Literature Review

Since Next Generation Networks (NGN) and Future networks have been researched by different
angles by various researchers, recommendation bodies, and projects such as ITU-T, NICT, NFS,
FIND, GENI etc., a thorough study has been done on initial level to identify and analyze the
network of the future.

Chen and Nahrstedt (1998)

Routing is used to send digitized text/multimedia packets from source to destination(s).

The routing method must find routes that satisfies the Quality of Service (QoS)
constraints and makes efficient use of network resources. In this article, authors have
given an overview of the QoS routing problems and their existing solutions. They also
presented the strengths and weaknesses of different routing strategies and outlined the
challenges. The existing unicast/multicast routing algorithms are classified by authors in
to three categories: (1) source routing, (2) distributed routing, and (3) hierarchical routing
algorithms. They have investigated source routing algorithm most thoroughly. Finally,
the authors have discussed the basic algorithm in each class, classified and compared
them, and pointed out possible future directions in the QoS routing area.

Cochennec (2002)

In this paper named “Activities on Next-Generation Networks under Global Information

Infrastructure in ITU-T”, the author states that Next Generation Network (NGN) is a new
concept. Thus operators, manufacturers, and service providers and a general wish of
every stake holder are to prepare standards on it. This is the reason that the ITU-T had
decided to start the standardization process on NGN under the form of a new ITU-T
project prepared by Study Group 13 in line with results from the existing ITU-T Project
on Global Information Infrastructure (GII) because NGN is seen as a concrete realization
of the GII.
 First the author discusses the GII reference model as a comprehensive approach
which basically describes “the provision of various services by a variety of service
providers, over a variety of network technologies from different industry sectors.” He
describes that NGN represents some basic requirements widely accepted in technical
bodies. Finally, he listed and explained fifteen items in the frame of NGN 2004 Project.

Tatipamula and Grossetete (2004)

IPv6 provides an expanded address space to satisfy the future networking requirements. It
is expected that IPv4 and IPv6 hosts will need to coexist for a substantial time during the
steady migration from IPv4 to IPv6, and the deployment of transmission strategies, tools
and mechanism has been part of the basic IPv6 design from the start. The authors, in this
article, define different strategies of development and transmission mechanism of IPv6 in
NGN. Since, tunneling, transmission, and dual-stack mechanism play a key role in the
integration and coexistence of IPv4 and IPv6, they are briefly compared and revisited by
the authors.

Ekici (2004)

Location management is one of the key factors which determine the performance of Next
Generation Wireless Networks (NGWN). In NGWN, location management schemes play
important roles, since mobile users roam in coverage areas of these subnetworks
simultaneously. In this paper, the author proposed NGWN to achieve the goal of
ubiquitous broadband networking by utilizing multiple wireless access subnetworks
serving overlapping areas. He presented signaling performance bounds achievable by
location management scheme in wireless portion of NGWN. Apart from presenting
idealized location management schemes, author also derived equations to calculate the
location registration, paging, and overall location management signaling costs over the
wireless medium.
Ghosh et al. (2005)

Networks have been substantially upgraded either wholly or partly using existing radio
access network infrastructure and which are capable of delivering broadband access
services with bandwidths significantly above those currently widely available. Fourth-
generation wireless technologies provide high bandwidth for content rich multimedia
applications. Authors have first studied some of the key issues of 4G system such as
high-data-rate transmission, high mobility and seamless integration, high capacity and
low cost per bit, coverage area, spectrum, and wireless Quality of Service (QoS). They
also studied their impact of network design. IP-based radio access network architectures
for next-generation mobile systems is focused here Then they have shown that Free
Space Optics (FSO), known as optical wireless has advantages of high bandwidth (155
Mbps to 1.2 Gbps) link, no licensing requirement, and susceptibility to weather
conditions. In the next section they present a self-similar fractal-geometry-based mesh
topology called FraNtiC, where all interconnection links in the mesh networks are
assumed to be optical wireless. Finally, it was concluded by the authors that mesh-based
backhaul coupled with emergent wireless transmission technologies, will emerge as the
future of fourth-generation radio access networks.

Akyildiz et al. (2006)

To solve current network problems due to the limited available spectrum, xG networks
are being developed. These xG networks are equipped with the intrinsic capabilities of
the cognitive radio which will provide an ultimate spectrum-aware communication
paradigm in wireless communications. The authors made a survey in which they
presented the intrinsic properties and current research challenges of the xG networks.
They then investigated the unique challenge in xG networks by a bottom up approach.
They introduced novel spectrum management functionalities such as spectrum sensing,
spectrum analysis, spectrum design, and spectrum mobility.
Kibria and Jamalipour (2007)

Existing networks such as 2G, 3G, WLAN, WiMAX, etc. have limited service
accessibility by mobile users to access specific terminals. To support the growing number
of wireless users, new applications and addressing requirements, Internet Protocol (IP)
needs to be adapted as the underlying transport technology in packet networks. Such an
integrated end to end IP based infrastructure is offered by Next Generation Mobile
Network (NGMN). NGMN is beyond 3G (B3G) or 4G mobile network. NGMN aims to
support seamless mobility across disparate access technology in a transparent manner.
NGMN design success will depend on its ability to address key design issues mainly
adaptation of its architecture and modifications of service continuity functions. This
article presents a solution where attempt is made to resolve these issues by considering an
IP based internetworking framework that promotes the evolution of individual networks
and integration of new technologies.

Aoyama (2009)

Japan’s AKARI Project’s Primary goal is to design a network of the future. AKARI
project aims to build technologies for new generation network by 2015. This article
discusses NWGN network architecture and its design based on that architecture. The
authors revieved research activities beyond the Internet and Next Generation Netwrk
(NGN) especially in Japan. Authors described fundamental technologies and
requirements to enable the provision of a New Generation Network beyond the I nternet
and next generation network. Both, beyond the Internet and NGN are based on IP
protocols but new generation network (NWGN) aims to be developed from the clean
slate. Some R&D activities are shown by the authors.

Antoniou (2010)

Different types of access networks, terminals and services coexist in converged networks.
Converged networks is a new paradigm which is user centric, that is, the user is no
 longer bound to only one access network but may indirectly select the best available
access network to support a service session. Interaction between a user and a network
resulting from network selection in next generation communication networks is studied
by authors in this article. In order to capture interaction between user and network,
authors utilized Game-theoretic tools which enabled them to compute a cooperative
solution that is satisfactory for both the user and network in a repeated interactive
situation between the two. The user-network interaction is evaluated analytically and
numerically through Mat lab simulations. It was indicated by the theoretical result that
the proposed approach easily cooperates between the user and the network. The
simulative results provide supportive evidence that the proposed approach can result in
comparatively higher payoffs for both entities.

Aurzada et al. (2011)

Next generation passive optical networks (NG-PONs) are built on Ethernet Passive
Optical Networks (EPONs) and Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPONs). NGPON
does the following:
i. Provides increased data rates, splits ratios, wavelength counts, and
ii. allows for all-optical integration of access and metro networks.

This paper provides a comprehensive probabilistic analysis of the capacity (maximum

mean packet throughput) and packet delays of subnetworks that can be used to form NG-
PONs.

ITU-T Recommendation Y.3001 (2011)

Objectives and design goals of future networks (FNs) are described in this
recommendation. To distinguish FNs from existing networks, four objectives have been
identified which are: service awareness, data awareness, environmental awareness, and
social and economic awareness. To realize these objectives, ITU-T has identified twelve
design goals which are: service diversity, functional flexibility, virtualization of
resources, data access, energy consumption, service universalization, economic
 incentives, network management, mobility, optimization, identification, reliability and
security. This Recommendation assumes that the target timeframe for FNs falls
approximately between 2015 and 2020. Appendix I describes technologies elaborated in
recent research efforts that are likely to be used as an enabling technology for each design
goal.

Maier et al. (2011).

Next Generation Passive Optical Networks (NG-PONs) are the access technologies of the
next generation networks (NGN). Compared to current GPONs/EPONs , NG-PONs
achieve high performance parameters such as higher bandwidth per subscriber, extended
maximum reach, and increased splitting ratio. In this article, authors divided NG-PON
technologies into NGPON1 and NGPON2 architectures such as Long-reach XGPON,
wavelength routing WDM PON, OCDM and OFDM PONs. Authors gave reports of
these PONs on recent progress toward enhanced data and control plane functionalities
including real-time dynamic bandwidth allocation, bandwidth flexibility, improved
privacy abd guaranteed Quality of Service, as well as cost effective inservice monitoring
techniques for NG-PONs. They then elaborated on converged optical fiber-wireless
(FiWi) access networks. They also explored powerful layer-2 optical wireless,
hierarchical frame aggregation, and network coding techniques. Finally, they enquired
into the opportunities of sensor enhanced FiWi networks and proposed their novel Uber-
FiWi networks.

ITU-T Recommendation Y.3011 (2012)

This Recommendation describes the framework of network virtualization for Future

Networks (FNs). Network virtualization allows multiple virtual networks which are
logically isolated network partitions (LINPs) and coexist in a single physical network.
The recommendation gives conceptual architecture of network virtualization and also
concept of LINP provided by network virtualization. Problem spaces of network
virtualization are discussed and design goals investigated. Finally, applicability of
 Network virtualization is discussed and its advantages and disadvantages are
summarized. An Appendix provides detailed use cases on various aspects of network
virtualization, such as experimental network and mobility.

ITU-T Recommendation Y.3021 (2012)

The framework of energy saving for Future Networks (FNs) is described in this
recommendation. First, energy saving within networks is described and then potential
energy saving technologies are reviewed. In energy saving technologies, it has listed
different energy saving technologies and their levels, then described device level
technologies, equipment level technologies, and network level technologies respectively.
Finally, the Recommendation identifies major functions and their cyclic
interactions, analyses the possible impact of introducing certain
energy-saving technologies and itemizes the high level requirements for
introducing such technologies.

ITU-T Recommendation Y.3031 (2012)

Recommendation ITU-T Y.3001 recommended that Future Networks (FNs) should

provide a new identification framework that will be helpful for intrinsic mobility support
and optimum data access. Considering emerging and upcoming networks that involves
various innovative communication paradigms, FNs have a major goal of specifying a new
architecture. Therefore, an identification framework should be identified that defines new
identifiers of communication objects. Such an identification framework should efficiently
support the new communication paradigms in Future Networks.

Matsubara (2013)

In this article, authors have discussed development of future Networks (FNs`) by ITU-T.
ITU-T has published four important recommendations during 2009-2012. These are:
Y.3001, Y.3011, Y.3021, and Y.3031 representing the first standard descriptions of
future networks. In addition to connectivity services, FNs are characterized by four
objectives and twelve design goals. These design goals are advanced capabilities,
features, and new network services that are needed together to realize FNs. It is believed
that these recommendations will provide a sound foundation and appropriate guidance for
subsequent FNs’ realization, standardization, research, and development. In these
recommendations, description of FNs is to meet assumption that trial services and phased
deployment of future networks supporting the described objectives and design goals falls
approximately between 2015 and 2020. This target date does not mean a network will
change by that estimated time frame but that parts of a network are expected to evolve.
Evolution and migration strategy may be employed to accommodate emerging and future
network technologies. Such evolution and migration scenarios are topics for further
studies. This article presents the background and the context of Future Network’s
standardization, and the deliverables and future plans originated from the initial
standardization work performed by ITU-T.