Big Data and a New Look at

Communication Networks
Babak Khalaj
Sharif University of Technology
Department of Electrical Engineering

Big Data Trend..

Explosive Growth of Data: from terabytes to petabytes
Lot of information hidden in the data that is not readily
evident and is never analyzed
Wide range:
Traditional: Web (Google, Amazon,), e-commerce
Science: Remote sensing, bioinformatics, scientific
simulation,
Smart Grids
Telecom Operator databases

Our focus is on exploiting Big Data in a new front:

Communication Networks

Sharif University of Technology

Mobile Operators view: Financial side

Segments addressed so far
through Big Data:
Optimizing and monetizing
mobile data
Mobile data fraud and revenue
assurance

Approaches:
Statistical data summarization and
feature extraction
Clustering in high dimensional
spaces

Sharif University of Technology

Can we further expand the Big Data

view in performance side?
Key question:
Does big data knowledge really help in hierarchical
structures?

Large part of our knowledge in such networks is local

Already tried to depart from a central structure and
moved toward distributed algorithms
It seems big data is not really aligned with such
direction!
So, lets revisit our view of future mobile networks..

Sharif University of Technology

Future Network View

Cloud processing architecture

IoT and large number of nodes and resource sharing options
Dumber nodes and more central control

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Physical Distribution: RRH

and Cloud-RAN

Digital Unit (DU) pooling

Joint processing through CoMP, joint scheduling and joint
interference alignment/cancellation
Optimization not just at wireless level any more (includes fiber
backbone as well)
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Alignment of Telecoms and IT

Software Defined Networking (SDN):

APIs (application programming interfaces) used for network
configuration

Network Function Virtualization (NFV):

Commodity hardware is used to run networking functions in
software
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Vision of BD in Communication Networks

Issues to note in our analytics view:
Growth of mobile broadband
Enhanced connectivity and adoption of M2M
Power of cloud computing
Easy and cheaper access to big data technologies
Can not store all data in a large database and run
offline queries on top
Achieving real-time and predictive analytics

Sharif University of Technology

Big Data in Communication Networks

Large communication networks always dealt with Big
Data

Channel state over a wireless network coverage area

Users usage patterns and context information
User data transported by the network
Data generated by network elements

Million Dollar Question: Ignoring the complexity for now,

can we exploit big data to improve network performance and
reduce operator costs?

Sharif University of Technology

Back to Future View: SON side

Self Organizing Networks (SON): SON makes more
sense as we also combine it with Big Data:
Big data to make networking smarter is just the
beginning of what the explosive growth in information
is going to provide in terms of efficiency.
Cognitive view of wireless networks now goes far
beyond just frequency sensing/utilization
Mobile data traffic explosion-> operators must densify
their network (HetNets)
SON is key For HetNets (Traffic Steering: making the
resources appear as one network)

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SON Functionalities

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Big Data and Network Optimization

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Back to the other side of the coin..

So, clouds now provide new path in processing large amounts
of data
Need for a new look at how we design, operate and optimize
our hierarchical networks:

Local: Select and gather information

Local-Global information exchange
Global: Process information
Global-Local: Send back action plans

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Issues to consider:
Privacy issues for access to Big Data
Probing: Practicality of access to Big Data
distributed over network with nodes that can
not extract local data
LTE has the standards for data interfaces but this is
not true for GSM or 3G and small cells.

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3 Key Aspects of Big Data Analytics

Database
Systems
and Parallel
Processing

Machine
Learning

Big Data
Statistics
Graph
Analysis
and Signal
Processing

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First Step to Address Big Data: Partitioning

Identify Sources of Big Data: Information
Sources and/or Network States
Extract the Information
Machine Learning View
Signal Processing View

Exploit the Information through proper actions

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I. Identify the Source/Network State

1.

At what scale to look at data?

Macro vs. Micro view

2.

How to sample data?

Sampling domain, type and rate

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II. Extract
Machine Learning view
Behavior mining: user, packet, network levels
Signal Processing view
Network Signal Processing and Adaptive
Networking

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III. Exploit
Smart Resource Allocation
Smart Handovers between Hetnets
Policy and Charging Engines

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Conclusion
Access to Big Data inevitable in future
communication networks (fixed and mobile)
More centralized processing through different
levels of cloud computing
Business Intelligence goes beyond financial
benefits to technical benefits
How to accommodate big data in real-time
remains a big challenge..

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Thanks!

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Sharif University of Technology