Antonio de la Oliva

• Professor (Associate) at University Carlos III de Madrid

5G mobile networks introduce a new dimension for connecting and operating mobile robots in outdoor environments, leveraging cloud-native and offloading features of 5G networks to enable fully flexible and collaborative cloud robot operations. However, the limited battery life of robots remains a significant obstacle to their effective adoption in r...

The advent of the Fifth Generation Mobile Network (5G) deployments and the anticipation of the Sixth Generation Mobile Network (6G) have spurred a concerted effort towards defining new network and application services that harness the potential of these technologies. One of these key technologies is deterministic networking, which has emerged as a...

In order to accommodate myriad disparate services, from legacy voice and data, to niche network applications for industry verticals, 6G networks are expected to heavily exploit the concept of network slicing introduced in 5G. However, the increased complexity of sliced networks amplifies the risk of configuration errors, necessitating the expanded...

5G mobile networks introduce a new dimension for connecting and operating mobile robots in outdoor environments, leveraging cloud-native and offloading features of 5G networks to enable fully flexible and collaborative cloud robot operations. However, the limited battery life of robots remains a significant obstacle to their effective adoption in r...

Starting with 5G, mobile networks moved away from the point-to-point model used by previous generations towards a Service-Based Architecture (SBA) focused on a Cloud-native design. While 5G considers the SBA mainly as a central location with a single administrative domain, 6G is expected to become more of a fully-distributed system. This raises the...

The Industry 4.0 (I4.0) concept revolutionizes how processes like quality, productivity, customization, and safety are managed in manufacturing. It has developed alongside 5G technology, and the two influence each other significantly. 5G supports the communication needs of I4.0, while I4.0 is a major sector for 5G growth. This whitepaper offers a c...

The Industry 4.0 (I4.0) concept revolutionizes how processes like quality, productivity, customization, and safety are managed in manufacturing. It has developed alongside 5G technology, and the two influence each other significantly. 5G supports the communication needs of I4.0, while I4.0 is a major sector for 5G growth. This whitepaper offers a c...

With the widespread adoption of diverse IoT applications, various vertical IoT deployments has emerged in recent years. Mission-critical IoT applications have gained substantial traction, showing considerable potential in various vertical markets, such as smart medicine and smart manufacturing. Given the significance of high-value mission-critical...

Industry 4.0 applications impose the challenging demand of delivering packets with bounded latencies via a wireless network. This is further complicated if the network is not dedicated to the time critical application. In this paper we use network calculus analysis to derive closed form expressions of latency bounds for time critical traffic when 8...

Last years we have witnessed the uprising of location based applications, which depend on the devices ability to accurately obtain their position. IEEE 802.11, foretelling the need for such applications, started the IEEE 802.11az work on Next Generation Positioning. Although this standard provides positioning enhancements for sub-6GHz and mmWave ba...

ETSI Multi-access Edge computing (MEC) main purpose is to improve latency and bandwidth consumption by keeping local traffic local while providing computing resources near the end-user. Despite its clear benefits, the next-generation of hyper-distributed applications (e.g., edge robotics, augmented environments, or smart agriculture) will exacerbat...

Last years we have witnessed the uprising of location-based applications, which depend on the device's capabilities to accurately obtain their position. IEEE 802.11, foretelling the need for such applications, started the IEEE 802.11az work on Next Generation Positioning. Although this standard provides positioning enhancements for sub-6 GHz and mm...

In this letter, we formulate the orchestration problem for networked robotic applications considering contextual information. Any solution to the proposed formulation provides adequate routing updates, migration, and radio handover decisions as the robot moves. We prove the NP-hard nature of the problem, and solve it for a remote driving robotic ap...

Wireless communications represent a game changer for future manufacturing plants, enabling flexible production chains, as machinery and other components not to be restricted to a location by the rigid wired connections on the factory floor. However, the presence of electromagnetic interference in the wireless spectrum may result in packet loss and...

Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) is an emerging paradigm, whereby virtualized network infrastructure elements from different vendors communicate via open, standardized interfaces. A key element therein is the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based controller. Traditionally, all data available in the network has bee...

Wireless communications represent a game changer for future manufacturing plants, enabling flexible production chains as machinery and other components are not restricted to a location by the rigid wired connections on the factory floor. However, the presence of electromagnetic interference in the wireless spectrum may result in packet loss and del...

Cloud-based robotics systems leverage a wide range of Information Technologies (IT) to offer tangible benefits like cost reduction, powerful computational capabilities, data offloading, etc. However, the centralized nature of cloud computing is not well-suited for a multitude of Operational Technologies (OT) nowadays used in robotics systems that r...

The traditional approach to distributed machine learning is to adapt learning algorithms to the network, e.g., reducing updates to curb overhead. Networks based on intelligent edge, instead, make it possible to follow the opposite approach, i.e., to define the logical network topology around the learning task to perform, so as to meet the desired l...

Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) is an emerging paradigm, whereby virtualized network infrastructure elements from different vendors communicate via open, standardized interfaces. A key element therein is the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based controller. Traditionally, all data available in the network has bee...

5G is being deployed in major cities across the globe. Although the benefits brought by the new 5G air interface will be numerous, 5G is more than just an evolution of the radio technology. New concepts, such as the application of network softwarization and programmability paradigms to the overall network design, the reduced latency promised by edg...

Industry 4.0 aims to support smarter and autonomous processes while improving agility, cost efficiency, and user experience. To fulfill its promises, properly processing the data of the industrial processes and infrastructures is required. Artificial intelligence (AI) appears as a strong candidate to handle all generated data, and to help in the au...

The fifth generation (5G) of mobile communications introduces improvements on many fronts when compared to its previous generations. Besides the performance enhancements and new advances in radio technologies, it also integrates other technological domains, such as cloud-to-things continuum and artificial intelligence. In this work, the 5G-DIVE Ela...

Edge computing has established itself as the foundation for next-generation mobile networks, IT infrastructure, and industrial systems thanks to promised low network latency, computation offloading, and data locality. These properties empower key use-cases like Industry 4.0, Vehicular Communication and Internet of Things. Nowadays implementation of...

Network slicing provides a way to define logically isolated networks over the same and shared physical infrastructure. This paper departs from previous work defining GST And Network Slice Operator (GANSO), a framework for automating the creation of network slices over SDN architectures, and proposes extensions to support the availability attribute...

The traditional approach to distributed machine learning is to adapt learning algorithms to the network, e.g., reducing updates to curb overhead. Networks based on intelligent edge, instead, make it possible to follow the opposite approach, i.e., to define the logical network topology em around the learning task to perform, so as to meet the desire...

Ongoing research and industrial exploitation of SDN and NFV technologies promise higher flexibility on network automation and infrastructure optimization. Choosing the location of Virtual Network Functions is a central problem in the automation and optimization of the software-defined, virtualization-based next generation of networks such as 5G and...

Edge & Fog computing have received considerable attention as promising candidates for the evolution of robotic systems. In this letter, we propose COTORRA, an Edge & Fog driven robotic testbed that combines context information with robot sensor data to validate innovative concepts for robotic systems prior to being applied in a production environme...

Fog computing has rapidly become a widely accepted computing paradigm to mitigate cloud computing-based infrastructure limitations such as scarcity of bandwidth, large latency, security, and privacy issues. Fog computing resources and applications dynamically vary at run-time, and they are highly distributed, mobile, and appear-disappear rapidly at...

Fog computing has rapidly become a widely accepted computing paradigm to mitigate cloud computing-based infrastructure limitations such as scarcity of bandwidth, large latency, security, and privacy issues. Fog computing resources and applications dynamically vary at run-time, and they are highly distributed, mobile, and appear-disappear rapidly at...

The trend toward cloudification of communication networks and services, with user data and applications stored and processed in data centers, pushes the limits of current Data Center Networks (DCNs), requiring improved scalability, resiliency, and performance. Here we consider a DCN forwarding approach based on software-defined addressing (SDA), wh...

Recent advances on Edge computing, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and 5G are stimulating the interest of the industrial sector to satisfy the stringent and real-time requirements of their applications. Digital Twin is a key piece in the industrial digital transformation and its benefits are very well studied in the literature. However, desig...

The ongoing research and industrial exploitation of SDN and NFV technologies promise higher flexibility on network automation and infrastructure optimization. Choosing the location of Virtual Network Functions is a central problem in the automation and optimization of the software-defined, virtualization-based next generation of networks such as 5G...

The forthcoming set of 5G standards will bring programmability and flexibility to levels never seen before. This has required introducing changes in the architecture of mobile networks, enabling different features such as the split of control and data planes, as required to support the rapid programming of heterogeneous data planes. Software Define...

Forthcoming networks will need to accommodate a large variety of services over a common shared infrastructure. To achieve the necessary flexibility and cost savings, these networks will need to leverage two promising technologies: Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC). While the benefits of NFV and MEC have bee...

This paper presents a baseline roadmap for the evolution of 5G new radio over the next decade. Three timescales are considered, namely short-term (2022-ish), medium-term (2025-ish), and long-term (2030-ish). The evolution of the target key performance indicators (KPIs) is first analyzed by accounting for forecasts on the emerging use cases and thei...

5G-DIVE targets end-to-end 5G trials aimed at proving the technical merits and business value proposition of 5G technologies in two vertical pilots, namely (i) Industry 4.0 and (ii) Autonomous Drone Scout. Its design is built around two main pillars, namely (1) end-to-end 5G connectivity including 5G New Radio, Crosshaul transport and 5G Core, and...

In addition to CPRI, new functional splits have been defined in 5G creating diverse fronthaul transport bandwidth and latency requirements. These fronthaul requirements shall be fulfilled simultaneously together with the backhaul requirements by an integrated fronthaul and backhaul transport solution. In this paper, we analyze the technical challen...

The goal of 5G-Crosshaul is to integrate fronthaul and backhaul operation under the same data and control planes. This paper focuses on the latter, by experimentally showing the flexibility of the 5G-Crosshaul Control Infrastructure (XCI). In this sense, various network setups featuring heterogeneous network and computing resources and high-speed m...

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) technologies bring important improvements in terms of network bandwidth, latency, and use of context information and critical for services like multimedia streaming, augmented, and virtual reality. In future deployments, operators will need to decide how many MEC points of presence (PoPs) are needed and where to de...

Cloud or Centralized Radio Access Networks (C-RANs) are expected to be widely deployed under 5G in order to support the anticipated increased traffic demands and reduce costs. Under C-RAN, the radio elements (e.g., eNB or gNB in 5G) are split into a basic radio part (Distributed Unit, DU), and a pool-able base band processing part (Central Unit, CU...

This article dives into the design of the next generation mobile transport networks to simultaneously support the needs of various vertical industries with diverse range of networking and computing requirements. Network slicing has emerged as the most promising approach to address this challenge by enabling per-slice management of virtualized resou...

In the recent years, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has changed the way networks are engineered, making them more flexible, programmable and dynamic. SDN advocates for the centralization of control functionalities in a central node, the so-called controller. This entity has a wide view of the entire network, including the topology, facilitating...

5G networks will be characterized by their diversity in terms of traffic patterns, multi-tenancy and heterogeneous and stringent traffic requirements. Network softwarization is a key enabler to cope with such management burden, as it provides the ability to control all networking functions through (re)programming, thus providing higher flexibility...

This chapter reviews the trends in the end‐to‐end (E2E) architectural design for 5th generation (5G) networks. It describes the high‐level ideas behind the common architectural trends, with a first definition of their common capabilities and how they can be leveraged to provide the enhanced key performance indicators (KPIs) expected by 5G networks....

This chapter focuses on the description of transport network architecture suitable for 5G in terms of both user plane (UP) and control plane (CP). The 5G UP architecture considers converged optical and wireless network domains in a common 5G infrastructure supporting both transport and access. Given the great degree of technology heterogeneity in t...

5G requires a redesign of transport networks in order to feed the increasingly bandwidth hungry radio access networks and to benefit from the performance/cost efficiency provided by the integration of both backhaul and fronthaul segments over the same transport substrate as well as the incorporation of cloud RAN architectures. In addition, to incre...

This paper is focused on the 5G-Crosshaul Packet Forwarding Element (XPFE), which is the packet forwarding element of the 5G-Crosshaul network architecture. The XPFE integrates multiple technologies which allow to transport traffic from multiple tenants and of different nature over the same infrastructure. Hence, the paper is focused on the perform...

The architecture of current operator infrastructures is being challenged by the non-stopping growing demand of data hungry services appearing every day. While currently deployed operator networks have been able to cope with traffic demands so far, the architectures for the 5th generation of mobile networks (5G) are expected to support unprecedented...

This article proposes an innovative architecture design for a 5G transport solution (dubbed 5G-Crosshaul) targeting the integration of existing and new fronthaul and backhaul technologies and interfaces. At the heart of the proposed design lie an SDN/NFV-based management and orchestration entity (XCI), and an Ethernet-based packet forwarding entity...

The paper presents a study of key aspects in the design of a flexible unified data plane capable of integrating both fronthaul and backhaul transport in future 5 G systems. In this study, we first review candidate access and multiplexing technologies from the state of the art and assess their capability to support legacy and new fronthaul and backh...

The current wireless network architecture needs to be re-thought to support mobility in very dense and heterogeneous network deployments. We propose and experimentally evaluate a novel SDN-based architecture which makes use of DMM concepts to deploy fast, flexible, reliable, and scalable mobility management mechanisms at both local and regional sco...

This paper presents the control and data plane architecture design for a 5G transport solution (5G‐Crosshaul) with the aim of integrating the fronthaul and backhaul network segments in a common transport stratum. The control plane relies on the Software‐defined networking/Network Functions Virtualization concept to control and orchestrate the diffe...

The expected boost in mobile data traffic and the evolution towards the next generation of networks are making cellular operators reconsider whether current approaches for handling mobility could be improved, according to the characteristics of the mobile traffic that actually flows through real networks. In this work, we make use of extensive anal...

The CPRI specification has been introduced to enable the communication between radio equipment and radio equipment controllers, and is of particular interest for mobile operators willing to deploy their networks following the novel cloud radio access network approach. In such a case, CPRI provides an interface for the interconnection of remote radi...

We are immerse in a world that becomes more and more mobile every day, with ubiquitous connectivity and increasing demand for mobile services. Current mobile terminals support several access technologies, enabling users to gain connectivity in a plethora of scenarios and favoring their mobility. However, the management of network connectivity using...

The Xhaul architecture presented in this article is aimed at developing a 5G integrated backhaul and fronthaul transport network enabling flexible and software-defined reconfiguration of all networking elements in a multi-tenant and service-oriented unified management environment. The Xhaul transport network vision consists of high-capacity switche...

The significant growth in mobile data traffic and the ever- increasing user's demand for high-speed, always connected networks continue challenging network providers and lead research towards solutions to enable faster, scalable and more flexible networks. In this paper we present the CROWD approach, a networking framework providing mechanisms to t...

To cope with the growing traffic demand, future mobile networks will be denser and integrate heterogeneous technologies. However, if not properly engineered, such networks may incur huge energy waste when there is little traffic, and may suffer from an unbearable management burden caused by the variety of technologies integrated. In this article, w...

Mobile operators are now facing the challenges posed by a huge data demand from users, mainly due to the introduction of modern portable devices and the success of mobile applications. Moreover, users are now capable to connect from different access networks and establish several active sessions simultaneously, while being mobile. This triggered th...

In this paper, we present initial results on how the ns-3 LTE LENA stack is used to build a LTE testbed in an indoor lab network. We have extended the ns-3 MAC/PHY layer architecture to interface with a LabVIEW implementation of the LTE Physical layer and also extended ns-3 core modules to enable real-time performance. We present how this testbed c...

The ever growing demand from mobile network users is pushing the current wireless technologies toward their limits. As a matter of fact, not even the most optimistic promises from emerging standards, such as LTEAdvanced and IEEE 802.11ac/ad/af, will be able to satiate the huge appetite for bandwidth of the future users of 5G networks — at least, un...

Mobile Internet traffic is growing steeply, mainly due to the deployment of new broadband wireless technologies and the ever increasing connectivity demand coming from new services being available to mobile users. Current mobile network architectures rely on centralized mobility protocols which intrinsically pose enormous burdens on the central anc...

Legacy IEEE 802.11 does not efficiently support multicast transmissions. To cope with the increasing demand for multicast, which is mainly required to deliver multimedia traffic, the IEEE 802.11aa Task Group has recently standardized new mechanisms for allowing efficient and robust transmission of multicast flows in wireless local area networks (WL...

Research on vehicular communications has been quite extensive over the past few decades. Most of the initial studies were theoretical and research has just recently moved to more experimental works. Conducting real field operational tests is extremely challenging due to the number of vehicles required, the lack of control over the environment and t...

Software defined networking, characterized by a clear separation of the control and data planes, is being adopted as a novel paradigm for wired networking. With SDN, network operators can run their infrastructure more efficiently, supporting faster deployment of new services while enabling key features such as virtualization. In this article, we ad...

Currently we are witnessing an explosion of devices able to connect to a variety of wired and wireless access network technologies. This connectivity is increasingly integrating networks composed by sensors, actuators and even utility devices that use private and public networks to relay important information and measurements. The deployment of the...

In this paper, we propose to provide throughput guarantees in heterogeneous wireless mesh networks by jointly optimizing routing and Medium Access Control configuration. Our solution is based on the notion of linearized capacity region, which provides a technology‐independent way of representing the capacity of a wireless link (thereby hiding the t...

The contemporary society has become more dependent on telecommunication networks. Novel services and technologies supported by such networks, such as cloud computing or e-Health, hold a vital role in modern day living. Large-scale failures are prone to occur, thus being a constant threat to business organizations and individuals. To the best of our...

This white paper is an outcome of the Radio Access and Spectrum cluster projects funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme in the area of Future Networks. It presents a view from the European research community on the architecture aspects of 5G mobile and wireless communication systems.

This paper presents TRIM+, an architecture for transparent mobility management with route optimization in IMS based networks. The design of our architecture is based on a previous work referred to as TRIM. TRIM was originally devised to provide transparent mobility support in the IMS, although transparency came at the cost of using a suboptimal dat...

Telecommunications networks are undergoing major changes so as to meet the requirements of the next generation of users and services, which create a need for a general revised architectural approach rather than a series of local and incremental technology updates. This is especially manifest in mobile broadband wireless access, where a major traffi...

Traffic demands in mobile networks are expected to grow substantially in the next years, both in terms of total traffic volume and of bit-rate required by individual users. It is generally agreed that the only possible solution to overcome the current limitations is to deploy very dense and heterogeneous wireless networks, which we call DenseNets....

The Wireless-Optical Broadband Access Network (WOBAN) is a promising access architecture that combines the high performance of optical networks with the ubiquity and convenience of wireless technologies. This article proposes a network-based mobility framework that is specially tailored for WOBANs. The proposed architecture is based on Proxy Mobile...

Current trends on mobile traffic show an exponential grow of the traffic consumed by users from smartphones and other portable devices. The explosion of traffic in cellular networks has forced operators to start deploying solutions to alleviate the congestion on their capacity-limited and expensive radio access networks. One of the solutions being...

Video traffic is foreseen to account for the majority of the Internet traffic in the near future. While the demand of video transmission keeps growing, the vast majority of wireless equipment deployed in the home environment, based on IEEE 802.11, cannot satisfy the amount of bandwidth that the video applications require. In order to cope with the...

Current Internet has become an essential communication infrastructure, not only for information transfer but also as a key component of social infrastructures, such as e-government, energy/traffic controls, finance, learning, health, etc. Even though the Internet has evolved towards high-bandwidth network architectures offering transparent transpor...

In this demo we propose a novel architecture suitable for deployment in future mobile networks based on the distributed mobility management (DMM) paradigm. In DMM, the IP anchoring point gets closer to users, with the aim to flatten the architecture and to truly enable the fixed/mobile convergence. DMM allows operators to tackle the explosion of da...

In this article, we introduce distributed mobility management (DMM) - a new architectural paradigm for evolving mobile IP networks. We discuss the technology trends that are driving a move toward DMM and what the relevant standards development organizations (IETF and 3GPP) are doing to address these new needs. We conclude with a discussion of how 3...

Current trends on traffic growth oversee a steady increase of video streaming services, and the subsequent development of the associated infrastructure to allocate and distribute such contents. One of the operational costs associated to this infrastructure is the power bill. Therefore any mechanism used to decrease it, reducing also the carbon foot...

Several IP mobility support protocols have been standardized. Each solution provides a specific functionality and/or requires operations of particular nodes. The current trend is towards the co-existence of these solutions, though the impact of doing so has not been yet fully understood. This article reviews key standards for providing IP mobility...

This poster presents the key ideas behind the ICT CROWD (Connectivity management for eneRgy Optimised Wireless Dense networks) project, funded by the European Commission. The project moves from the observation that wireless traffic demand is currently growing exponentially. This growing demand can only be satisfied by increasing the density of poin...

Optimized video delivery, Quality of Experience (QoE) and customer satisfaction are key issues to be addressed by mobile network operators while providing next generation video services to their users. The sharp increase in video traffic, the diversity of video applications and the availability of advanced smart-phones create new challenges that re...