Intelligent Integrated Wireless and Fiber Access Networks beyond 5G
Current network management and control is largely quasi-static. The quasi-static approach worked reasonably well up to now due to statistical multiplexing of bursty traffic and the network management and control system only needs to react to average traffic changes. As such, the network management and control can afford to be and are rather inefficient in terms of network parameter sensing and control. Within the next decade, there will be more statistical multiplexing but the changes will not be slower. There are a number of factors that will make the network much more dynamic and bring the problem of managing and controlling a fast dynamic network to the forefront as a significant challenge to be overcome. The nature of these new dynamics and properties can be divided into two groups though they are intimately related:
Exogenous traffic statistics and service requirements (list not exhaustive)
- Wideband sensor (e.g. optical imagery) data relay to storage and processing centers.
- Large transactions (TB) flows generated by big data analytics.
Critical time deadline services such as fast trading, early warning, blue force tracking and situation awareness in challenged areas. - Real time sensing, correlation and data analytics of massive and global-extent computer and network data for cyber defense.
- Potential of ~50 billion data sources and sinks when Internet of Things is fully deployed
Network granularity and dynamics (list not exhaustive)
- Core optical network will use end-to-end flows without buffering at intermediate nodes pushing congestion control to the network edge and scheduling.
- Transaction size (elephants) can fill up the granularity of a single wavelength at the edge and in the core for seconds to minutes requiring fast per session scheduling and network reconfiguration.
- Software defined networking (which is rather static today compared to sub-second time scales) need to create a new paradigm for congestion control and recovery from failure.
- Merging of architectures of access wireless and optical networks necessitates the joint management and control of both networks at per session rates.
Many proposals for management and control of dynamic networks today especially in the SDN area and the hybrid wireless/optical access network area, most if not all, have yet to address the massive scalability at speeds problem adequately. This daunting problem will not be solved without new modeling and creation of insightful techniques to convert a hitherto sloppy and sleepy discipline into a rigorous science.