Start website main content

Thesis

Thesis available

Optical Transport Networks for 5G cellular systems (Supervisor: Luca Valcarenghi, SSSUP)

This work will focus on designing and evaluating wired optical transport for supporting  5G cellular systems. Current protocol, such as CPRI, will be first evaluated. Then novel solutions based on the encapsulation of CPRI on layer2/layer1 protocols will be devised. The study can be conducted through simulations or by implementing some solutions on FPGAs.

Design and evaluation of a future municipal broadband network  (Supervisor:  Luca  Valcarenghi, SSSUP)

This  thesis  will  focus  tools for designing and evaluating a future municipal transport network. The study will focus on collecting the requirements of a municipal broadband network, implementing design algorithms, evaluating the performance of the designed network and implementing a web interface for locating the broadband network nodes. The most of the work will based on C/C++ and Java programming.

Reliable Flexible Optical Networks (Supervisor: A. Giorgetti,  SSSUP) 

This work will elaborate reliable routing algorithms for flexible optical networks. In particular, GMPLS control plane will be considered and compared with emerging SDN approaches based on OpenFlow protocol. This work will be mainly conducted using OPNET programming. 

Flexible multi bit-rate wavelength switched optical networks (WSONs) (Supervisor: Filippo Cugini, and Piero Castoldi, SSSUP)

Due  to  network  upgrades, in  centralized  wavelength  switched  optical  networks  path  computation  element  (PCE) has to guarantee the coexistence of different bit-rates in the same WSON. Several new issues arise ranging from QoT guarantee to traffic engineering need to be addressed also using the recently established technique of flexible grid provisioning.

Energy efficient solutions for wireless networks based on LTE (Supervisor: Isabella Cerutti, SSSUP)

Due to the ever increasing power consumption of the wireless networks at the operator side, solutions for enabling  energy  efficiency  and  energy  proportionality  (i.e.,  a  power  consumption  proportional  to  the utilization) are required. The thesis aims at studying energy efficient and energy proportional solutions to be implemented at the base station of Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular networks.

Enhanced scheduler for optical interconnection networks (Supervisor: Nicola Andriolli, SSSUP)

A  two-step  scheduler  (TSS)  for  optical  interconnection  networks  has  been  recently  proposed.  TSS outperforms  the  existing  schedulers  in  computational  complexity  and  performance.  The  thesis  aims  at  enhancing  the  current  scheduler  for  the  support  of  advanced  features  such  as  interconnection  network energy-awareness, packet-mode operation, quality of service, and multicast.

Design and characterization of Photonic Integrated for optical interconnection networks (Supervisor: Nicola Andriolli, Isabella Cerutti, SSSUP)

The aim of the thesis is to design and characterize the behavior a photonic integrated circuit of a the whole or  part  of  an  optical  interconnection  network.  Innovative  solutions  for  integrating  photonic  and  electronic design will also be explored.

Implementation  of  scheduler  and  switch  controller  with  Field  Programmable  Gated  Array  (FPGA) (Supervisor: Nicola Andriolli, Isabella Cerutti, SSSUP)

The  aim  of  the  thesis  is  to  extend  the  current  implemented  scheduler  with  FPGA  and  carry  out  the  first experiments on the control of photonic integrated switches.

Energy efficient design of data center networks based on optical switches (Supervisor: Isabella Cerutti, SSSUP)

Today's data center networks are consuming up to 50% of the overall power drained by the data center. The replacement  of  the  electrical  Ethernet  switches  with  optical  switches  has  been  proposed  to  reduce  the energy consumption. The thesis aims at optimally designing the data center network with optical switches to minimize the overall power consumption, while ensuring the required connectivity and bandwidth.

De-fragmentation  techniques  in  flex-grid  optical  networks  (Supervisor: Nicola Sambo,  Piero Castoldi, SSSUP)

In flex-grid optical networks, spectrum fragmentation may prevent lightpath setup. Effective techniques for de-fragmentation (i.e., re-optimization) are then required to limit the wasting of spectrum resources. The objective of this thesis is the study and the proposal of novel and effective de-fragmentation techniques and algorithms.

Support of multicast in dynamic GMPLS networks (Supervisor: Nicola Sambo, Piero Castoldi, SSSUP)

For supporting multicast services (such as IPTV, online gaming), GMPLS control plane needs to be properly extended. The thesis aims at developing GMPLS extension for supporting multicast in wavelength switched optical  networks  (WSONs).  Dynamic  performance  of  the  proposed  extension  will  be  compared  to  the standardized GMPLS control plane.

Energy  efficient  design  of  wavelength  switched  optical  networks  (WSONs)  with  flexible  multi-rate grid support (Supervisor: Nicola Sambo, Piero Castoldi, SSSUP)

The  physical  layer  of  the  wavelength  switched  optical  networks  is  being  enhanced  with  the  support  of different transmission rates in flexible transmission grids. The study aims to optimize the design of a WSON with flexible multi-rate grid to enable support of the requested connections in an energy efficient way.

Energy efficiency in access networks (Supervisor: Luca Valcarenghi, SSSUP)

This  thesis  will  focus  on  implementing  an  energy  efficient  Optical  Network  Unit  (ONU)  prototype.  Energy efficient ONUs are optical customer premises equipments that implement schemes that automatically turn them  off  (i.e.,  put  to  sleep)  the  they  are  idle.  This  thesis  will  deal  with  the  implementation  of  an  ONU prototype implementing sleep modes into an FPGA.

Advanced  smart  management  system  for  electric  vehicles  recharge  (SMS-EV)  (Supervisors:  Luca Valcarenghi, SSSUP – Barbara Martini, CNIT)

This thesis will focus on simulating an advanced smart management system for electric vehicles recharge (SMS-EV). In particular both distributed and centralized algorithms for maximizing the system sustainability from the perspective of both the  end  users (i.e.,  EV  drivers) and  the  service   providers  (i.e.,  electrical utility    providers  and  micro  producers  of  renewable  energy  resources)  will  be  evaluated.  The  thesis  will mainly involve programming an event-driven simulator to implement and evaluate the proposed algorithms.

Advanced management solutions for Cloud Data Centers (Supervisor: Barbara Martini and Piero Castoldi, SSSUP)

Ever  more  popular  cloud  computing  services  are  pushing  towards  convergent  data  center  infrastructures acting  as  a  unified  pool  of  shared  resources  for  many  distributed  services  (e.g.,  cloud  computing,  high performance  computing).  In  such  a  context  the  network  interconnection  among  and  within  data  centers become  crucial.  Key  to  the  whole  process  is  a  management  system  able  to  jointly  manage  network, computing  and  data  storage  elements  while  enabling  dynamic  network  reconfiguration,  QoS-guaranteed data  transfer  and  coordinated  network  control  and  management  procedures  also  exploiting  the  novel  Software-Defined Network (SDN) paradigm for controlling network data flows over heterogeneous systems.