Interface Card Research Articles

A Virtual Network Resource Allocation Framework Based on SR-IOV

The workload of a data center has the characteristics of complexity and requirement variability. However, in reality, the attributes of network workloads are rarely used by resource schedulers. Failure to dynamically schedule network resources according to workload changes inevitably leads to the inability to achieve optimal throughput and performance when allocating network resources. Therefore, there is an urgent need to design a scheduling framework that can be workload-aware and allocate network resources on demand based on network I/O virtualization. However, in the current mainstream I/O virtualization methods, there is no way to provide workload-aware functions while meeting the performance requirements of virtual machines (VMs). Therefore, we propose a method that can dynamically sense the VM workload to allocate network resources on demand, and can ensure the scalability of the VM while improving the performance of the system. We combine the advantages of I/O para-virtualization and SR-IOV technology, and use a limited number of virtual functions (VFs) to ensure the performance of network-intensive VMs, thereby improving the overall network performance of the system. For non-network-intensive VMs, the scalability of the system is guaranteed by using para-virtualized Network Interface Cards (NICs) which are not limited in number. Furthermore, to be able to allocate the corresponding bandwidth according to the VM’s network workload, we hierarchically divide the VF’s network bandwidth, and dynamically switch between VF and para-virtualized NICs through the active backup strategy of Bonding Drive and ACPI Hotplug technology to ensure the dynamic allocation of VF. Experiments show that the allocation framework can effectively improve system network performance, in which the average request delay can be reduced by more than 26%, and the system bandwidth throughput rate can be improved by about 5%.

Location-Invariant Physical Layer Identification Approach for WiFi Devices

Recently, Radio Frequency Fingerprinting (RFF) becomes a promising technique which augments existing multifactor authentication schemes at the device level to counter forgery and related threats. As RFF leverages the discriminable hardware imperfections reflected in Radio Frequency (RF) signals for device identification, it has a good property of scalability, accuracy, energy-efficiency and tamper resistance. However, its identification accuracy might be compromised when the locations of training and testing are different, which is a more realistic assumption in practical scenarios. To address this issue, we study the location-invariant RFF feature extraction and identification method for WiFi Network Interface Cards (NICs). Firstly, we present an RFF feature extraction approach named Differential Phase of Pilots (DPoP). To further address the low-dimensional feature space problem, we propose another novel RFF extraction approach named Amplitude of Quotient (AoQ). AoQ exploits the fact that the RFFs of two Long Training Sequences (LTSs) in WiFi frames exhibit semi-steady characteristics and two LTSs in the same frame have similar channel frequency responses. Next, we use Euclidean distance and Deep Neural Network (DNN) for AoQ authentication and identification, respectively. Experimental results verify the effectiveness of our proposed AoQ method among 55 WiFi NICs of 5 models. The identification accuracy is higher than 95% and the Equal Error Rate (EER) is around 4% when SNR is higher than 40 dB.

A Comprehensive Study on Enterprise Wi-Fi Access Points Power Consumption

Wi-Fi networks are becoming more and more ubiquitous and represent a substantial source of energy consumption around the globe, mainly when it comes to Access Points (APs). There has been some work done on the characterization of the power consumption of Wi-Fi APs and network interface cards (NICs), and the power usage of these devices under different configurations and standards but mostly using legacy standards. A detailed AP power consumption analysis, exploring the whole set of degrees of freedom and capabilities of these devices is lacking in the state of the art. In this paper, we present a thorough power consumption analysis, covering the configuration options available in enterprise Wi-Fi APs from the three major vendors on the market. The goal is to understand how the power consumption of an AP varies with the different configurations, and provide insights on the parameters that significantly affect the AP power consumption. The obtained experimental results confirm previous state-of-the-art conclusions but contradict some of the studies and results found in the literature, while updating results and conclusions taken in the past to the most recent standards, configurations, and data rates available today. The analysis provided herein is a valuable source of information for deriving new AP power consumption models and designing energy-efficient Wi-Fi networks.

Концепция стенда для исследования кибербезопасности устройств на шине FlexRay «подключенного» транспортного средства, основанная на использовании интерфейсных плат

The article proposes the concept of a stand for researching the vulnerabilities of devices onthe FlexRay bus, the so-called “Connected” vehicle , the operation of which uses digital datatransmission systems. The main problems of cybersecurity of such objects are related to the possibility of compromising the data exchanged between the vehicle devices during its operation.The relevance of the study of cybersecurity of such devices is associated with the need to ensuretraffic safety. To simulate the effects on the bus, in particular, the substitution and injection ofsignals by intruders, it is proposed to use interface cards designed to study the FlexRay bus, programmed in the Labview development environment.

SmartWAZ: Design and Implementation of a Smart WiFi Access System Assisted by Zigbee

Recently, WiFi networks have witnessed an unprecedented deployment, and WiFi APs are ubiquitous around the world. On one hand, the WiFi clients have to actively discover new WiFi access points (APs), and try to access to them, even though most of the APs are privately owned, which wastes the precious energy of mobile devices due to excessive listening and scanning operations of WiFi network interface cards. On the other hand, many wireless technologies coexist in overlapping channels (e.g., 2.4 GHz ISM bands). It provides a new opportunity of cross-technology communication (CTC) that utilizes these overlapping frequencies to share information among different technologies. This paper deeply investigates the application of wireless CTC into smart and energy-effective WiFi access with the assistance of low-power radio. Specifically, we design a smart WiFi access system assisted by Zigbee, SmartWAZ, for mobile terminals with both WiFi and Zigbee interfaces. The most prominent feature of this system is that the different WiFi beacon periods are intentionally used to distinguish publicly accessible and privately owned WiFi APs. Then, the folding algorithm is applied by the Zigbee module in clients to detect the specific WiFi beacon period used by public APs, and then the WiFi interface will be waked only when a public WiFi AP is detected. From the system design viewpoint, we investigate the influence of the beacon period of the sender (i.e., WiFi AP) and the judgment threshold of the mobile client on a false positive and false negative, and provide the basic rule to appropriately set those system parameters. Compared to the traditional WiFi access methods, the SmartWAZ significantly saves the energy consumption of continuous WiFi scanning; compared to other low-power radio assisted WiFi access systems, SmartWAZ avoids waking WiFi interface when private WiFi APs appear. The experiment results show that the SmartWAZ averagely consumes only 36% of the energy of traditional WiFi access schemes and achieves reliable detection with an error rate of less than 1%.

Performance analysis of a smart meter node for congestion avoidance and LoS coverage

Smart meters are intelligent next-generation energy meters which are used for measuring energy consumption and transmitting information over a network. In a real-time environment, a smart meter network faces congestion and coverage issues. To connect to the network, a network interface card (NIC) is installed for each smart meter. NICs are hardware components that link a host to a network and acts as both the physical and data link layer. Generally, a single node is connected to a NIC. We found that the use of multiple NICs in a node shows significant improvement over the use of a single NIC to overcome network congestion in a real-time environment. The line of sight (LoS) between the transmitter and the receiver is a coverage issue in a smart meter network, which leads to an increase in the packet loss ratio (PLR). In this work, we address network congestion and the coverage issue through multi-channel capability and maximum LoS with single-and multi-hop nodes respectively. The proposed multi-channel network shows two times improvement in the throughput over the regular system; with additional hardware and approximately 1.5 times lower PLR for Node. The experimental results suggest that for a single-hop node, approximately 30 m is the average distance over which LoS communication is possible, and for multi-hop nodes, the distance is 24 m.

Porting Android Oreo onto Imx6 Processor based Media Accelerated Graphics Innovation Kit with driving an SD card

Nowadays for the embedded devices use of android operating system has become current emerging trend in the market. The most widely used embedded device in industries which built with android OS is mobile phone. The advantage of using android OS compared to other OS is that, it is an open source and responds quickly to functional changes. It is becoming default OS for devices which requires the multimedia support. Porting of android onto ARM processor based platform is very necessary in order to bring the effectiveness of ARM and capability of android onto a product. The proposed work is to port android 8.0(oreo) onto iMX6 processor based Media Accelerated Graphics Innovation Kit (MAIK-II) and testing sd card interface for read or write process.

A real-time power monitoring and energy-efficient network/interface selection tool for android smartphones

Energy efficiency in wireless and cellular networks has become one of the most important concerns for both academia and industry due to battery dependence of mobile devices. In this regard, Wireless Network Interface Cards (WNICs) of mobile devices have to be taken into account carefully as they consume an important chunk of the system's total energy. In this paper, we propose a real-time network power consumption profiler and an energy-aware network/interface selection tool for Android-based smartphones. The tool has been freely released on the Android Play Store. The proposed solution reports the power consumption levels of different network interfaces (Wi-Fi and Cellular) by making use of actual packet measurements and precise computations, and enables the devices to handover horizontally/vertically in order to improve the energy efficiency. In this context, widespread analyses have been executed to show the accuracy of the proposed tool. The results demonstrate that the proposed tool is very accurate for any type of IEEE 802.11 wireless or cellular stations, regardless of having different amount of channel utilization, transmission rates, signal strengths or traffic types.

400GbE Technology Demonstration Using CFP8 Pluggable Modules

In this article, we first review the current status of 400GBASE client-side optics standards and multi-source agreements (MSAs). We then compare different form factors for 400GE modules, including CFP8, OSFP and QSFP-DD. The essential techniques to implement 400GE, such as pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4), forward error correction (FEC) and a continuous time-domain linear equalizer (CTLE), are discussed. A 400GE physical interface card (PIC) in Juniper’s PTX5000 platform has been developed, conforming to the latest IEEE802.3bs standard. To validate the PIC’s performance, a commercial optical network tester (ONT) and the PIC are optically interconnected through two CFP8-LR8 modules. The CFP8-LR8 module utilizes eight optical wavelengths through coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM). Each wavelength carries 50 Gb/s PAM4 signal. The signal transmits through 10 km of single mode fiber (SMF). The ONT generates framed 400GE signal and sends it to the PIC through the first CFP8 module. The PIC recovers the signal, performs an internal loopback, and sends 400GE signal back to the ONT through the second CFP8 module. The optical spectrum, eye diagram, receiver sensitivity, long time soaking results, and internal digital diagnosis monitoring (DDM) result are fully characterized. The pre-FEC bit error rate (BER) is well below the KP4 FEC threshold of 2.2 × 10−4. After KP4 FEC, error-free performance over 30 km of SMF is achieved. In this way, we demonstrate both the interoperation between the PIC and the ONT, as well as the interoperation between the two CFP8 modules. This demonstration represents the successful implementation of the 400GE interface in the core IP/MPLS router.

A Joint Routing and Channel Assignment Scheme for Hybrid Wireless-Optical Broadband-Access Networks

In this paper, we investigate mechanisms for improving the quality of communications in wireless-optical broadband access networks (WOBAN), which present a promising solution to meet the growing needs for capacity of access networks. This is achieved by using multiple gateways and multi-channel operation along with a routing protocol that effectively reduces the effect of radio interference. We present a joint route and channel assignment scheme with the objective of maximizing the end-to-end probability of success and minimizing the end-to-end delay for all active upstream traffic in the WOBAN. Performance evaluations of the proposed scheme are presented using ns-2 simulations, which show that the proposed scheme improves the network throughput up to three times and reduces the traffic delay by six times in presence of 12 channels and four network interface cards (NICs), compared to a single channel scenario.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Warning in the Approximate Ward Environment

This research presents the usage of modern 5G C-Band sensing for health care monitoring. The focus of this research is to monitor the respiratory symptoms for COPD （Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease）. The C-Band sensing is used to detect the respiratory conditions, including normal, abnormal breathing and coughing of a COPD patient by utilizing the simple wireless devices, including a desktop system, network interface card, and the specified tool for the extraction of wireless channel information with Omni directional antenna operating at 4.8 GHz frequency. The 5G sensing technique enhances the sensing performance for the health care sector by monitoring the amplitude information for different respiratory activities of a patient using the above-mentioned devices. This method examines the rhythmic breathing patterns obtained from C-Band sensing and digital respiratory sensor and compared the result.

On Multiple Virtual NICs in Cloud Computing: Performance Bottleneck and Enhancement

Multiple network interface card (NIC) configuration is the key to achieving service isolation and link aggregation in enterprise networks. Despite the increasing deployments of multiple virtual NICs ( multi-vNIC ) in cloud environments, the performance and hidden cost of such multi-vNIC configurations are yet to be understood. Our measurements in both Xen and KVM environments reveal that the network workloads on one virtual NIC can negatively affect the transmission performance on other virtual NICs. Such a bottleneck however does not exist in conventional physical machines or to a much lower degree. We therefore explore the possible approaches to detect and resolve such a problem in the virtualization architecture design. In particular, a mutual information-based model is developed to monitor the stability of virtual NIC pairs. Based on this model, we further design a bottleneck avoidance mode to enhance the network performance. Different from the previous research that merely optimizes virtualized network I/O stack, our solution focuses on the entire application I/O workflow in the cloud environments. Extensive evaluations show that our enhancements can mitigate the performance degradation of multi-vNIC configuration, making it a practically workable solution for cloud environments.

A network selection method for handover in vehicle-to-infrastructure communications in multi-tier networks

Network selection is very important for a successful handover in a multi-tier heterogeneous networks. However, the primary challenges currently faced by research community is the lack of availability of network information at the mobile node side for efficiently select the most appropriate target network. It is practically difficult for an UE to get network information from base stations/access point of the neighbouring networks before connecting to them. In response to this, this paper proposes a network selection method that applies the knowledge of mobility data and the network load information to carry out an efficient handover for vehicle-to-infrastructure communication over multi-tier heterogeneous networks. We first derive key parameters, such as relative direction index, proximity index, residence time index, and network load index to select the best candidate network. A moving vehicle would be able to select the most appropriate target network by selecting one or more of the above parameters. We then test our algorithms by developing a dual mode vehicle On-Board Unit equipped with both Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) and Wi-Fi network interface cards in OPNET simulator. The performance of the proposed handover method is evaluated by extensive OPNET-based simulation experiments. In the simulation model, we consider a multi-tier heterogeneous network comprising of a macro and multiple small cells of LTE-A and IEEE 802.11n technologies. Results show that our proposed handover method offers about 50% higher throughput and up to 43% higher packet delivery ratio than the conventional received signal strengths based network selection method.

Semi-Coherent DMA: An Alternative I/O Coherency Management for Embedded Systems

Many modern embedded CPUs adopt Non-Coherent DMA (NC-DMA) over Coherent DMA (C-DMA) because of simplicity. An NC-DMA design, however, requires a CPU device driver to explicitly invalidate or flush a wide range of cache space. When an I/O DMA device writes data to a main memory region, the CPU needs to invalidate the cache space corresponding to the same memory region twice: (1) to prevent dirty cache lines from overwriting the DMA data and (2) to remove any cache lines prefetched before the DMA is done. In this work, we first show that such explicit invalidations consume 31 percent of CPU cycles, limiting the data transfer throughput of a high-speed network interface card (NIC) when receiving network packets. Second, we propose a Semi-Coherent DMA (SC-DMA) architecture for improving the efficiency of NC-DMA with a slight modification to the hardware. Specifically, our SC-DMA records the DMA region and prohibits any data that is prefetched from the region from entering the cache, reducing nearly 50 percent of the unnecessary invalidations. Lastly, we identify several software optimizations that can substantially reduce excessive cache invalidations prevalent in NIC drivers. Our evaluation with NVIDIA Jetson TX2 shows that our proposed SC-DMA design with the NIC driver optimizations can improve the NIC data transfer throughput by up to 53.3 percent.

Quasi-switched inverter using space vector pulse width modulation with triangular comparison for photovoltaic applications

This work analyzes a prototype of a quasi-switched boost inverter (qSBI) feeding an isolated resistive load from a DC source. The use of spatial vector pulse width modulation (SPWM) with triangular comparison is proposed to increase the qSBI gain factor, and its performance is contrasted with other types of spatial vector modulations, such as discontinuous modulations. To verify the validity of the method for voltage range extension in the qSBI converter, a semi-customized test platform was developed. This platform uses a DSP floating point card (Analog Devices ADSP-21369) for processing and control strategies and an interface card that includes a programmable logic array (FPGA) from Xilinx (Spartan-3), which allows to develop the synchronized modulation qSBI needs. The experimental results show improvements in the performance of the qSBI converter in terms of gain factor, voltage reduction in the capacitor, and input current profiles. Discontinuous space vector modulation strategies do not perform well when compared to continuous SVPWM or SPWM modulations, because the ripple levels in the currents taken from the PV module are approximately twice as great as in continuous modulation techniques. Finally, the usefulness of a qSBI as PV microinverter is confirmed by two practical experimental cases of a PV photovoltaic system with a maximum power point adjustment algorithm (MPPT).

Highly scalable intelligent sensory application and time domain matrix for safety-critical system design

The designs of highly scalable intelligent sensory application—Ethernet-based communication architectures—are moving toward the integration of a fault recovery and fault-detection algorithm on the automotive industry. In particular, each port on the same network interface card design is required to provide highly scalable and low-latency communication. In this article, we present a study of intelligent sensory application for the Ethernet-based communication architecture and performance of multi-port configuration which is mainly used in safety-enhanced application such as automotive, military, finance, and aerospace, in other words, safety-critical applications. Our contributions and observations on the highly scalable intelligent behavior: (1) proposed network interface card board design scheme and architecture with multi-port configuration are a stable network configuration; (2) timing matrix is defined for fault detection and recovery time; (3) experimental and related verification methods by cyclic redundancy check between client–server and testing platform provide comparable results to each port configurations; and (4) application program interface–level algorithm is defined to make network interface card ready for fault detection.

Configuring a Software Router by the Erlang-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$ </tex-math> </inline-formula>-Based Packet Latency Prediction

Characterizing a virtual network function performance is one of the most challenging issues in softwarized network function deployment due to different configurations leading to a different performance. Since there has been no clear solution on how to configure a software router that provides the minimum average packet latency, we address this problem by proposing a configuration framework for a software router. First, we advance the performance characterization of a software router by conducting a packet latency prediction model based on the Erlang- $k$ distribution. Motivated by the analysis of the packet latency distribution, the Erlang- $k$ distribution is chosen as a basis of the packet latency prediction model. Our prediction model requires the measurement of only two different configurations, i.e., one and two receiving queues of a network interface card, to predict the average packet latency of all configurations. We cross-verify the accuracy of our prediction model with the measured data. Second, we adopt our prediction model in the configuration selection (CS) algorithm for searching which configuration yields the minimum of average packet latency. The validity of the prediction-based CS algorithm is confirmed by comparing to the measurement-based one. Finally, we present the CS-based measurement system interworking with network function virtualization-management and orchestration for advances in network management.

A practical sleep coordination and management scheme with duty cycle control for energy sustainable IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh networks

We consider the energy sustainable operation of solar powered IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh networks. Our main contribution is the development of a simple and novel sleep scheduling scheme that is local and distributed and provides contiguous sleep intervals that can be used for putting both radio interface cards and the main-board into deep sleep mode. We show this provides substantial energy savings as main-board power consumption comprises a significant portion of total node power. Unlike many sleep coordination schemes developed for Wireless Sensor Networks, our approach is suitable for Wireless Mesh Networks having much larger traffic demand and non-tree-like routing pattern. In addition, we propose a local duty-cycle control scheme, which regulates node awake time and naturally limits the amount of elastic traffic that moves along energy limited nodes. This is coupled with an implicit admission control scheme, which limits the number of non-elastic flows admitted to the network. More importantly, our scheme does not modify the IEEE 802.11 MAC and does not require information of the traffic demand nor input energy pattern. We have evaluated the performance of our approach using NS3 simulations by considering its traffic volume, lifetime and numerous other parameters and have also compared it to both perfect scheduling and default IEEE 802.11s behavior. Our results are also backed by evaluating numerous randomly generated topologies. A detailed discussion of the effect of topological aspects of the network on its sustainability characteristics is also provided.

IBCube

Datacenter networks have attracted a lot of research interest in the past few years. BCube is proved to be a promising scheme due to its low cost. By using a recursive construction scheme, BCube can exponentially scale a datacenter. Industry experiences, however, articulate the importance of incremental expansion of datacenter. In this article, the authors show that BCube's expanding scheme suffers low utilization of switch ports. They propose IBCube, a novel economical design for incrementally building datacenter networks. The insight is that: by letting the number of switches in each BCube layer equal the number of the building blocks, the authors can enable the switch ports to be fully utilized to support the total number of network interface cards of the deployed servers in the datacenters. Accordingly, their IBCube designs a novel automatic port allocation scheme. Simulation results show that the IBCube design reduces the budget for the datacenter networks by 94% as well as improves the packet delay and throughput by 10.3% and 11.5%, respectively, compared to the previous partial BCube design.

Determination of Interrupt-Coalescence Latency of Remote Hosts Through Active Measurement

Recently, hosts connected to the Internet through network interface cards (NICs) are equipped with a hardware artifact called interrupt coalescence (IC). This artifact reduces the processing load of a host in exchange for an additional delay in the receiving of packets that arrive into its NIC. Even though the adoption of IC has its benefits, the additional delay negatively affects the hosts that are involved in the performance measurement of various network parameters and time-sensitive applications. Therefore, prior knowledge of IC-inflicted delay may be used to facilitate accurate delay and bandwidth measurements, IP geolocation, and traffic load-balancing. In this paper, we propose what we believe as the first scheme to measure the IC period (the additional delay) of remote hosts through the use of pairs of probing packets and a k-means clustering algorithm. We report the practicability of our scheme and the high accuracy through extensive experiments on both controlled and production networks consisting of up to 1000-Mb/s links. Our experimental evaluations show that the proposed scheme measures IC period with 90% accuracy, quickly, and with a small probing load.