Design of a control and management system for frequency-and time-synchronous SDN networks

Many of today's telecommunications systems rely on strict timing and synchronization requirements. This is the case of cellular telephony (3G, 4G/LTE), where base stations need accurate and stable frequency clocks in order to obtain their carrier radio frequencies, arbitrate the frequency- and time-...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Author: Suárez Marín, Raúl
Format: Master's thesis
Publication date:2016
Country:España
Institution:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repository:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/88748
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/88748
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Computer network architectures
SDN
OpenFlow
SyncE
PTP
Ryu
Open vSwitch
Xarxes definides per programari (Tecnologia de xarxes d'ordinadors)
Ordinadors, Xarxes d' -- Arquitectures
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria de la telecomunicació
_version_ 1878737700053319680
author Suárez Marín, Raúl
author_browse Suárez Marín, Raúl
author_facet Suárez Marín, Raúl
author_role author
collection UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
description Many of today's telecommunications systems rely on strict timing and synchronization requirements. This is the case of cellular telephony (3G, 4G/LTE), where base stations need accurate and stable frequency clocks in order to obtain their carrier radio frequencies, arbitrate the frequency- and time-shared access of terminals, and coordinate the handover of terminals between adjacent cells. The imminent deployment of 5G networks, with a much higher density of cells and speed, will further increase the need for synchronization. On the one hand, Synchronous Ethernet (SyncE) is a well-known, cheap, scalable Ethernet data plane, with the addition of special messages that convey frequency synchronization information. On the other hand, Precision Time Protocol (PTP) is a widely used protocol to transport time information, and used to synchronize nodes in networks. On top of that, SDN is a new networking paradigm that provides an abstraction of the forwarding function, decoupling the data plane from the control plane. The control of the network is moved to the controller, an external centralized entity that manages the network configuration based on policies through a southbound interface, for example OpenFlow. SDN architecture opens the way to the virtualization of network functions, the global optimization of network operations, and reduces operational costs. Two solutions proposed moving SyncE and PTP to SDN networks: SyncE has been introduced in SDN with the SDN-enabled SyncE networks and PTP with the ReversePTP. SDN-enabled SyncE proposed extensions to OpenFlow 1.0 which enables the SDN network to control the circulation of ESMC PDU, the possibility of transmitting SyncE statistics and to build synchronization trees based on SyncE. ReversePTP proposed extensions to OpenFlow which enabled the SDN network to request the time to each node, so the SDN controllers know clock offsets between slave clocks (network elements) and itself (master clock). These extensions allow to coordinate the handover of terminals between adjacent cells in mobile networks and a kind of PTP. However, there is no solution in the literature which proposes an SDN+PTP+SyncE (i.e. a full synchronous) solution. This master thesis proposes multiple standard extensions of the OpenFlow protocol in order to deploy Fully-Synchronous SDN (FSS) networks. For that, SyncE and PTP are studied and implemented in the SDN architecture. The proposed extensions and modifications have been deployed and successfully tested in a real environment. Results showed a good performance on PTP time-stamping.
eu_rights_str_mv openAccess
format masterThesis
id ES_a3a4f7790f75bda683d64edcffb8ffb5
institution Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
instname_str Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
language eng
network_acronym_str ES
network_name_str España
oai_identifier_str oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/88748
publishDate 2016
publishDateSort 2016
publisher Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
publisherStr Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
reponame_str UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
spelling Design of a control and management system for frequency-and time-synchronous SDN networks Suárez Marín, Raúl Computer network architectures SDN OpenFlow SyncE PTP Ryu Open vSwitch Xarxes definides per programari (Tecnologia de xarxes d'ordinadors) Ordinadors, Xarxes d' -- Arquitectures Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria de la telecomunicació Many of today's telecommunications systems rely on strict timing and synchronization requirements. This is the case of cellular telephony (3G, 4G/LTE), where base stations need accurate and stable frequency clocks in order to obtain their carrier radio frequencies, arbitrate the frequency- and time-shared access of terminals, and coordinate the handover of terminals between adjacent cells. The imminent deployment of 5G networks, with a much higher density of cells and speed, will further increase the need for synchronization. On the one hand, Synchronous Ethernet (SyncE) is a well-known, cheap, scalable Ethernet data plane, with the addition of special messages that convey frequency synchronization information. On the other hand, Precision Time Protocol (PTP) is a widely used protocol to transport time information, and used to synchronize nodes in networks. On top of that, SDN is a new networking paradigm that provides an abstraction of the forwarding function, decoupling the data plane from the control plane. The control of the network is moved to the controller, an external centralized entity that manages the network configuration based on policies through a southbound interface, for example OpenFlow. SDN architecture opens the way to the virtualization of network functions, the global optimization of network operations, and reduces operational costs. Two solutions proposed moving SyncE and PTP to SDN networks: SyncE has been introduced in SDN with the SDN-enabled SyncE networks and PTP with the ReversePTP. SDN-enabled SyncE proposed extensions to OpenFlow 1.0 which enables the SDN network to control the circulation of ESMC PDU, the possibility of transmitting SyncE statistics and to build synchronization trees based on SyncE. ReversePTP proposed extensions to OpenFlow which enabled the SDN network to request the time to each node, so the SDN controllers know clock offsets between slave clocks (network elements) and itself (master clock). These extensions allow to coordinate the handover of terminals between adjacent cells in mobile networks and a kind of PTP. However, there is no solution in the literature which proposes an SDN+PTP+SyncE (i.e. a full synchronous) solution. This master thesis proposes multiple standard extensions of the OpenFlow protocol in order to deploy Fully-Synchronous SDN (FSS) networks. For that, SyncE and PTP are studied and implemented in the SDN architecture. The proposed extensions and modifications have been deployed and successfully tested in a real environment. Results showed a good performance on PTP time-stamping. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya https://hdl.handle.net/2117/88748
spellingShingle Design of a control and management system for frequency-and time-synchronous SDN networks
Suárez Marín, Raúl
Computer network architectures
SDN
OpenFlow
SyncE
PTP
Ryu
Open vSwitch
Xarxes definides per programari (Tecnologia de xarxes d'ordinadors)
Ordinadors, Xarxes d' -- Arquitectures
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria de la telecomunicació
title Design of a control and management system for frequency-and time-synchronous SDN networks
title_full Design of a control and management system for frequency-and time-synchronous SDN networks
title_fullStr Design of a control and management system for frequency-and time-synchronous SDN networks
title_full_unstemmed Design of a control and management system for frequency-and time-synchronous SDN networks
title_short Design of a control and management system for frequency-and time-synchronous SDN networks
title_sort Design of a control and management system for frequency-and time-synchronous SDN networks
topic Computer network architectures
SDN
OpenFlow
SyncE
PTP
Ryu
Open vSwitch
Xarxes definides per programari (Tecnologia de xarxes d'ordinadors)
Ordinadors, Xarxes d' -- Arquitectures
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria de la telecomunicació
topic_facet Computer network architectures
SDN
OpenFlow
SyncE
PTP
Ryu
Open vSwitch
Xarxes definides per programari (Tecnologia de xarxes d'ordinadors)
Ordinadors, Xarxes d' -- Arquitectures
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria de la telecomunicació
url https://hdl.handle.net/2117/88748