA are illustrated through three realistic network resource management use cases with different communication requirements. Based on simulation, we demonstrate the flexibility and extensibility of our solution in satisfying these requirements, thus effectively supporting advanced decentralized decision-making processes.

This article shows the usage and the experimental analysis of open source software packages for designing and implementing carrier-grade multimedia services. The shown implementation is based on the use of Java Call Control APIs for managing SIP sessions and MGCP connections. This JCC implementation has been integrated within an open source platform, Mobicents JSLEE. Mobicents is a runtime environment suitable for deploying services integrating voice, video, and messaging over different networks. An extensive experimental campaign has allowed suitable deployment strategies to be identified, depending on the service features. The main contribution of this article is to present these strategies, consisting of resource allocation and configuration in a virtualized environment. The results of our experiments are aimed at providing general guidance on configuring servers in a virtualized environment such as a cloud. They can also be helpful to address the server placement problem, which is beyond the scope of this article. An additional contribution of this article consists of a simple and effective model to predict the achievable server throughput, expressed in calls per second. For this purpose, we have measured the CPU time for processing SIP and MGCP messages, and estimated the maximum sustainable load of each virtual machine. In this way, we can preliminarily estimate the number of virtualized instances of the platform needed for handling a given workload with the desired quality of service.

Nanoscale communications is an emergent research topic with potential applications in many fields. In order to design nanomachines able to exploit the communication potentials of nanoscale environments, it is necessary to identify the basic communication mechanisms and the relevant parameters. In this paper, we show how system parameters can be derived by suitably matching the results of in vitro experiments with those obtained via simulations by using the BiNS2 simulator. In order to scale the simulation from micrometric settings, with timescale in the order of seconds, to real experiments lasting tens of minutes with millimetric size, we enhanced the BiNS2 simulator by introducing a space partition algorithm based on the octree. In this way, the simulator can exploit the high level of parallelism of modern multicore computer architectures. We have used this technique for simulating an experiment focused on the communication between platelets and endothelium through the diffusion of nanoparticles. Simulation results match experimental data, thus allowing us to infer useful information on the receiver operation.

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are a new class of engineered systems based on interactions between cyber and physical components, by integrating three main components: communications, control, and computing. When these systems are brought to the nanoscale, some design and implementation issues arise. A high level of complexity is due to the use of biological components in a CPS, such as engineered cells, which may play the role of sensors, actuators, or even controllers. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of control solutions implemented through the usage of molecular communications in a biological nanoscale cyber-physical system, where a biological nanomachine plays the role of actuator, that releases drug molecules, and another acts as both sensor and controller. The goal of the proposal is to control the release rate, so that target cells can receive the desired amount of drug in a given time, by limiting potential side effects. Basically, we aim to limit congestion, which can arise when large amounts of molecules are released toward a target. To this aim, we propose a simple congestion detection scheme, and compare different rate control algorithms used to throttle the molecules release rate at the transmitter upon the reception of a feedback signal sent by the receiver. We validate the proposed techniques against delivery efficiency and delivery time of molecules by means of an extensive simulation campaign.

Experts have warned that processing of genetic data will soon exceed the computing needs of Twitter and YouTube. This is due to the drop of the costs for sequencing DNA of any living creature and its huge impact in many application areas. Designing suitable network architectures for distributing such data is therefore of paramount importance. Management of genomic data sets is a typical big data problem, characterized not only by a huge volume, but also by the large size of each genomic file. Since it is unthinkable that any professional who needs to process genomes can own the infrastructure for massive genome analysis, a cloud-based access to genomic services is envisaged. This will have a significant impact on the underlying networks, which could become the system bottleneck. In this paper, we propose Genome Centric Networking (GCN), a novel network function virtualization framework for cloud-based genomic data management, designed with the aim of limiting the exchanged traffic by using distributed caching. The key element of GCN is a novel signaling protocol, which allows both discovering network resources and managing caches. We evaluated GCN on a real testbed. GCN allows halving the exchanged traffic and reducing the transfer time of genomic datasets significantly.

This paper shows a proposal for pricing cloud services tailored to IoT applications that generate big data. The basic assumption of our analysis is that the emerging IoT applications do not simply make use of the information collected by few sensors. The expected volume of information generated by sensors, the different nature of sensors, the different information delivery techniques, and the variable nature of applications make the system management a real 3V big data problem. In this paper we identify the key feature that characterizes a cloud-based, sensing-as-a-service IoT application, map each feature into a specific cost function, and suitably combine these cost functions. This way, we obtain a pricing strategy sufficiently simple to be applied in operation, dependent on all the identified features, and flexible enough for being updated for any new introduced IoT service in the cloud infrastructure.

The management of network infrastructures has become increasingly complex over time, which is mainly attributed to the introduction of new functionality to support emerging services and applications. To address this important issue, research efforts in the last few years focused on developing Software-Defined Networking solutions. While initial work proposed centralized architectures, their scalability limitations have led researchers to investigate a distributed control plane, with controller placement algorithms and mechanisms for building a logically centralized network view, being examples of challenges addressed. A critical issue that has not been adequately addressed concerns the communication between distributed decision-making entities to ensure configuration consistency. To this end, this paper proposes a signaling framework that can allow the exchange of information in distributed management and control scenarios. The benefits of the proposed framework are illustrated through a realistic network resource management use case. Based on simulation, we demonstrate the flexibility and extensibility of our solution in meeting the requirements of distributed decision-making processes.

In this article, the use of IEEE 802.11 technology is used for the problem of augmenting the coverage of satellite positioning systems when less than four satellites are visible, by using a low complexity and effective technique involving a terrestrial radio technology. The solution consists of processing the information received by the terrestrial infrastructure for introducing virtual satellites to obtain the minimum number of satellites needed for fixing the receiver position. The feasibility and the achievable performance is demonstrated experimentally by implementing real prototypes using either sophisticated or low-cost receivers in different experiments. The results obtained are comparable, in terms of error magnitude, with those of a plain GPS receiver when four satellites are visible.

A functional mapping between the Java Call Control (JCC) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) can help developers more easily create, deploy, and manage advanced telecom services.

A critical issue for the convergence of telephone networks towards an all IP environment is the provisioning of an adequate QoS level to the telephone traffic. Following the guidelines detailed in RFC 2990, we recently proposed an admission control function, named Gauge & Gate Reservation with Independent Probing (GRIP), through which we are able to provide QoS guarantees by means of stateless procedures compliant within the Differentiated Service (DiffServ) paradigm, which is the de facto standard for QoS provisioning in Internet. The main goal of this paper is to present a specific implementation of GRIP optimized for supporting voice over IP (VoIP) services within a DiffServ cloud. In particular, we propose and analyze a simple measurement-based call admission control procedure for carrying VoIP traffic in a DiffServ environment. We assume voice sources are leaky bucket controlled with known leaky bucket parameters. We analyze the leaky bucket to derive the distribution of the times over which voice sources generate traffic at peak and regulated rates. We use the results of that analysis, which provides complete knowledge of the traffic generation characteristics of a single source, to derive a Markov chain model that characterizes the voice packet generation process of a single voice source. We then derive a simple stateless threshold policy for admission control; that is, our policy is of the form if, at admission request time,x=

Digital Cinema (DC) consists of integration of new advanced digital technologies in the context of the cinema system. As regards the transport of DC content towards theatres, Distributors may select the method that is both economically and technically sound. In this work, which is carried out within the framework of the IST Integrated Project Enhanced Digital CINEma (EDCINE), we deal with the network distribution service provided by a Network Service Provider, which becomes a new actor in the DC business. One of the main criticalities of the system is the very large size of the contents to be transferred towards theatres. From the operator's perspective, this criticality translates into the objective of optimising the usage of network resources while complying with quality of service (QoS) constraints. The goal of this paper is to present the system which is able to support the network delivery of DC contents, with a special focus on live event delivery. This service can consume a large amount of network bandwidth, not only because of the volume of transmitted data, but also due to the number of receivers, and thus multicast transmission proves to be very useful. Consequently, a key issue of the overall distribution system is the request-routing algorithm, the goal of which is to optimise the QoS-guaranteed delivery of a number of live streams in the backbone, each one of which is sent towards a set of theatres (QoS multicast routing). We consider the MultiProtocol Label Switching mechanism, which has emerged as an elegant solution to meet traffic engineering and resource reservation requirements in backbone networks, and focus especially on the overall request-routing procedure, the mathematical modelling of the problem, and relevant solving algorithms. Finally, we present the comparative performance evaluation of these algorithms by means of an extensive simulation campaign performed with the OMNeT++ simulation platform.

Given the high multi-disciplinarity of Molecular Communications (MolCom), researchers often face significant difficulties to understand each other. This impairment not only affect researchers with different backgrounds, but it also affects the different software tools. This paper motivates the development of the Molecular Communication Markup Language (MolComML). MolComML is proposed as an XML-based format to represent the considered elements, interactions, configuration and results of the experiments and simulations in the field of MolCom. MolComML is designed with the objective of converging all fields of research within Mol-Com to help the exchange of information. We overview its main functionality and define its basic composing elements.

The Internet of Things concept has revolutionized the way of using sensors and produced data. The interconnection of sensors to computing systems and to both storage infrastructures and processing facilities in a cloud fashion enables the paradigm of Sensing as a Service (S2aaS). In this paper, we propose a system architecture compliant with the S2aaS model, and detail it for a specific use case, the Spectrum Sensing as a Service (S3aaS). We illustrate the system components, including heterogeneous spectrum sensors, a distributed messaging system, a scheduler, a scalable database with a relevant SQL interface tool, and a user interface tool used to interact with the S3aaS system. Finally, we show the implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype used for assessing its effectiveness in operation.

Current proposals for combining service functions (SFs) do not address some critical management issues, such as the discovery of SF instances close to IP data paths. This information is crucial for deploying complex services both in large cloud networks, where SFs may be moved or replicated, and in the emerging fog/mobile edge computing systems. For this purpose, in this letter we propose the distributed off-path signaling protocol (OSP). We show the protocol functions and demonstrate its scalability and effectiveness by experimental results., Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Letters

Cloud computing is a convenient model to easily access large amounts of computing resources in order to implement platforms for data intensive applications. These platforms, such as Hadoop, are designed to run on large clusters. When the amount of computing and networking resources are limited, such as in the emergent paradigm of edge computing, maximizing their utilization is of paramount importance. In this paper we investigate the performance of a benchmark suite for Hadoop, running on both physical and virtual infrastructure in a testbed representative of an edge computing deployment. Experimental results show that in spite of a predictable performance loss in virtualized environments with respect to the native one, it is still convenient to execute Hadoop in a small cloud. This could be useful to pre-process data coming from sensors and/or mobile devices before sending them to a central cloud for further analysis.

This paper shows the methodology used for analyzing the technical and non-technical skills necessary for defining a university program providing a Data Science certification. The original aspects of the approach consists of the close collaboration between the organizing universities and the collaborating companies. For what concerns the technical skills, the statistics collected by the already existing programs have been validated by processing thousands of job offers worldwide. The humanistic perspective has completed the picture of the set of skills that have led to the program shown.

If the Internet is to become a network supporting differentiated application and transfer services, advanced architectures must be deployed to efficiently support hard Quality of Service (QoS) and usage-based charging. In this paper we present a novel pricing scheme for IP services with guaranteed quality. Our approach is built on the basis of the virtual delay, which is a novel, simple and effective QoS index that describes an advanced IP service. We propose a model to compute the virtual delay from a purely technical point of view, taking into account not only guaranteed performance, but also traffic and system parameters. We then analyze the sensitivity of both the virtual delay and the tariff towards the involved parameters, taking into account both the users' benefit and the operators' income. We also extend the pricing model to make it dependent on service demand. Finally, we also present an economic analysis, the aim of which is to establish a model to set the QoS level and the relevant price, taking into account revenue, social fairness, and service availability.

The evolution and the spreading of wireless access technology and the consequent increase of user mobility will make handover procedures critical for the provision of Quality of Service in the next generation wireless Internet. Often, layer 3 handovers are supposed to be driven by access layer procedures. In this way, the movement detection delay can be reduced, but at the expenses of making the Mobile IP protocol dependent of lower layer implementations. Furthermore, this approach may not be effective when users roam among heterogeneous networks. Nevertheless, movement detection algorithms, which operate at the Mobile IP layer, imply appreciable delays, usually intolerable for real time services.In this paper, we propose a Mobile IP handover scheme based on a novel movement detection algorithm at layer 3, able to timely manage migrations by exploiting advertisements losses, combined with a two-timers mechanism.We analyze the performance of our algorithm in terms of handover delay and throughput, and we show that our solution is able to decrease the movement detection delay as much as 47% with respect to other literature solutions that pursue similar approaches. In addition, this feature implies also higher values of the throughput seen by the TCP layer.

This paper presents the interdisciplinary area of networked genomic research and medicine. We first illustrate the most significant issues involved in these activities. Then, we illustrate an ongoing research activity in this area, and the relevant results obtained by using a network architecture designed for optimising the distribution of a large amount of genomic data-set. This architecture, based on an evolved Next Steps in Signalling, addresses the major challenges for managing genomic data-sets over a network with limited resources. Research results have been obtained in the framework of the project Advanced networking for EU genomic RESearch, which is part of the GEANT/GN3plus project, co-funded by the European Commission.

This letter proposes a new architectural solution for service creation in JSLEE-compliant platforms, where service business logic can be separated by implementation issues and designed by non JSLEE experts. The novelty consists of integrating a workflow engine inside the development environment of the JSLEE platform, thus allowing simplified management in the development of advanced services and reduction of the time to market of new services.

This paper shows the network solutions proposed and implemented in the framework of the project ARES. The strategic objective of ARES is to create an advanced CDN, accessible through a cloud interface, supporting medical and research systems making a large use of genomic data. The expected achievements consist of identifying suitable management policies of genomic contents in a cloud environment, in terms of efficiency, resiliency, scalability, and QoS in a distributed fashion using a multi-user CDN approach. The experimental architecture envisages the use of the following key elements: a wideband networking infrastructure, a resource virtualization software platform, a distributed service architecture, including suitable computing and storage infrastructure, a distributed software platform able to ingest, validate, and analyze high volumes of data, a software engine executing a sophisticated intelligence for workload distribution and CDN provisioning.

This paper shows the cloud services provided by the project ARES. The network solutions have been illustrated in a companion paper in the same conference. The ARES project aims to deploy CDN services over a broadband network for accessing and exchanging genomic datasets, accessible by medical and research personnel through a Cloud interface. This paper illustrates the procedure defined to access such services, also providing a case-study simulation to show the implementation of the bioinformatics pipeline included. The experimental activity in ARES aims to gain a detailed understanding of the network problems relating to its sustainability given the increasing use of genomics for diagnostic purposes. The main aim is to allow an extensive use of genomic data through the collection of relevant information available from the network in the medical and diagnostic field diseases.

In this paper, we present a communication protocol between a pair of biological nanomachines, transmitter and receiver, built upon molecular communications in an aqueous environment. In our proposal, the receiver, acting as a control node, sends a connection setup signal to the transmitter, which stokes molecules, to start molecule transmission. The molecules transmitted by the transmitter propagate in the environment and are absorbed by the receiver through its receptors. When the receiver absorbs the desired quantity of molecules, it releases a tear-down signal to notify the transmitter to stop the transmission. The proposed protocol implements a bidirectional communication by using a number of techniques originally designed for the TCP. In fact, the proposed protocol is connection-oriented, and uses the TCP-like probing to find a suitable transmission rate between transmitter and receiver so as to avoid receiver congestion. Unlike the TCP, however, explicit acknowledgments are not used, since they would degrade the communication throughput due to the large delay, a characteristic feature of molecular communications. Thus, the proposed protocol uses implicit acknowledgments, and feedback signals are sent by the receiver to throttle the transmission rate at the transmitter, i.e., explicit negative feedbacks. We also present the results of an extensive simulation campaign, used to validate the proposed protocol and to properly dimension the main protocol parameters., Comment: Accepted for publication, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 2014

In this paper, we propose a new gossip-based signaling dissemination method for the Next Steps in Signaling protocol family. In more detail, we propose to extend the General Internet Signaling Transport (GIST) protocol, so as to leverage these new dissemination capabilities from all NSIS Signaling Layer Protocol applications using its transport capabilities. The new GIST extension consists of two main procedures: a bootstrap procedure, during which new GIST-enabled nodes discover each other, and a service dissemination procedure, which is used to effectively disseminate signaling messages within an Autonomous System. To this aim, we defined three dissemination models, bubble, balloon, and hose, so as to fulfill requirements of different network and/or service management scenarios. An experimental campaign carried out on the GENI testbed shows the effectiveness of the proposed solution., Comment: Accepted for publication at IFIP/IEEE NOMS 2012, Maui, USA

This paper analyzes the communications and medical potentials arising from establishing nano-scale communications making use of the stent tubular structures in blood vessels. Most of stent implants (both bare metal and drug eluiting stents) happens in coronary arteries for supporting weak endothelial points and counteracting the obstructing effects of arthrosclerosis. Such structures have continuously inspired researchers for introducing additional functions to the mere mechanical sustain of vessels. After a review of the current literature, we propose an original use of stents for monitoring CD47 receptors bearing cells and provide effective diagnostic and prognostic information. We can also perform the detection of different cancer markers, and then integrate this information. These monitoring functions and the event notifications makes used of nano-scale communications. Through a well established simulator of biological nano-scale communications, we will gain significant insights about the establishment of these types of communications happening between different sections of the stent structure. The information exchanges is assumed to be collected by nano-sensors of tumor cells. The outcome of the research is the characterization of the channel transmission capabilities. When considering cost benefit of these expensive smart stents, we suggest a wider perspective where oncologists may join the team of future interventional cardiologists. Thus, our system creates a link between cancer detection, stent devices, and body area networks to P5 medicine.

In this paper we analyze the probability of consistency of sensor data distribution systems (SDDS), and determine suitable evaluation models. This problem is typically difficult, since a reliable model taking into account all parameters and processes which affect the system consistency is unavoidably very complex. The simplest candidate approach consists of modeling the state sojourn time, or holding time, as memoryless, and resorting to the well known solutions of Markovian processes. Nevertheless, it may happen that this approach does not fit with some working conditions. In particular, the correct modeling of the SDDS dynamics requires the introduction of a number of parameters, such as the packet transfer time or the packet loss probability, the value of which may determine the suitability of unsuitability of the Markovian model. Candidate alternative solutions include the Erlang phase-type approximation of nearly constant state holding time and a more refined model to account for overlapping events in semi-Markov processes., IEEE IWCMC 2013, Cagliari, Italy, June 2013

In this paper, we evaluate the suitability of the vehicular devices for supporting data storage and distribution applications. Vehicular storage systems have recently emerged as means for making the information related to the vehicular environment available to vehicular users. Information could either be collected by sensors mounted onboard vehicles or coming from the surrounding environment. Modeling a vehicular data storage and distribution system requires the introduction of a number of parameters, such as the vehicle concentration and transmission range, the value of which may determine the suitability or unsuitability of the vehicular environment for establishing a communication infrastructure with the desired quality. In this paper we show how to solve this problem by resorting to a Markovian model and some results achieved through its application., Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE LANMAN 2013

This paper shows an innovative solution for distributing dynamic sensor data by using distributed caches. Our proposal is based on the concepts of service modularization and virtualization of network nodes made available by the NetServ hosting environment, which has been defined and implemented with the aim of extending the functions of the network nodes. Through a lab experiment involving tens of nodes, we have demonstrated a significant performance improvements in term of traffic saving and download time in comparison with a legacy, Internet-based, approach. Beyond this performance improvements, the proposed solution holds also functional improvements, in terms of dynamic deployment and easy integration with services making use of sensor data., Accepted for publication in IEEE LANMAN 2013