Group description

The UPV/EHU's NQaS (Networking Quality and Security) research group is made up of 10 lecturers (all of them PhDs) and 4 full time researchers who have been collaborating together since 2008 (UPV/EHU group). The group, currently accredited as a consolidated research group (type A, highest qualification) of the Basque Government, focuses its activity on the technologies used in data networks, in 3 lines:

- L1. Capture and processing of large volume data for 5G services

- L2. Resource management in the deployment of services in 5G environments

- L3. Integral quality analysis (QoS and QoE)

The group has nationally and internationally recognized expertise in all three areas. This recognition has enabled it to establish links with numerous groups and to participate in international networks and projects. It is a mature group, with a remarkable scientific productivity, even in a period marked by a reduction in research calls.

The activity of the NQaS group has focused in the last decade on performance analysis and adaptive management of novel services in next generation networks, with a strong focus on QoS and QoE. In line with the evolution of network technologies, research has increasingly focused on mobile broadband networks, and the possibility to offer a large number of services over them. In fact, the NQaS group has conducted world-class research in the 5G/NFV area, and has been involved in 5G-PPP projects in the European H2020 programme since its Phase 1. In this sense, NQaS, while remaining faithful to its commitment to consolidate and specialize knowledge applied to new network scenarios, is focusing its research on new services applied to vertical sectors that are coming up in the 2021-2027 six-year period, in accordance with the European 5G-PPP strategy and the RIS3 smart specialization framework in the corresponding areas. Specifically, NQaS has specialized in recent years in mission-critical communications and their application to rail transport networks and utilities (electricity, gas, water, motorways, etc.), participating in several R&D projects.

Therefore, the proposed activities are partly basic research oriented towards transversality, and partly applied research on strategic industrial priorities.

In this expression of interest, NQaS is focusing on advanced orchestration mechanisms in virtualized service deployments for industrial environments. These are environments with strict response time requirements, which therefore demand agile, automated management of their network services with as little human intervention as possible. Therefore, we propose a novel ecosystem of closed-loop automated management techniques, based on the feedback received from the observation of the network. NQaS intends the integration of advanced IA assisted decision making within the technical NFV-MANO architecture out of the observation of the network and monitoring techniques of the complete architecture at different levels from the infrastructure to the deployed services themselves. Therefore NQAS seeks the incorporation of researchers with expertise in IA (machine learning, reinforcement learning, metaheuristics, deep learning, etc.). Experience in virtualization/5G environments would be no doubt a plus but NQAS will for sure provide expertise in the technical and testbed/experimentation and complementing strong theoretical background is preferred.