System Architecture Evolution Research Articles

Optimal Key Handover Management for Enhancing Security in Mobile Network

The 3GPP long term Evolution or System Architecture Evolution (LTE/SAE) was designed for the dispositioning of the mobile networks towards 4G. The significant hurdle of 4G is about cementing the privacy and security gap. Due to the disclosures in the connectivity of public networks, a single malicious device could jeopardize the operation of a whole network of devices. The key deliverance handling within the 3GPP LTE/SAE is developed to unauthorize the keys that are being attacked and, in result, to alienate the miscreant keys off the chain of network. The proposed article recognizes the attacks that jeopardize the safe connectivity among the stops in the network chain and details the vulnerability of the key deliverance administration to desynchronization attacks. Even though the periodic upgrade of the root could prove to be a fundamental part of the system, the work proposed brings an emphasis on reducing the impact of desynchronization attacks which currently are unable to be prevented efficiently. The main focus of the design is to shed light on the ways the network operators work to confirm the optimal intervals for the periodic updates to reduce the signal weightage while providing secure user mobility. The analysis and model simulations intend to disclose the influence of the period of root key upgrade on integral operational levels such as constellation and user experience.

Towards an effective approach for architectural knowledge management considering global software development

Architectural design is expected to provide virtuous outcomes of quality software products by satisfying customer requirements. A foremost apprehension of the customer is to have a better quality product within a minimal time span. The evaporation of architectural knowledge causes snags for the quality of a system being developed. The research study aims to propose and validate a framework bridging the gaps in architectural knowledge management. A mixed research approach has been employed. In order to align closely with industry practices, action research has been considered as research methodology, while the evaluation has been performed using a multiple case study approach. The results show that the framework enables the architects to cope with complex designs in distributed software development environments. The developed tool enabled to shift the theory into practice by assisting in creation of system architecture, knowledge survival and support architectural evolution with changing requirements.

Efficient System Geolocation Architecture in Next-Generation Cellular Networks

We propose a shift in the cellular positioning system paradigm that enables cellular providers to better meet the location-based services (LBS) needs of cellular users using only existing network infrastructure. Focusing specifically on current 4G and next-generation 5G technology, we outline a novel positioning system architecture, which utilizes the timing advance parameter to generate continuous position estimates with modern accuracy, minimum overhead, and improved latency. We highlight key limitations in existing positioning methods—excessive data overhead in positioning management traffic and poor network infrastructure geometry—through a review of the Third Generation Partnership Project's positioning system architecture evolution. We then present our alternative architecture, and demonstrate how our proposed system methodology mitigates these concerns, by comparing our proposed architecture with the existing ones. Finally, through numerical study, we establish that our methodology is able to meet and exceed federal emergency services standards and, thus, also many common LBS service requests. Our architecture is agnostic to mobile devices’ capabilities and has the potential to alleviate computational burden at the mobile device while simultaneously improving data throughput and latency through reduction of control overhead.

A Console GRID Leveraged Authentication and Key Agreement Mechanism for LTE/SAE

The growing popularity of multimedia applications, pervasive connectivity, higher bandwidth, and euphoric technology penetration among the bulk of the human race that happens to be cellular technology users, has fueled the adaptation to Long Term Evolution (LTE)/ System Architecture Evolution (SAE). The LTE fulfills the resource demands of the next generation applications for now. We identify security issues in the authentication mechanism used in LTE that without countermeasures might give superuser rights to unauthorized users. The LTE uses static LTE Key (LTE-K) to derive the entire key hierarchy such as LTE follows Evolved Packet System-Authentication and Key Agreement (EPS-AKA) based authentication which discloses user identity, location, and other Personally Identifiable Information (PII). To counter this, we propose a public key cryptosystem named International mobile subscriber identity Protected Console Grid-based Authentication and Key Agreement (IPG-AKA) protocol to address the vulnerabilities related to weak key management. From the data obtained from threat modeling and simulation results, we claim that the IPG-AKA scheme not only improves the security of authentication procedures, it also shows improvements in authentication loads and reduction in key generation time. The empirical results and qualitative analysis presented in this paper proves that IPG-AKA improves security in authentication procedure and performance in the LTE.

Security Extension for Relaxed Trust Requirement in Non3GPP Access to the EPS

Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has standardized the Evolved Packet System (EPS) as a part of their Long Term Evolution System Architecture Evolution (LTE/SAE) initiative. In order to provide ubiquitous services to the subscribers and to facilitate interoperability, EPS supports multiple access technologies where both 3GPP and Non-3GPP defined access networks are allowed to connect to a common All-IP core network called the Evolved Packet Core (EPC). However, a factor that continues to limit this endeavor is the trust requirement with respect to the subscriber's identity privacy. There are occasions during Non-3GPP access to the EPS when intermediary network elements like the access networks that may even belong to third party operators have to be confided with the subscriber's permanent identity. In this paper, we propose a security extension that relaxes this need. Contrary to several other solutions proposed recently in this area, our solution can be adopted as an extension to the existing security mechanism.

Inter-Domain Mobility Management Based on the Proxy Mobile IP in Mobile Networks

System Architecture Evolution (SAE) with Long Term Evolution (LTE) has been used as the key technology for the next generation mobile networks. To support mobility in the LTE/SAE-based mobile networks, the Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIP), in which the Mobile Access Gateway (MAG) of the PMIP is deployed at the Serving Gateway (S-GW) of LTE/SAE and the Local Mobility Anchor (LMA) of PMIP is employed at the PDN Gateway (P-GW) of LTE/SAE, is being considered. In the meantime, the Host Identity Protocol (HIP) and the Locator Identifier Separation Protocol (LISP) have recently been proposed with the identifier-locator separation principle, and they can be used for mobility management over the global-scale networks. In this paper, we discuss how to provide the inter-domain mobility management over PMIP-based LTE/SAE networks by investigating three possible scenarios: mobile IP with PMIP (denoted by MIP-PMIP-LTE/SAE), HIP with PMIP (denoted by HIP-PMIP-LTE/SAE), and LISP with PMIP (denoted by LISP-PMIP-LTE/SAE). For performance analysis of the candidate inter-domain mobility management schemes, we analyzed the traffic overhead at a central agent and the total transmission delay required for control and data packet delivery. From the numerical results, we can see that HIP-PMIP-LTE/SAE and LISP-PMIP-LTE/SAE are preferred to MIP-PMIP-LTE/SAE in terms of traffic overhead; whereas, LISP-PMIP-LTE/SAE is preferred to HIP-PMIP-LTE/SAE and MIP-PMIP-LTE/SAE in the viewpoint of total transmission delay.

Third-Generation Partnership Project Standards: For Delivery of Critical Communications for Railways

The Global System for Mobile Communications-Railways (GSM-R) is a radio telecommunication network and the bearer technology for the European Train Control System (ETCS). Both GSM-R and ETCS constitute the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS). GSM was adopted by the International Union of Railways (UIC) because it was the only system in commercial operation with a great potential to fulfill the requirements for the transport of railway services, although some features had to be added to the standard. However, as time has passed, GSM-R has proven to have capacity limitations, higher costs, and long development cycle times due to the special features built into standard GSM that have reduced the market for GSM-R equipment. These facts, together with the end of industry support by 2025, are motivating the switch to long-term evolution (LTE)/system architecture evolution technology as the new bearer network for railways. LTE provides higher data capacity than GSM and presents a flat architecture, which reduces deployment and maintenance costs as long as standard elements are used. This article provides an overview of third-generation partnership project (3GPP) systems, services, and their standardization status, which should be implemented to support the transport of railway services over a standard LTE network. Additionally, the quality of service (QoS) requirements for the transport of ETCS data control are compared with the QoS provided by LTE.

Evolution of the pore structure of constructed Technosols during early pedogenesis quantified by image analysis

Despite Technosols being widely present in environments, their pedogenesis has been studied to a much lesser extent than “natural” soils. As the initial characteristics of constructed Technosols are controlled and well-known, they represent unique experimental models for studying the early stages of soil formation. Focusing on those processes involved in soil structuration, our study proposes an image analysis protocol for the quantification of porosity and the study of pore system architecture evolution. The implications that the architecture of soil pore system evolution could have on the capacity of these constructed soils as well as “natural” soils to carry out their basic functions are also discussed. Soils with porosities of >50μm and 0.5–50μm were directly quantified by analyzing thin section images prepared from undisturbed soil samples, collected in situ in Kubiena boxes in 2008 and 2010. Pores were classified according to their diameter (five classes: diameter>2000μm, 500–2000μm; 50–500μm; 25–50μm; and 0.5–25μm). The >50μm porosity decreased significantly between 2008 (20.60%±6.10) and 2010 (14.36%±5.35). Only the number and surface of large pores (packing pores) with equivalent diameters exceeding 2000μm decreased. The surface of 0.5–50μm porosity increased between 2008 (10.56±2.64) and 2010 (13.63±2.55). This means that the soil is compacting. The consequence of this is a reduction of water holding capacity, which has a bearing on the filtering/buffering function of soil. After statistical analysis, the number of pores (N), surface area (A), index of connectivity (Ic) and shape factor (Sf) are proposed as indicators to be monitored in the study of Technosol porosity evolution.

Architectural implications of smart city business models: an evolutionary perspective

Smart cities have rapidly become a hot topic within technology communities, and promise both improved delivery of services to end users and reduced environmental impact in an era of unprecedented urbanization. Both large hightech companies and grassroots citizen-led initiatives have begun exploring the potential of these technologies. Significant barriers remain to the successful rollout and deployment of business models outlined for smart city applications and services, however. Most of these barriers pertain to an ongoing battle between two main schools of thought for system architecture, ICT and telecommunications, proposed for data management and service creation. Both of these system architectures represent a certain type of value chain and the legacy perspective of the respective players that wish to enter the smart city arena. Smart cities services, however, utilize components of both the ICT industry and mobile telecommunications industries, and do not benefit from the current binary perspective of system architecture. The business models suggested for the development of smart cities require a longterm strategic view of system architecture evolution. This article discusses the architectural evolution required to ensure that the rollout and deployment of smart city technologies is smooth through acknowledging and integrating the strengths of both the system architectures proposed.

Performance Technique of Location Registration in System Architecture Evolution

Performance Technique of Location Registration in System Architecture Evolution

Future wireless networks: key issues and a survey (ID/locator split perspective)

Future wireless networks (FWNs) are expected to be a convergence of different kinds of wireless technologies, such as cellular technologies, wireless local area networks (WLANs), wireless metropolitan area networks, wireless sensor networks, and traditional wired networks. The internet protocol (IP) will be potentially adopted as the common networking protocol for diverse networking technologies including the next generation of cellular networks using system architecture evolution (SAE). However, the IP architecture has several known challenges, such as mobility, multihoming, routing scalability, location privacy, path preference selection, etc. One of the greatest problems preventing the networks from overcoming these challenges is that the IP address is contextually overloaded, both as locators and identifiers. As a result, in this paper, we describe the issues of all-IP wireless networks, and survey recent proposals focusing on IP address overloading that can be applied to FWNs.

Virtualization architecture using the ID/Locator split concept for Future Wireless Networks (FWNs)

Future Wireless Networks (FWNs) will be a convergence of many fixed and mobile networking technologies including cellular, wireless LANs, and traditional wired networks. This united ubiquitous network will consist of billions of networkable devices with different networking interfaces. A common networking protocol is required to communicate among these devices and interfaces; System Architecture Evolution (SAE) documents state that Internet Protocol (IP), world-widely used in the current Internet, is likely to become that common protocol. However, traditional IP architecture has faced several known challenges, such as mobility, multihoming, privacy, path preference selection, etc., which should be resolved in FWNs. One of the difficulties in the current IP architecture is the overloading of IP addresses used both as the identity and the location of IP devices. In this paper, we propose a virtualization concept for networkable components, or (virtual) objects, which generalizes all abstract components to potentially be used in FWNs. In addition, we have explicitly separated the functions of the virtual object identity from the virtual object location (using the ID/locator split concept). The end-to-end communication is a concatenation of the involved components, called a channel. To help support the ownership and policy enforcement for trusted vs. untrusted networks, a set of (virtual) networkable components with the same interest, called a realm, is formed in a multi-tier structure. The individual policy can be enforced for each individual group of (virtual) objects and/or channels. This virtualization architecture concept, characterized by the ID/locator split concept, is well-suited for FWNs and helps eliminate problems in the current Internet.

Security Enhancement With Optimal QOS Using EAP-AKA In Hybrid Coupled 3G-WLAN Convergence Network

The third generation partnership project (3GPP) has addressed the feasibility of interworking and specified the interworking architecture and security architecture for third generation (3G)-wireless local area network (WLAN), it is developing, system architecture evolution (SAE)/ long term evolution (LTE) architecture, for the next generation mobile communication system. To provide a secure 3G-WLAN interworking in the SAE/LTE architecture, Extensible authentication protocol-authentication and key agreement (EAP-AKA) is used. However, EAP-AKA have several vulnerabilities. Therefore, this paper not only analyses the threats and attacks in 3G-WLAN interworking but also proposes a new authentication and key agreement protocol based on EAP-AKA. The proposed protocol combines elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) with symmetric key cryptosystem to overcome the vulnerabilities. The proposed protocol is used in hybrid coupled 3G-WLAN convergence network to analyse its efficiency in terms of QoS metrics, the results obtained using OPNET 14.5 shows that the proposed protocol outperforms existing interworking protocols both in security and QoS.

Access network discovery and selection in the evolved 3GPP multi‐access system architecture

AbstractThe system architecture evolution (SAE) of mobile networks specified in 3GPP release 8 comprises an evolved packet core (EPC) network to which different types of access networks can be connected. Inter‐system mobility management enables users to change the access network while maintaining ongoing data sessions. One important functionality in a 3GPP system is how a mobile terminal discovers and selects available access networks. In this paper we describe the access network discovery and selection functionality used in 3GPP release 8; we explain the differences of the methods applied for 3GPP access networks (GERAN, UTRAN, E‐UTRAN), for fixed or wireless non‐3GPP access networks (e.g. WLAN, WiMAX), as well as the optimisation used for CDMA2000 access networks. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

3GPP authentication and key agreement-protocol based on public key cryptosystem

The authentication and key agreement protocol adopted by 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) System Architecture Evolution (SAE) Release 8 standard was analyzed in contrast with 3G,and several security defects in SAE protocol were pointed out,then an improved 3GPP SAE authentication and key agreement protocol was put forward based on public key cryptosystem. In the new protocol,user's identity information and authentication vector in network domain were encrypted based on public key cryptosystem,public parent key adopted in local authentication was generated by random data. The security and efficiency of the proposed new scheme was analyzed at last. The analysis results show that the proposal can effectively solve the problems mentioned above and improve the security of protocol with less cost.

Device-to-device communication as an underlay to LTE-advanced networks

In this article device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying a 3GPP LTE-Advanced cellular network is studied as an enabler of local services with limited interference impact on the primary cellular network. The approach of the study is a tight integration of D2D communication into an LTE-Advanced network. In particular, we propose mechanisms for D2D communication session setup and management involving procedures in the LTE System Architecture Evolution. Moreover, we present numerical results based on system simulations in an interference limited local area scenario. Our results show that D2D communication can increase the total throughput observed in the cell area.

Multi-radio infrastructure for 4G

Future multi-radio infrastructure for the fourth generation (4G) will combine existing radio network technologies into a common communication system. For such an infrastructure, we propose a multi-radio management (MRM) that enables optimized access selection and handover control for mobile users and increases the overall efficiency of network resources. This paper presents the MRM concept by its functional architecture, its main and supporting functions, the migration of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) system architecture evolution, and last but not least, results from a demonstrator and simulations. MRM comprises multi-radio resource management (MRRM) and multi-radio mobility management (MRMM), which are tightly coupled to corresponding legacy subsystems through an abstraction and adaptation layer (AAL). In this way, MRM interworks with different radio access technologies (RATs) and extends their legacy functions with multi-radio control and sophisticated management based on generic mechanisms and virtualized interfaces. MRM is scalable due to the distribution of MRM across network nodes, and future RATs can be added seamlessly due to the AAL concept.

Network-based mobility management in the evolved 3GPP core network

A key aspect of the 3GPP system architecture evolution is the specification of an evolved packet core that supports multiple access networks. The EPC enables operators to deploy and operate one common packet core network for 3GPP radio accesses (E-UTRAN, UTRAN, and GERAN), as well as other wireless and wireline access networks (e.g., eHRPD, WLAN, WIMAX, and DSL/Cable), providing the operator with a common set of services and capabilities across the networks. A key requirement of the EPC is to provide seamless mobility at the IP layer as the user moves within and between accesses. This article provides an overview of the EPC specifications that use a network-based mobility mechanism based on Proxy Mobile IPv6 to enable mobility between access networks. An important facet of providing seamless mobility for a user's sessions across technologies is to ensure that quality of service is maintained as the user moves between accesses. An overview of the "off-path" QoS model to supplement PMIPv6 is also provided.