Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The demand for high-bandwidth network connectivity has been growing significantly over the past few years. As much as this rapid increase represents a business opportunity for mobile operators, it also pauses pressing network capacity challenges in need of a timely response. Investing in additional infrastructure is always there as a solution. However, this is far from a magic wand in this situation since the return-on-capital investments can be minimal. It is undeniable that upgrading network capacity depends heavily on the infrastructure upon which the network relies. However, realizing the true potential of a specific hardware setup is an objective that has more realistic room for improvement and visible impact. Operators are in insistent search for an innovative game-changing solution to elevate the network capacity beyond the expected network performance levels. Furthermore, network operators are juggling other multi-layered challenges as critical as increasing demand. Increasing energy, financial and social costs coupled with the lack of personnel with expertise to design, implement, and orchestrate a progressively complex hardware-based infrastructure are the primary concerns of operators. The scope of these issues is not limited merely to revenue loss; ripple effects manifest through lags in time-to-market, as well as supply chain challenges and general hindrances to innovation within the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) industries. Virtualization technology gained more momentum offering a gateway reducing the opportunity cost for operators aiming at reducing dependency on proprietary hardware. Empowered with the ability to facilitate hardware and software decoupling and the means to achieve more effective capital investments with higher returns on capital, Virtualization technology has the potential to revolutionize the telecommunications industry. In this research program, the applicant aims to investigate and develop a virtualized telecommunications network framework that efficiently address the virtualization technology challenges while considering network resource utilization (e.g., wireless) and the rapidly changing computing resource market.