European Telecommunications Research Articles

A Maneuver Coordination Analysis Using Artery V2X Simulation Framework

This paper examines the impact of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications on vehicle cooperation, focusing on increasing the robustness and feasibility of Cooperative, Connected, and Automated Vehicles (CCAVs). V2X communications enable CCAVs to obtain a holistic environmental perception, facilitating informed decision making regarding their trajectory. This technological innovation is essential to mitigate accidents resulting from inadequate or absent communication on the roads. As the importance of vehicle cooperation grows, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has been standardizing messages and services for V2X communications, in order to improve the synchronization of CCAVs actions. In this context, this preliminary work explores the use of Maneuver Coordination Messages (MCMs), under standardization by ETSI, for cooperative path planning. This work presents a novel approach by implementing these messages as well as the associated Maneuver Coordination Service (MCS) with a Cooperative Driving System to process maneuver coordination. Additionally, a trajectory approach is introduced along with a message generation mechanism and a process to dynamically handle collisions. This was implemented in an Artery V2X simulation framework combining both network communications and SUMO traffic simulations. The obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness of using V2X communications to ensure the safety and efficiency of Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS).

EXPRESS: Does Location Familiarity Increase Response to Mobile Ads?

Targeting ads based on consumers’ real-time locations has evolved into a practice worth billions of dollars in the advertising industry. Yet, the implications of repeated mobile ad exposure are poorly understood, primarily due to the confounding effects of locational context. This paper seeks to bridge this gap. Using two large datasets comprising more than three million observations from a major European mobile telecommunication company, we investigate how ad repetition and location revisits (i.e., returning to a previously visited location) jointly determine consumer response to mobile display advertising. Our empirical strategy leverages coarsened exact matching combined with a logit model with fixed effects at the consumer-location level. We find that the click rate through ads is more than 26 percent higher at revisited locations compared to locations visited for the first time. However, mobile ad repetition decreases click rates, and this effect is amplified at revisited locations. Our results contribute to the theory and practice of mobile advertising.

The European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI): in search for legitimacy and resilience of European standardisation

European standardisation, a key institution for the functioning of the EU single market, functions at the crossroads of private rule-making and public policy. Recently, it has been subjected to fierce scrutiny by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. Expressed concerns relate to the legal value of standards and the legitimacy of institutions creating them but have broader implications for European competitiveness, highlighting the strategic role of standards. By far much of this critique has been directed towards the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the EU’s crown jewel of technology standardisation. ETSI’s normative power manifests itself in policymaking, legislation and market processes, rendering it an interesting organisation to study as a proxy to understand the legitimacy and resilience of European standardisation. Against this backdrop, this introduction sets the theoretical and legal context for this Special Issue. Upon discussing the background and dynamic of European standardisation, it provides a theoretical framework for ‘crises' and ‘legitimacy’, tailoring it to the particular case of ETSI and the challenges it faces at the policy and judicial level. Lastly, it provides a critical reflection on the Research Articles in this Special Issue, linking them to the current discourses on legitimacy and resilience.

Evaluating the Performance of ETSI-ITS Multi-Stack Protocols for V2V Communication in VANETs: A Simulation Study

The research evaluates various multi-stack protocols for Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), focusing on Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication scenarios with Emergency Vehicle (EV) simulations. The study uses the ns-3 network and SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility) traffic simulators to test these protocols in diverse scenarios, including fluctuating data rates and dense network conditions. By implementing the IEEE 802.11p protocol alongside vehicular message dissemination stacks compliant with ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) standards, the study performs simulation experiments with varying vehicle counts, ranging from 20 to 35. It employs two distinct data rate configurations while maintaining a constant transmission power of 23 dBm. The results indicate a decline in the average Packet Reception Ratio (PRR) as vehicle density increases, indicating heightened contention and interference. At the same time, there is an observed increase in average latency, contributing to increased message transmission and reception delays. The quantitative analysis demonstrates an inverse relationship between the average PRR and the total vehicle count when the SEND_CAM message is enabled. On the other hand, disabling SEND_CAM maintains a relatively consistent average PRR across scenarios. Additionally, a positive correlation between vehicle count and average latency underlines the impact of network congestion and interference on communication efficacy within VANETs. Despite suboptimal PRR values falling between 41% and 47%, latency performance remains satisfactory, with average latency durations ranging from 0.154 s to 0.187 s. Notably, the SEND_CAM parameter status shows negligible impact on protocol performance, suggesting that network density plays a more pivotal role. Finally, this study offers valuable insights into the trade-offs and challenges of multi-stack protocols in V2V communication within VANETs. Further optimization efforts are recommended to improve packet reception ratios, especially in high-vehicle-density environments, while maintaining acceptable latency levels. These findings contribute to the ongoing efforts to enhance the reliability and efficiency of communication protocols in VANETs, thus advancing the development of intelligent transportation systems. The study's quantitative protocol performance analysis under varying network conditions provides valuable guidance for optimizing V2V communication deployments in VANETs.

ETSI As a case study of organizational resilience in standard setting: strategies that ensure thriving despite organizational challenges

This paper brings forth an empirical study of organizational resilience strategies in standard setting. The selection of ETSI (The European Telecommunications Standards Institute) as a case study for this purpose was motivated by ETSI's legal status as an ESO (European Standardization Organization), global impact, and the history of external criticism directed at the organization. Based on theoretical considerations and author's previous empirical research, it was expected that the organizational resilience strategies used by ETSI differ with regards to two dimensions: anticipation of the disturbance (proactive and reactive strategies); and the locus of the strategic effort (internal or external to the organization). A combination of deductive and inductive content analysis was applied to 12 semi-structured interviews with individuals who participate in standard setting activities within ETSI. The conducted analysis confirmed the expected 2 × 2 type of taxonomy determined by anticipation and locus of strategic effort. The identified 29 categories were thus categorized into four clusters of resilience strategies: proactive external (5), proactive internal (9), reactive external (5) and reactive internal (10) strategies. The discussion reflects on the historical organizational challenges, the resilience strategies reported in response to them, and how they might have contributed to continued thriving of ETSI despite organizational challenges.

ETSI ITS: A Comprehensive Overview of the Architecture, Challenges and Issues

Abstract: Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have attracted the attention of developing nations because of their potential to enhance mobility and road safety, two issues that have become increasingly pressing in recent years. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has accentuated every industry, and the automobile industry is no exception, allowing vehicles to communicate among themselves and the surrounding infrastructure for information exchange using Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle- to-infrastructure (V2I), vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P), and vehicle-to-cloud (V2C) connections are made possible through the use of state-of-the-art networking technology. With EVehicles at the forefront, the vision of an ITS expands further. ITS is anticipated to offer wireless network-based services including vehicle occupant entertainment, traffic flow optimization, and accident prevention. Most nations have been trying to standardize the ITS architecture, and the European Union (EU) has been at the forefront by developing and standardizing the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) architecture. As the most mature ITS architecture, this paper thoroughly explains the ETSI architecture in a single document for both the researcher's and newcomers' ease. Additionally, the challenges and issues pertinent to adopting and implementing the ITS ecosystem have also been discussed in detail.

Improvement of 5G Core Network Performance using Network Slicing and Deep Reinforcement Learning

Users have increasingly been having more use cases for the network while expecting the best Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE). The Fifth Generation of mobile telecommunications technology (5G) network had promised to satisfy most of the expectations and network slicing had been introduced in 5G to be able to satisfy various use cases. However, creating slices in a real-life environment with just the resources required while having optimized QoS has been a challenge. This has necessitated more intelligence to be required in the network and machine learning (ML) has been used recently to add the intelligence and ensure zero-touch automation. This research addresses the open question of creating slices to satisfy various use cases based on their QoS requirements, managing, and orchestrating them optimally with minimal resources while allowing the isolation of services by introducing a Deep reinforcement Machine Learning (DRL) algorithm. This research first evaluates the previous work done in improving QoS in the 5G core. 5G architecture is simulated by following the ETSI NFV MANO (European Telecommunications Standards Institute for Network Function Virtualization Management and Orchestration) framework and uses Open5G in 5G core, UERANISM for RAN, Openstack for Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM), and Tacker for Virtual Network Function Management and orchestration (VNFMO). The research simulates network slicing at the User Plane Function (UPF) level and evaluates how it has improved QoS. The network slicing function is automated by following ETSI Closed Loop Architecture and using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) by modeling the problem as a Markov Decision Problem (MDP). Throughput is the Reward for the actions of the DRL agent. Comparison is done on the impact of slicing on throughput and compares models that have not been sliced, the ones that have been sliced and combined to work together, and models with slices that have been assigned more bandwidth. Sliced networks have better throughput than the ones not sliced. If more slices are load-balanced the throughput is increased. Deep Reinforcement Learning has managed to achieve the dynamic assigning of slices to compensate for declining throughput.

The role of ETSI in the EU’s regulation and governance of artificial intelligence

This paper explores the significant role that standardisation plays in the regulation and governance of artificial intelligence (AI) within the European Union (EU). As AI technologies rapidly advance, they bring about important societal implications involving privacy, fairness, transparency and other relevant ethical considerations. As a result, legislators and policymakers around the world are joined by a common drive to provide legislative solutions and regulatory frameworks that guarantee that the ongoing integration of AI systems into society is consistent with fundamental rights and democratic values. This paper critically examines the EU Regulation on AI (AI Act), which delegates the definition of essential requirements for high-risks AI systems to harmonised standards, underlying the significance of standardisation in ensuring technical feasibility and compliance with EU laws and values. At the forefront of this discussion there is the increasing influence of AI-related standardisation across social, economic, and geopolitical domains, with a particular focus on the crucial role played by Standard Developing Organisations (SDOs) in the regulatory and governance processes. This paper contributes to the legal scholarship by critically analysing the regulatory approach chosen for the EU’s AI Act, contesting the adequacy of the New Legislative Framework (NLF) for AI governance, and arguing that the reliance on harmonised standards risks undermining democratic accountability and fails to sufficiently safeguard fundamental rights without a more inclusive and transparent standard-setting process. The article focuses on the exclusion of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) from the European Commissions standardisation request in support of the AI Act, and asseses its potential impact on EU law-making and regulatory consistency. Ultimately, the analysis aims to contribute to the understanding of standardisation dynamics, offering insights into its profound implications for AI governance and the broader digital sphere.

What is beyond 50G: future standards of optical access networks [Invited

In the past two decades, optical access networks have been widely deployed by operators around the world. The global optical access network market reaches about 1 billion users with a revenue of over 10 billion US dollars. As strategic tools to facilitate mass production, the optical access network standards play a crucial role in driving the product deployment and market growth. This paper overviews the latest effort in international standards bodies on the next generation optical access networks. It discusses projects in this area within the International Telecommunication Union’s Telecommunication Standardization Section (ITU-T), the IEEE, and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Promising technologies are investigated with the goal of providing rates beyond 50 Gbps. Challenges are highlighted to satisfy the requirements on balancing access rates, loss budgets, and cost. Candidate systems are analyzed in three categories: point-to-multipoint (PtMP), point-to-point (PtP), and new applications. These standardization endeavors will jointly guarantee optical access networks as the premiere solution of wireline broadband access.

Distributed Ledger Standards for 6G Mobile Networks

Distributed ledger technology, with its multitude of advantages including immutability, transparency, decentralization, and security, has excellent potential to promote and even revolutionize future 6G mobile networks. Large-scale distributed ledger deployment within or for mobile networks relies on distributed ledger-focused standards to facilitate and ensure interoperability. The European Telecommunications Standards (ETSI) Industry Specification Group (ISG) on Permissioned Distributed Ledger (PDL) develops PDL-related standards, targeting various application verticals, especially within the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) domain. This article aims to give an overview of ETSI ISG PDL and describes selected PDL standards, which have synergies with future 6G mobile networks.

Navigating transatlantic power dynamics in ICT standardization – The case of ETSI

Standards are the foundation of global trade facilitating the compatibility and interoperability of goods and services through institutional coordination to reduce transaction costs, shape technological choices, and market access. Such private transnational rulemaking has faced increased competition in key technological sectors. In Europe, ETSI has been critical for the European telecommunications market in the aftermath of liberalization of national monopolies as Europe sought to enhance market power to attract European and non–European firms to develop key technological standards. With the standardization strategy in 2022, the European Union has requested the revision of internal governance and operating norms of ETSI to strengthen European economic interests and social values. This has generated concern in the United States over the increase in government–based membership at the expense of a more open model. As international leadership in standards continues to be challenged by China, the US and EU have highlighted the importance of values–based standards. This has generated efforts to promote cooperation with strategic partners. The reform of ETSI could be viewed as a defensive strategy at odds with its globally oriented model of standards development and may undermine its legitimacy as a leading open and inclusive standards body in the field.

Medical Data in Wireless Body Area Networks: Device Authentication Techniques and Threat Mitigation Strategies Based on a Token-Based Communication Approach

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), low power, and short-range wireless communication in a near-body area provide advantages, particularly in the medical and healthcare sector: (i) they enable continuous monitoring of patients and (ii) the recording and correlation of physical and biological information. Along with the utilization and integration of these (sensitive) private and personal data, there are substantial requirements concerning security and privacy, as well as protection during processing and transmission. Contrary to the star topology frequently used in various standards, the overall concept of a novel low-data rate token-based WBAN framework is proposed. This work further comprises the evaluation of strategies for handling medical data with WBANs and emphasizes the importance and necessity of encryption and security strategies in the context of sensitive information. Furthermore, this work considers the recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), which are opening up opportunities for enhancing cyber resilience, but on the other hand, also new attack vectors. Moreover, the implications of targeted regulatory measures, such as the European AI Act, are considered. In contrast to, for instance, the proposed star network topologies of the IEEE 802.15.6 WBAN standard or the Technical Committee (TC) SmartBAN of the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI), the concept of a ring topology is proposed which concatenates information in the form of a ‘data train’ and thus results in faster and more efficient communication. Beyond that, the conductivity of human skin is included in the approach presented to incorporate a supplementary channel. This direct contact requirement not only fortifies the security of the system but also facilitates a reliable means of secure communication, pivotal in maintaining the integrity of sensitive health data. The work identifies different threat models associated with the WBAN system and evaluates potential data vulnerabilities and risks to maximize security. It highlights the crucial balance between security and efficiency in WBANs, using the token-based approach as a case study. Further, it sets a foundation for future healthcare technology advancements, aiming to ensure the secure and efficient integration of patient data.

The participation of civil society in ETSI from the perspective of throughput legitimacy

The use of standards to complement legislation is a prevalent regulatory technique in the EU, including in the telecommunications, information technology and broadcasting sectors, where the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standard Institute) plays a key role. In light of the recent reform of ETSI’s governance model in terms of its inclusiveness, this paper examines the role of societal stakeholders in ETSI’s standard-setting process through the lens of throughput legitimacy. In particular, by relying on desk research and semi-structured interviews conducted in 2020 and 2023, we analyse specific membership and voting rules of ETSI in order to discuss in detail the possibilities of effective participation for the so-called ‘Annex III organisations’. The paper shows that ‘Annex III organisations' have had limited participative possibilities in ETSI’s standard-setting process, entailing both institutional throughput and constructive throughput legitimacy issues. Although not fully, the recent reform of ETSI’s decision-making appears to tackle them to a certain extent.

Recoding Power: Tactics for Mobilizing Tech Workers. By Sidney A. Rothstein. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 288p. $80.00 cloth. - Exit, Voice, and Solidarity: Contesting Precarity in the US and European Telecommunications Industries. By Virginia Doellgast. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 312p. $110.00 cloth, $32.99 paper.

Recoding Power: Tactics for Mobilizing Tech Workers. By Sidney A. Rothstein. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 288p. $80.00 cloth. - Exit, Voice, and Solidarity: Contesting Precarity in the US and European Telecommunications Industries. By Virginia Doellgast. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 312p. $110.00 cloth, $32.99 paper.

Service for Deploying Digital Twins of QKD Networks

Quantum technologies promise major advances in different areas. From computation to sensing or telecommunications, quantum implementations could bring significant improvements to these fields, arousing the interest of researchers, companies, and governments. In particular, the deployment of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) networks, which enable the secure dissemination of cryptographic keys to remote application entities following Quantum Mechanics Principles, appears to be one of the most attractive and relevant use cases. Quantum devices and equipment are still in a development phase, making their availability low and their price high, hindering the deployment of physical QKD networks and, therefore, the research and experimentation activities related to this field. In this context, this paper focuses on providing research stakeholders with an open-access testbed where it is feasible to emulate the deployment of QKD networks, thus enabling the execution of experiments and trials, where even potential network attacks can be analyzed, without the quantum physical equipment requirement, nor compromising the integrity of an already built QKD network. The designed solution allows users to automatically deploy, configure, and run a digital twin environment of a QKD network, offering cost-effectiveness and great flexibility in the study of the integration of quantum communications in the current network infrastructures. This solution is aligned with the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI) standardized application interface for QKD, and is built upon open-source technologies. The feasibility of this solution has been validated throughout several functional trials carried out in the 5G Telefónica Open Network Innovation Centre (5TONIC), verifying the service performance in terms of speed and discarded qubits when generating the quantum keys.

Doellgast, Virginia. 2022. Exit, Voice, and Solidarity: Contesting Precarity in the US and European Telecommunications Industries

Doellgast, Virginia. 2022. <i>Exit, Voice, and Solidarity: Contesting Precarity in the US and European Telecommunications Industries</i>

BENN: Bias Estimation Using a Deep Neural Network.

Utilizing existing methods for bias detection in machine learning (ML) models is challenging since each method: 1) explores a different ethical aspect of bias, which may result in contradictory output among the different methods; 2) provides output in a different range/scale and therefore cannot be compared with other methods; and 3) requires different input, thereby requiring a human expert's involvement to adjust each method according to the model examined. In this article, we present BENN, a novel bias estimation method that uses a pretrained unsupervised deep neural network. Given an ML model and data samples, BENN provides a bias estimation for every feature based on the examined model's predictions. We evaluated BENN using three benchmark datasets, one proprietary churn prediction model used by a European telecommunications company, and a synthetic dataset that includes both a biased feature and a fair one. BENN's results were compared with an ensemble of 21 existing bias estimation methods. The evaluation results show that BENN provides bias estimations that are aligned with those of the ensemble while offering significant advantages, including the fact that it is a generic approach (i.e., can be applied to any ML model) and does not require a domain expert.

Shortest Path Routing Performance Evaluation over SDN Environment

Static routing has a manual configuration setup system, and the scope of static routing in an SDN network is just for small networks. The solution to this problem rises up with the new technology defined as software-defined networking (SDN) based on shortest path first dynamic routing. SDN has the facility of a centralized controller that smooth the controls and routes computation over a data packet. The performance analysis of SDN networks that have SDN switches connected to the network based on the shortest path first protocol are simulated on Mininet. The POX controller with Mininet programming feature for creating smart topologies was chosen. In this research, the SDN network using Dijkstra’s algorithm, Bellman-Ford algorithm, extended Dijkstra’s algorithm and Floyd Warshall Algorithm were implemented. The quality factors of SDN created by using four algorithms are measured in terms of delay, jitter, latency, packet loss, transmit, received, throughput, and bandwidth based on experimental results and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) data. The performance parameters of SDN network topology created using Dijkstra’s, bellman ford, extended Dijkstra’s, and Floyd Warshall algorithms were compared and the experimental results showed that Bellman-Ford algorithm is better in terms of performance parameters than the other three algorithms.

Deterministic Full-Fiber Service Network for the Fifth-Generation Fixed Network (F5G)

A new communication era characterized by cloud services with high bandwidth and low latency requirements is coming. In this era, fixed networks always provide the highest bandwidth and availability for broadband access users. The concept of the fifth-generation fixed network (F5G), proposed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), is to identify the fixed network generations and facilitate the adoption of wider technical standards. In F5G period, the future fixed network will adapt to the end-to-end optical fiber architecture. F5G connect users with clouds and try its best to provide deterministic service carrying. In the fixed network family, optical transport networks (OTN) have the benefit of high-quality bandwidth provisioning, which will be fundamental infrastructures for F5G. This article focuses on the evolving trend of OTN in the new communication era. Considering the deterministic requirements of cloud services in the F5G era and the key enabling optical service unit (OSU), we propose a concept of deterministic full-fiber service network (D-FSN), which drive OTN to play an important role in F5G. We also outline the D-FSN network architecture and several new key technologies. In addition, as a typical service of F5G, Cloud Virtual Reality (VR) is experimentally demonstrated to verify the performance of D-FSNs. Finally, we look ahead to the possible development trend and challenges of D-FSN.

Frequency Spectrum Management within the Regulatory Framework of the European Union's Telecommunications Market

Frequency Spectrum Management within the Regulatory Framework of the European Union's Telecommunications Market