Networks, coding and much much more...

Colosseum

Colosseum is a wireless network channel emulator with hardware in the loop[1] sporting 256 USRP Software Defined Radios designed and released by DARPA in 2019.

• Despite being a flexible network emulator, standard SDR cannot support 802.11 packet timing requirements; designed, implemented, and deployed an extension using Zylinx System-on-chip boards and OpenWiFi to fully enable Wi-Fi communications.

A. Chaudhari and M. Braun, “A Scalable FPGA Architecture for Flexible, Large-Scale, Real-Time RF Channel Emulation,” in 2018 13th International Symposium on Reconfigurable Communication-centric Systems-on-Chip (ReCoSoC), 2018, pp. 1–8. doi: 10.1109/ReCoSoC.2018.8449390.

Spectrum Sharing

The increasing demand for wireless network communication has led to an overcrowding of the wireless spectrum. As we are running out of available licensed bands, we can exploit spectrum sensing and machine learning to devise intelligent and dynamic wireless spectrum sharing techniques.

• Research on deep neural networks applied to raw wireless I/Q samples;
• Design and implementation of intelligent prototypes for spectrum sharing.

Networkx

NetworkX is a Python package for the manipulation and the study of complex networks.

• Designed and developed a random graph generator reproducing given global properties, such as modularity and community structure [1][2]
• Implemented a random graph generator for internet-like networks [3]

Baldesi, Luca, Carter T. Butts, and Athina Markopoulou. “Spectral Graph Forge: A Framework for Generating Synthetic Graphs with a Target Modularity.” IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2019.

Baldesi, Luca, Carter T. Butts, and Athina Markopoulou. “Spectral Graph Forge: Graph Generation Targeting Modularity.” In IEEE INFOCOM 2018 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, 2018.

 A. Elmokashfi, A. Kvalbein and C. Dovrolis, "On the Scalability of BGP: The Role of Topology Growth," in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 28, no. 8, pp. 1250-1261, October 2010.

PeerStreamer-ng

PeerStreamer-ng is a distributed application for media live streaming; its core and back-end are written in C to grant a high level of portability and minimal resource footprint, while it uses HTML5 and WebRTC for the graphical user interface and front-end, hence, being usable on any device supporting a web browser.

• Designed and implemented the full-stack system [1]
• Tested and used with the Wireless Community Network users of Ninux in Italy and AWMN in Greece
• Participated in the media streaming development and deployment tasks of the multi-disciplinary, European netCommons project

Baldesi, Luca. Distributed Live Streaming on Mesh Networks. University of Trento, 2018.

Content distribution optimization

Delay distribution guarantees and high-probability delivery time reception in unstructured networks.

• Designed a mathematical model and derived its theoretical results for resource optimization and delay minimization in unstructured network broadcasting. The solution can be easily implemented through neighbour gossiping and the optimized system improves reception delay by 60% and packet loss by half in simulated networks [1]
• Analytically derived stochastic bounds for content delay reception in a mesh distribution network. These are of particular interest for real-time broadcasting applications [2][3]
• Analitically derived age of information metrics in unstructured vehicular networks [4]

Baldesi, Luca, Leonardo Maccari, and Renato Lo Cigno. “On the Use of Eigenvector Centrality for Cooperative Streaming.” IEEE Communications Letters, 2017.

Baldesi, Luca, Leonardo Maccari, and Renato Lo Cigno. “Infective Flooding in Low-Duty-Cycle Networks, Properties and Bounds.” Computer Communications 151 (2020): 216–26. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2019.12.044.

Baldesi, Luca, Leonardo Maccari, and Renato Lo Cigno. “On the Properties of Infective Flooding in Low-Duty-Cycle Networks.” In 2019 15th Annual Conference on Wireless On-Demand Network Systems and Services (WONS), 2019.

Baldesi, Luca, Leonardo Maccari, and Renato Lo Cigno. “Keep It Fresh: Reducing the Age of Information in V2X Networks.” In 1st ACM Workshop on Technologies, MOdels, and Protocols for Cooperative Connected Cars (TOP-Cars), 2019.

NePA TesT

Network Protocol and Application Testing Toolchain (NePA TesT) is a network emulator built on top of mininet and focused on prototyping. It exploits the Linux kernel namespaces to obtain a lightweight virtualisation and emulate networks of thousands of nodes.

• Designed and implemented the network emulator [1]
• Emulated live video streaming distributions and the OLSR routing protocol on real topologies [1]

Baldesi, Luca, and Leonardo Maccari. “NePA TesT: Network Protocol and Application Testing Toolchain for Community Networks.” In 2016 12th Annual Conference on Wireless On-Demand Network Systems and Services (WONS), 2016.

Network cross-layer optimization

Distributed optimization of resource usage and communication delays in unstructured mesh networks; with a particular focus on Community Networks.

• Derived a cross-layer optimization technique leveraging link-state protocol information in mesh networks for reducing link bottlenecks and increase network resource usage fairness. Emulated results on real-world networks show reduction of overall link usage up to 66% [1][2]

Maccari, Leonardo, Nicolò Facchi, Luca Baldesi, and Renato Lo Cigno. “Optimized P2P Streaming for Wireless Distributed Networks.” Pervasive and Mobile Computing, 2017.

Baldesi, Luca, Leonardo Maccari, and Renato Lo Cigno. “Optimized Cooperative Streaming in Wireless Mesh Networks.” In 2016 15th IFIP Networking Conference, 2016.