European Telecommunications Standards Institute Research Articles

Test descriptions with ETSI TDL

To address the need for abstract, high-level test descriptions that can be shared among different stakeholders, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) commissioned the design of the Test Description Language (TDL). TDL is designed as a domain-specific language for testing, consisting of a standardised abstract syntax (meta-model) and concrete syntaxes for textual specification, graphical design, and model exchange between tools. Its main purpose is to support a test methodology that is followed in the standardisation work for software-intense systems at ETSI and is applicable in industrial projects as well. TDL enables the formal specification of both test objectives derived from system requirements and test descriptions refining the test objectives. The latter serve as blueprint for the implementation of executable tests. A standardised mapping of TDL specifications to test scripts in the standardised test execution language TTCN-3 widens the reach of TDL to ensure compatibility and consistency of generated executable tests. An open-source toolset has been developed as a common platform to accelerate the adoption of TDL and lower the barrier to entry for users and tool vendors. Reports from pilot applications within three ETSI standardisation groups demonstrate the practicality of the chosen approach.

On the security of biquadratic C∗ public-key cryptosystems and its generalizations

Public key cryptosystems based on multivariate polynomials have been studied since the eighties. One of them, called C∗, was introduced in 1988 by Imai and Matsumoto, and broken in 1993 by Dobbertin in classified work he did for the German Federal Office for Information Security and later by Patarin (see Dobbertin et al. 2005, Patarin 1995). Since then, the construction of multivariate systems sharing a great deal of the C∗ properties have become of particular interest. Dobbertin introduced in a series of classified papers and later in a challenge of the MysteryTwister-Competition hosted by the Horst-Gortz-Institute in 2005, (see Dobbertin et al. 2005) together with the author, a system where the central mapping is a power mapping of degree 4 and shares almost all the properties of C∗. It was therefore called biquadratic C∗. The challenge remained unbroken and the security of these systems an open problem. As its key size is rather large, the interest in such systems became low during the last years. Due to the initiative of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute and the National Institute for Standards and Technology in creating standards for post-quantum cryptography, systems with bigger key sizes have become of interest for practical applications. In this paper we will consider biquadratic C∗ and more general systems based on hidden monomials of degree k called k-ary C∗. We will prove a lower bound for the running time of attacks based on Grobner basis algorithms like F4 or F5. We will compute the first fall degree for k-ary C∗ and give a counterexample to the first fall degree assumption. We will derive an estimate for the complexity of breaking the above mentioned cryptochallenge and give parameter sizes for secure systems by taking into account all known types of attacks. It will turn out that the security requirements yield systems with impractical key sizes even for applications in post-quantum cryptography. Although k-ary C∗ is not of practical interest the results presented here give some insight in understanding the complexity of attacks on multivariate cryptosystems, especially based on Grobner basis algorithms, and show that these systems are very promising objects for conducting further research in this direction.

EdgePlace: Availability‐aware placement for chained mobile edge applications

AbstractMobile edge computing (MEC) literally pushes cloud computing from remote datacenters to the life radius of end users. By leveraging the widely adopted European Telecommunications Standards Institute network function virtualization architecture, MEC provisions elastic and resilient mobile edge applications with proximity. Typical MEC virtualization infrastructure allows a configurable placement policy to deploy mobile edge applications as virtual machines (VMs): affinity can be used to put VMs on the same host for inter‐VM networking performance, whereas anti‐affinity is to separate VMs for high availability. In this paper, we propose a novel model to track the availability and cost impact from placement policy changes of the mobile edge applications. We formulate our model as a stochastic programming problem. To minimize the complexity challenge, we also propose a heuristic algorithm called EdgePlace. With our model, the unit resource cost increases when there are less resources left on a host. Applying affinity would take up more resources of the host but saves network bandwidth cost because of colocation. When enforcing anti‐affinity, experimental results show increases of both availability and interhost network bandwidth cost. For applications with different resource requirements, our model is able to find their sweet points with the consideration of both resource cost and application availability, which is vital in a less robust MEC environment.

Compact Multi Bit Slotted C-Scatterer for Threshold Sensitive Chipless Wireless Temperature Sensor

This paper presents a novel compact scatterer structure for a passive chipless wireless temperature threshold sensor. The structure is based on a single C-scatterer with multiple embedded slots; each slot forms a sub-scatterer dedicated to resonating in one regulated band. This structure has the advantage of increasing the data capacity without increasing the number of scatterers, which results in a more compact sensor size. The sensing principle is based on the detuning of the resonance frequency peaks of the backscattered signal from the slotted scatterer due to temperature variations. For the first time, this work demonstrates the design of a passive chipless sensor while at the same time respecting the conventional radio frequency (RF) emission regulations. The sensor only exploits the allowed bands: European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM). Sensitivity measurement results show sensitive characteristics in the order of 10−4 GHz/°C in accordance with the theoretical predictions.

Automated Network Service Scaling in NFV: Concepts, Mechanisms and Scaling Workflow

Next-generation systems are anticipated to be digital platforms supporting innovative services with rapidly changing traffic patterns. To cope with this dynamicity in a cost-efficient manner, operators need advanced service management capabilities such as those provided by NFV. NFV enables operators to scale network services with higher granularity and agility than today. For this end, automation is key. In search of this automation, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has defined a reference NFV framework that make use of model-driven templates called Network Service Descriptors (NSDs) to operate network services through their lifecycle. For the scaling operation, an NSD defines a discrete set of instantiation levels among which a network service instance can be resized throughout its lifecycle. Thus, the design of these levels is key for ensuring an effective scaling. In this article, we provide an overview of the automation of the network service scaling operation in NFV, addressing the options and boundaries introduced by ETSI normative specifications. We start by providing a description of the NSD structure, focusing on how instantiation levels are constructed. For illustrative purposes, we propose an NSD for a representative NS. This NSD includes different instantiation levels that enable different ways to automatically scale this NS. Then, we show the different scaling procedures the NFV framework has available, and how it may automate their triggering. Finally, we propose an ETSI-compliant workflow to describe in detail a representative scaling procedure. This workflow clarifies the interactions and information exchanges between the functional blocks in the NFV framework when performing the scaling operation.

DTV broadcasting failover switching system using PCR information

Background/Objectives: Major Terrestrial broadcasters, MSO (Multi-System Operator), IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) Operators have been putting effort to prevent the transmission stops such as transmission interruption.Methods/Statistical analysis: The main and spare signals of the digital broadcasting are monitored. If a problem occurs in the main signal, it automatically switched to a preliminary signal, preventing a broadcast accident before a failover switch is performed.In this paper, we propose a method that can automatically switch signal to minimize the resulting impacts on a broadcasting accident caused by a disconnection from the input or an accident from the network. Digital broadcasts transmission abides by MPEG-2 (Moving Picture Expert Group) TS (Transport Stream) standardization.Findings: This paper proposes a method to maintain the quality of broadcast such as transmission interruption within ETSI TR 101 290 (European Telecommunications Standards Institute Technical Report) standardization. Furthermore, with this proposed method, it would be possible to minimize the error from an automatically transferred stream that sent from the emergency link within ETSI TR 101 290 standardization.Improvements/Applications: A method for preventing broadcast transmission accidents

Access and home networking technology standards

This IEEE Communication Standards Series addresses industry standards and the technologies used for the portion of the communications network nearest to the customer. This includes home networking technology used by a multitude of networked devices within the home or business to communicate with each other (local area networking) and to communicate with the public network (wide area networking). This Series also addresses the access technologies providing communications between the customer premises and the nearest traffic aggregation node of the public network, such as a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) or optical line terminal (OLT). This Series focuses on the industry standards for access and home networking including standards development organizations such as the International Telecommunication Union - Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T), IEEE, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), and Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), industry organizations such as the Broadband Forum, Cable- Labs, Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), TeleManagement Forum (TMF), and open source entities such as Open Compute Project (OCP) and Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV). Article submissions related to the work of these and other relevant industry standards bodies are invited for future issues of IEEE Communications Standards. The article in this issue is written by experts working on fixed broadband access technologies and participating in several SDOs as well as cooperative projects. From a customer point of view, not only is downstream data rate important but also upstream.

On the Use of a 77 GHz Automotive Radar as a Microwave Rain Gauge

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) defines the frequency band of 77 GHz (W-band) as the one dedicated to automatic cruise control long-range radars. A car can be thought as a moving integrated weather sensor since it can provide meteorological information exploiting the sensors installed on board. This work presents the preliminary analysis of how a 77 GHz mini radar can be used as a short range microwave rain gauge. After the discussion of the Mie scattering formulation applied to a microwave rain gauge working in the W-band, the proposal of a new Z-R equation to be used for correct rain estimation is given. Atmospheric attenuation and absorption are estimated taking into account the ITU-T recommendations. Functional requirements in adapting automatic cruise control long-range radar to a microwave rain gauge are analyzed. The technical specifications are determined in order to meet the functional requirements.

Modeling of V2V Communications for C-ITS Safety Applications: A CPS Perspective

Tight coupling between the performance of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications and the performance of cooperative intelligent transportation system (C-ITS) safety applications is addressed. A cyber-physical system analytical framework is developed which links the characteristics of V2V communications (such as packet loss probability and packet transmission delay) with the physical mobility characteristics of the vehicular system (such as safe intervehicular distance). The study is applied to the Day 1 C-ITS application, emergency electronic brake lights, enabled by the European Telecommunication Standard Institute ITS-G5 and IEEE 802.11p standards.

Fog Computing: Enabling the Management and Orchestration of Smart City Applications in 5G Networks.

Fog computing extends the cloud computing paradigm by placing resources close to the edges of the network to deal with the upcoming growth of connected devices. Smart city applications, such as health monitoring and predictive maintenance, will introduce a new set of stringent requirements, such as low latency, since resources can be requested on-demand simultaneously by multiple devices at different locations. It is then necessary to adapt existing network technologies to future needs and design new architectural concepts to help meet these strict requirements. This article proposes a fog computing framework enabling autonomous management and orchestration functionalities in 5G-enabled smart cities. Our approach follows the guidelines of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) NFV MANO architecture extending it with additional software components. The contribution of our work is its fully-integrated fog node management system alongside the foreseen application layer Peer-to-Peer (P2P) fog protocol based on the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing protocol for the exchange of application service provisioning information between fog nodes. Evaluations of an anomaly detection use case based on an air monitoring application are presented. Our results show that the proposed framework achieves a substantial reduction in network bandwidth usage and in latency when compared to centralized cloud solutions.

Licensed Shared Access evolution enables early access to 5G spectrum and novel use cases

This paper discusses the regulatory and standardization status of the Licensed Shared Access (LSA), compares it with the US Citizens Broadband Radio Service concept, and reviews results from the ongoing feasibility study in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute on temporary spectrum ac

On the Placement of VNF Managers in Large-Scale and Distributed NFV Systems

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute management and orchestration framework is designed to enable automated management of the network services and their corresponding virtualized network functions (VNFs). In that context, the network function virtualization (NFV) orchestrator (NFVO) manages the lifecycle of the network services and coordinates with the VNF managers (VNFMs) which manage the VNFs lifecycle. In large-scale and distributed NFV deployments, these management functions face critical challenges such as delays, and variations in VNFs workload. Placing NFVO and VNFM in a large-scale distributed NFV deployment is therefore a very challenging problem due to the potential negative impact on performance and operational cost. However, to the best of our knowledge, the problem has not yet been addressed in the literature. This paper is a first step toward a solution to the overall problem. It focuses on the VNFM placement and aims at minimizing the operational cost without violating the performance requirements. We call this the VNFM placement problem (MPP). We provide an integer linear programming formulation and propose a tabu search algorithm to solve larger instances of the MPP. We evaluate our algorithm in a real-world large-scale scenario. The results show that it leads to significant reductions in the operational cost of large-scale distributed NFV deployments.

Licensing At All Levels Is The Rule Under The ETSI IPR Policy: A Response to Dr. Bertram Huber

As the former Director-General of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), Mr. Rosenbrock has followed with interest the various discussions and disputes regarding the application of the ETSI IPR Policy. The ETSI IPR Policy was drafted, debated and finalized during his tenure, and he was closely involved in its creation and approval and has followed further discussions within ETSI. In a recent paper, Mr. Rosenbrock explained that a promise to license Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) on fair, reasonable and non‐discriminatory (FRAND) terms and conditions, under the ETSI IPR Policy, “allows every company that requests a license to obtain one, regardless of where the prospective licensee is in the chain of production and regardless of whether the prospective licensee is active upstream or downstream”. Dr. Bertram Huber wrote a response to this paper, on behalf of a group of SEP owners called IP Europe. Mr. Rosenbrock’s new paper rebuts the arguments of Dr. Huber and those who seek to undermine the principle of “licensing at all levels”. In particular, the paper confirms: • First, that a promise to license SEPs on FRAND terms and conditions, under the ETSI IPR Policy, allows every company that requests a license to obtain one, regardless of whether the prospective licensee is active upstream or downstream; • Second, that companies like Ericsson and Qualcomm, which now oppose upstream licensing of SEPs, for many years supported it; and • Third, that “end-use royalties” could be misused to pervert the “license to all” principle.

Why the ETSI IPR Policy Does Not and Has Never Required Compulsory License to Alll: A Rebuttal to Karl Heinz Rosenbrock

Bertram Huber is a legal expert who personally participated in elaborating and drafting the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy adopted by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). In this paper, he explains the history and reasoning for his view that the obligation to license under the ETSI IPR Policy, once a commitment is given to license at fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms and conditions, does not necessarily extend to chipsets and other electronic components of standards-compliant end-devices. He further explains why, in his view, the ETSI IPR Policy does not compel an “essential” IPR holder to grant a license to every company that requests one, without consideration of where the license-seeking company operates in the chain of production or of whether that license would be duplicative of licenses granted to others. As explained by the author, his views are consistent with, and supported by, ETSI’s objectives and intent at the time it adopted its current IPR Policy, the express Policy language, and the long-standing practice of the telecommunications industry. In particular, he highlights how, in adopting its IPR Policy, ETSI intended to safeguard access to the cellular standards without changing the prevailing industry practice of manufacturers of complete end-devices concluding licenses to the standard essential patents practiced in those end-devices. Huber’s views on these issues rebut the positions taken by ETSI’s former Director-General, Karl Heinz Rosenbrock, in his recent paper titled Why the ETSI IPR Policy Requires Licensing to All.

Review of recent standardization activities in speech quality of experience

Speech communication services have been amongst the first telecommunication services to be used by a wide public, and the quality experienced by their users has been an object of concern since then. Methods on how to evaluate quality using test participants or using technical measurements and algorithms have been standardized mostly in Study Group 12 of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T SG12) and the Technical Committee Speech and multimedia Transmission Quality (STQ) of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, ETSI. This paper reviews new and updated ITU-T Recommendations and ETSI documents which have emerged within the last 12 years, and puts them into the general framework of available standards for this type of service. It also discusses current work items of ITU-T SG12 to illustrate directions of thoughts and future Recommendations to be addressed within the next study period.

Enabling autonomicity in wireless mesh networks with the ETSI AFI GANA reference model

SummaryThe distributed nature of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) allows them to benefit from multiple autonomic functionalities. However, the existing landscape of self‐x solutions (eg, self‐configuration) is fragmented and the lack of a standardized framework through which interoperable autonomics can be developed has been hampering adoption and deployment of autonomics in real‐world service networks. There is a need for a standardized architectural framework that enables to comprehensively support and integrate interoperable components for autonomicity in WMNs. Such an architecture (autonomicity‐enabled wireless mesh architecture) is currently being standardized by the working group called Evolution of Management towards Autonomic Future Internet (AFI) in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute within the Network Technologies Technical Committee. The proposed autonomic wireless mesh architecture is an instantiation of the AFI GANA (Generic Autonomic Network Architecture) reference model, a standards‐based approach to autonomics. This paper complements and extends the early version of the architecture by further detailing the architectural principles and providing experimental and validation results. First, we provide a brief overview of the AFI GANA reference model and then show how each of its building blocks can be instantiated for WMNs. We evaluate the proposed architecture by implementing and testing the 4 basic self‐x functionalities defined by the GANA model. The provided guidelines can now help researchers and engineers build autonomicity‐enabled WMNs using a standardized framework that enables adoption and deployment of autonomics by industry, thereby enabling researchers and engineers to contribute to the further evolution of the standard in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.

Unwired Planet v Huawei: The First UK FRAND Determination

On 5 April 2017, the High Court of England and Wales (the ‘English Court’) delivered its judgement on the ‘non-technical’ aspects of Unwired Planet v Huawei.1 This is the first decision of the English Courts that determines a FRAND rate for a licence of a portfolio of SEPs. The judgement offers crucial guidance on the law surrounding standardised technology, including the relevance of competition law, and will no doubt influence similar cases across the EU and further afield. This article will set out the background to the proceedings, summarise the key findings of the judgement and comment on the role of competition law in FRAND disputes in the future. The process of standardisation involves defining technical or quality requirements with which current or future products, production processes, services or methods may comply. This arises in many fields, including the telecommunications sector in which particular product and technical specifications are required to ensure compatibility and interoperability between the products of different manufacturers. For example, a standard has been developed for each of the ‘generations’ of mobile technology: 2G, 3G, and 4G. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (‘ETSI’) is the organisation responsible for standards development in the telecommunications industry in Europe, and the 2G, 3G, and 4G standards developed by ETSI are now used worldwide.

Unwired Planet vs Huawei: A Welcome Clarification of the Concept of FRAND and of the Role of Competition Law Towards SEP Licencing

On 5 April 2017, the High Court of Justice (the Hon. Mr. Justice Birrs) delivered a thought-provoking judgement in the matter of Unwired Planet vs Huawei.1 The dispute involved the licensing of Standard Essential Patents allegedly reading on mobile telephony standards. Some of these patents were found to be valid and infringed in a series of technical trials. Unwired Planet claimed that Huawei was an unwilling licensee, while Huawei argued that Unwired Planet was abusing its dominant position by demanding royalty rates which were clearly higher than FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) rates, by insisting on a worldwide license even though it did not enjoy worldwide IP (intellectual property), and by ‘rushing to Court’. Mr. Justice Birr's decision helps clarify two important aspects of standard essential patent (SEP) licensing: the meaning of FRAND and the interplay between European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) commitments and competition law in disciplining the behaviour of SEP holders. These clarifications rely on a number of key insights from economic analysis.

Assessment of attribute-based credentials for privacy-preserving road traffic services in smart cities

Smart cities involve the provision of advanced services for road traffic users. Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are a promising communication technology in this regard. Preservation of privacy is crucial in these services to foster their acceptance. Previous approaches have mainly focused on PKI-based or ID-based cryptography. However, these works have not fully addressed the minimum information disclosure principle. Thus, questions such as how to prove that a driver is a neighbour of a given zone, without actually disclosing his identity or real address, remain unaddressed. A set of techniques, referred to as Attribute-Based Credentials (ABCs), have been proposed to address this need in traditional computation scenarios. In this paper, we explore the use of ABCs in the vehicular context. For this purpose, we focus on a set of use cases from European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Basic Set of Applications, specially appropriate for the early development of smart cities. We assess which ABC techniques are suitable for this scenario, focusing on three representative ones—Idemix, U-Prove and VANET-updated Persiano systems. Our experimental results show that they are feasible in VANETs considering state-of-the-art technologies, and that Idemix is the most promising technique for most of the considered use cases.

V2X Application-Reliability Analysis of Data-Rate and Message-Rate Congestion Control Algorithms

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) require vehicle-to-everything communication. In dense traffic, the communication channel may become congested, impairing the reliability of the ITS safety applications. Therefore, the European Telecommunications Standard Institute demands decentralized congestion control (DCC) to control the channel load. Our objective is to investigate whether message-rate or data-rate congestion control provides better application reliability. We compare LIMERIC and PDR-DCC as representatives of the two principles. We analyzed the application reliability of LIMERIC with different data-rates and PDR-DCC with different message-rates for varying traffic densities and application requirements. We observed that, for applications with demanding requirements and in a large variety of vehicular densities, PDR-DCC (data-rate) provides more reliable communication support than LIMERIC (message-rate). Furthermore, this letter hints that a combined message-rate and data-rate congestion control can improve reliability further.