NFV-Enabled Multicast Services
Past project
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Network function virtualization decouples network functions from proprietary hardware, which makes service-customized networks possible but shifts the difficulty into orchestration: which functions to compose, where to place them, and how to route traffic through them under uncertainty. This was the subject of Dr. Omar Alhussein’s PhD research at the University of Waterloo, completed in 2020.
The work addressed three problems essential to orchestrating network services of a multicast nature, in which a source is connected to a set of destinations through a service function chain: joint composition, placement and routing for NFV-enabled multicast services; robust online orchestration when demand is not known in advance; and dynamic topology design using deep reinforcement learning.
The project is complete. Its learning-based successors are pursued under AI for Network Optimization, and the broader earlier research history is collected on the past research page.
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Team
Publications
- Dynamic topology design of NFV-enabled services using deep reinforcement learning
O. Alhussein and W. Zhuang
IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, to appear. DOI: 10.1109/TCCN.2021.3139632
Download pre-print - On the Orchestration and Provisioning of NFV-enabled Multicast Services
O. Alhussein
Doctoral Dissertation, UWSpace, 2020.
Download thesis · Download defense slides - Robust online composition, routing and NF placement for NFV-enabled services
O. Alhussein and W. Zhuang
IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 1089–1101, 2020.
Download pre-print · Download paper - A virtual network customization framework for multicast services in NFV-enabled core networks
O. Alhussein, P. T. Do, J. Li, W. Shi, W. Zhuang, and X. Shen
IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 1025–1039, 2020.
Download pre-print · Download paper - Joint VNF placement and multicast traffic routing in 5G core networks
O. Alhussein, P. T. Do, J. Li, Q. Ye, W. Shi, W. Zhuang, X. Shen, X. Li, and J. Rao
In Proc. IEEE Globecom, 2018, pp. 1–6.
Download paper · Download presentation - Software Defined Space-Air-Ground Integrated Vehicular Networks: Challenges and Solutions
N. Zhang, S. Zhang, P. Yang, O. Alhussein, and W. Zhuang
IEEE Comm. Magazine, vol. 55, no. 7, pp. 101–109, 2017.
Download pre-print