Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

On the heels of various industry calls to action since the fall of 2012, virtualization of telecom network functions has generated significant research interest in recent years. Network function virtualization (NFV) has thus emerged as a key technology to properly scale infrastructure in the era of massive communications and to facilitate the provisioning of a broadly diverse set of end-user services. As such, through sharing of network resources, NFV can offer multiple benefits ranging from optimized capital and operational costs, reduced time to market for novel differentiated services and openness in terms of virtual operator business models.*Traffic growth has been exerting, and will continue to exert, particular stress on wireless networks that are becoming the dominant mode of end-user access. In this context, heterogeneous wireless networks (HetNets) can benefit from all the aforementioned benefits of virtualization as well as from shared access to wireless spectrum, which can mitigate the long-standing spectrum ossification problem. As virtualization of wireless networks is a fairly recent trend, the objectives of the research program are thus to identify optimal virtualized wireless network infrastructure deployment strategies as well as corresponding approaches to service provisioning. As a longer-term complementary objective, and in conjunction with software-defined networking (SDN), the research program seeks to derive a broad set of design principles for end-to-end programmable, cloud-based, virtualized wireless and wired networks.*Within the next five years, 5G networks are expected to move from concept to commercial deployment. This will constitute the implementation of a major paradigm shift for the information and communications technology (ICT) industry, not just in terms of the form of network infrastructure but also in terms of value chains and business models for operators as well as in the myriad of vertical markets that ICT will now be able to more fully tap. These involve transportation, agriculture, advanced manufacturing, energy, buildings, healthcare, etc. etc. As communication networks, with wireless technology as a dominant mode of access, thus become a fundamental enabling infrastructure for socio-economic development, regulatory policies are also highly likely to be impacted e.g. facilities-based completion, spectrum auctions, etc.; these are critical issues to address e.g. in order to prevent a digital divide between urban and rural areas to morph into a socio-economic divide. In this context, properly deploying virtualized wireless networks, cost and performance-wise, becomes an imperative for any country, such as Canada, which seeks to leverage 21st century opportunities offered by ICT-enabled transformations in almost industrial sector and ultimately, in various forms of human activity.