MATILDA

Link to project website: :  http://www.matilda-5g.eu/

Social media: Twitter @matilda5g

Contact: MATILDA-Contact@5g-ppp.eu 

Objective

MATILDA aims to devise and realize a radical shift in the development of software for 5G-ready applications, as well as virtual and physical network functions and network services, through the adoption of a unified programmability model, the definition of proper abstractions and the creation of an open development environment that may be used by application as well as network functions developers.

Intelligent and unified orchestration mechanisms are going to be applied for the automated placement of the 5G-ready applications and the creation and maintenance of the required network slices. Deployment and runtime policies enforcement is provided through a set of optimisation mechanisms providing deployment plans based on high level objectives and a set of mechanisms supporting runtime adaptation of the application components and/or network functions based on policies defined on behalf of a services provider.

Multi-site management of the cloud/edge computing and IoT resources is supported by a multi-site virtualized infrastructure manager, while the lifecycle management of the supported Virtual Network Functions Forwarding Graphs (VNF-FGs), as well as a set of network management activities, are provided by a multi-site NFV Orchestrator (NFVO).

Network and application-oriented analytics and profiling mechanisms are supported based on real-time as well as a posteriori processing of the collected data from a set of monitoring streams.

Achievements

The MATILDA service and functional separation concept has been clearly reflected into the final architecture, whose main elements have been completely developed within the second year of the project. While the instantiation and management of the application-aware network slice (including the necessary set of network functions) is realised by the Network and Computing Slice Deployment Platform (NCSDP, in charge of the telecommunications infrastructure provider), the deployment and runtime management of an application is realised by the MATILDA VAO (in charge of the service provider), following a service-mesh-oriented approach. The NCSDP includes an OSS/BSS system, a NFVO and a resource manager handling the set of deployed Wide Area and Virtual Infrastructure Managers (WIMs and VIMs). Based on the interpretation of the provided slice intent, the required network management mechanisms are activated and dynamically orchestrated.

General overview of the MATILDA architecture

An original solution has been adopted for the integration of the 5G vApps into the 5G ecosystem at the VIM-level, by keeping – also in the perspective of the Mobile Edge Orchestrator (MEO) – the tenant spaces of each vApp and NFV/Mobile Edge services in each datacentre, so that each orchestrator has its own isolated resources, quotas, external networks, etc.

The MATILDA Telecom Platform has been realized through the composition of five main architectural building blocks: i) the Operations Support System (OSS), acting as the main configuration/interfacing point for Telecom Platform Providers; ii) the NFV Orchestrator (NFVO), managing the lifecycle of the network services composing the base 4/5G services (Open Source MANO has been selected as reference NFVO); iii) the Wide-area Infrastructure Manager (WIM), to manage and monitor the wide-area communication resources, to create network overlays, as well as to provide information on which resources can be selected in the distributed 5G infrastructure to create slices/services in order to satisfy vertical application performance requirements; iv) the Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM – one instance per each distributed computing facility) abstracting and exposing compute, storage, and networking capabilities of datacenters within the 5G infrastructures; v) the Wide-Area SDN Controller (WSC), interconnecting the control agents of the SDN devices in the wide-area network for monitoring and configuration purposes (OpenDaylight has been chosen as reference WSC).

At the same time, the design of a set of intelligent vertical application orchestration mechanisms, in order to realize the proper placement and orchestration of 5Gready applications over the created application-aware network slices, has been completed and developed. The main components constituting the MATILDA VAO are: (i) the deployment and execution manager that supports the production of optimal deployment plans, as well as the management of the overall execution of the application, (ii) a set of data monitoring mechanisms which collect feeds from network and application-level metrics, (iii) a data fusion, real-time profiling and analytics toolkit, which produces advanced insights through machine learning mechanisms and provides real-time profiling of the deployed components, application graphs and VNFs, (iv) service discovery mechanisms for supporting registration and consumption of application-oriented services following a service mesh approach, (v) a context awareness engine providing inference over the acquired data and support of runtime policies’ enforcement, and (vi) mechanisms supporting interaction among the VAO and the 5G programmable infrastructure management tools.

Demonstration Use Cases

The interim results achieved in the development of architectural layers and components will be fully employed in the demonstration of five vertical applications in different domains, which will constitute the final outcome of the project:

• High Resolution Media on Demand Vertical with Smart Retail Venues’ Integration, combining the functionalities of two systems, to provide 5G Personal Assistance in Crowded Events (5GPACE), by offering end-users Immersive Media Services combined with Machine Learning-based personal retail recommendations.
• 5G Emergency Infrastructure with SLA Enforcement (5GPPRD), a 5G system for Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR), extending the capabilities of a real time intervention monitoring and critical infrastructure protection product suite (iMON), combined with a suite for performance monitoring engines and advanced Operation, Administration and Management (OAM) functionalities to support SLAs (qMON).
• Smart City Intelligent Lighting System, providing an easy replicable solution with fast time to market, automated maintenance and a modular approach enabled by 5G application graphs that will assure better monetization of intelligent city lighting solutions.
• Industry 4.0 Smart Factory – Distributed Logistics-Production & Maintenance Application, addressing both a logistic scenario (5G-based tracking of transport vehicles and monitoring of transported goods) and a production one (real-time pattern detection for quality assurance and distance calculation in a human-robot collaborative (HRC) production environment for collision avoidance).
• Testing 4.0 – Distributed System Testing, based on FastWAN, an experimental communication technology that was developed as a solution for the enablement of geographically separated real-time industrial test benches.

The five demonstrators will be mapped over three different testbeds:

• The University of Bristol testbed, integrating an extensive environment of LTE radio, WiFi and mmWave devices, interconnected by fibre backhaul, and providing OpenStack on High Performance Computing nodes in Bristol, UK.
• The CNIT-S2N (Smart and Secure Networks National Lab) testbed in Genoa, Italy, based on a cloud infrastructure able to control computing resources at bare-metal level, autonomously instantiate virtual infrastructure managers or software components in automated unattended fashion, and connect them to software-defined networking and radio devices and user equipment (with equivalent testbeds being deployed by Ubitech and Cosmote in their premises in Greece).
• The Orange Romania Smart Lighting testbed deployed in Bucharest, Romania, integrating LTE/5G Lighting Sensors, radio access and VNFs hosted in the Orange Regional Datacentre, along with a Cloud middleware IoT platform.

Project Participants: