Multimedia Tools and Applications

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-08793-x

Incoming Traffic Control of Fronthaul in 5G Mobile

Network for Massive Multimedia Services

Dae-Young Kim 1 & Seokhoon Kim 2

Received: 1 July 2019 / Revised: 12 November 2019 / Accepted: 24 February 2020

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract
The cloud radio access network (C-RAN) is composed of optical networks and is
known to a fronthaul network. In the fronthaul network, remote radio heads (RRHs)
connect to a baseband processing unit (BBU) and BBUs connect to the BBU pool in
the 5G core network. Multimedia traffic in radio is transmitted to the core network
through the fronthaul network. Although the fronthaul is an optical network, band-
width of the fronthaul is insufficient for mobile multimedia services because mobile
multimedia services are based on large amounts of data. Therefore, it is necessary to
control the bandwidth usage in the fronthaul. In 5G mobile networks, RRHs can use
a mobile edge computing (MEC) server as an edge cloud and can perform compli-
cated operations in the MEC using knowledge of fronthaul. The proposed method
controls incoming traffic to the fronthaul network using knowledge according to the
network condition in the fronthaul. When the bandwidth of the fronthaul becomes
full due to a large amount of traffic, incoming traffic to the fronthaul network is
controlled. The MEC server acts as a buffer for incoming multimedia traffic.
Through the proposed method, transmission efficiency for massive multimedia
traffic in the fronthaul can be improved. The performance is validated through
computer simulation.

Keywords Fronthaul . Mobile network . Traffic control . Multimeida services . Mobile edge cloud

* Seokhoon Kim
seokhoon@sch.ac.kr
Dae-Young Kim
kimdy81@cu.ac.kr

1
School of Computer Software, Daegu Catholic University, Gyeongsan 38430, Republic of Korea
2
Department of Computer Software Engineering, Soonchunhyang University, Asan 31538, Republic
of Korea
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1 Introduction

The fifth generation (5G) mobile network will provide higher capacity for mobile services. Its
services are faster, are more reliable, and allow a larger number of mobile devices to participate
in the service. The 5G mobile networks propose a cloud radio access network (C-RAN) as a
radio access technology to support explosive data traffic. In the C-RAN, remote radio heads
(RRHs) provides radio access to mobile terminals and IoT devices as radio base stations. A
baseband processing unit (BBU) manages each RRH. The BBU provides resource manage-
ment for radio access. The BBUs integrate into a BBU pool and consist of a fronthaul network
[1, 2, 9, 19, 22, 25]. This fronthaul network connects the network elements with optical fiber. It
uses the common public radio interface (CPRI) to transmit messages over the optical network.
The radio interface depends on the number of antennae used, regardless of traffic load so that
transmission efficiency can be reduced in the fronthaul [1, 2].
The 5G mobile networks allow both broadband and narrowband services. There exist
various types of data traffic and a large amount of data traffic in the radio network. Such data
traffic flows into the fronthaul network and is delivered to the Internet. Although the fronthaul
network is made up of optical networks, it has an insufficient resource capacity to handle the
expanded bandwidth and increased data of 5G services. To provide efficient 5G mobile
multimedia services, the capacity of the fronthaul network can be increased with investment
in the optical infrastructure to overcome the insufficient capacity. However, the installation
cost of the optical infrastructure is expensive and cannot continue to increase with increasing
data traffic because of the installation costs. Therefore, it is important to manage incoming
traffic to the fronthaul network [11]. If the fronthaul network condition is predicted in the radio
network (i.e., RRH) and incoming data traffic to the fronthaul network can be controlled,
transmission efficiency in the fronthaul network can be improved and 5G mobile multimedia
services can be provided more efficiently. This paper proposes a way to manage incoming data
traffic in the fronthaul network. The proposed method employs mobile edge computing (MEC)
[6, 8, 10, 15, 16] for massive multimedia traffic management.
The MEC consists of an edge cloud in a radio access network and is one of the major
technologies of the 5G mobile network. A base station, such as the RRH, integrates into the
MEC server and mobile terminals utilize the MEC server’s computing and storage resources.
The goal of the MEC is to move the computing position from the data core network to the edge
network (e.g., the radio network). By employing the MEC, mobile terminals can use cloud
computing in the radio network. They can offload their computing loads to the MEC server
and thus can operate services that require high performance, such as high-quality video play
[8]. In addition, the MEC server enables monitoring of data traffic in the radio network
because whole data traffic in the radio network is delivered to a base station as an access
point and the base station is connected to a data core network through the MEC server. The
MEC server, which is an intermediate node of the mobile network system, can collect network
data (i.e., throughput, delay, jitter, etc.) in the radio network and fronthaul network.
This paper proposes data traffic management that considers fronthaul network condition
using the MEC and fronthaul knowledge. In the proposed method, the MEC server is
integrated into the C-RAN architecture. The MEC server obtains network data in the fronthaul
network. Then, the networking data can be used to learn of the fronthaul network status.
According to this knowledge, incoming traffic to the fronthaul can be adjusted. Because the
MEC server can be also used as an intermediate storage, it can store the incoming traffic for a
while, as a buffer system. Thus, if the fronthaul condition is bad, the MEC server reduces the
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amount of incoming traffic. When the fronthaul condition improves, the MEC server increases
the amount of incoming traffic again. As mentioned earlier, 5G mobile services use vast
amounts of data traffic. Particularly, due to the expansion of IoT services and high-quality
video services, the data traffic that mobile network systems must accommodate is rapidly
increasing. The fiber-optic fronthaul network must handle a large amount of data traffic with
limited capacity. If the capacity of the fronthaul network is exceeded by a large amount of
incoming traffic, the transmission efficiency decreases. Therefore, a method of improving the
transmission efficiency at a limited capacity should be provided. The proposed method
improves the transmission efficiency of the fronthaul network by controlling the incoming
traffic according to the fronthaul status.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: in Section 2, related works are
described; in Section 3, the proposed data traffic management method is presented; in
Section 4, the performance evaluation of the proposed method is carried out using computer
simulation; and in Section 5, the paper is concluded.

2 Related work

Mobile multimedia services are known as over-the-top (OTT) services. They are related to
mobile TVs or mobile video streaming. OTT services provide multimedia contents using
mobile Internet [5, 17]. In 5G mobile networks, the demand for high-quality multimedia
increases [3, 4]. This means that multimedia data traffic occupies most of the total data traffic.
Therefore, large amounts of data traffic are entered into the fronthaul network. The fronthaul
network is an optical network, but there are bandwidth constraints to deal with massive
multimedia traffic. For efficient mobile multimedia service support, the fronthaul network
management scheme should be provided. Figure 1 shows the OTT service network: the mobile
client requests multimedia service from a content server and data traffic for the service is
delivered through the fronthaul network.
The mobile edge cloud is placed in front of the fronthaul network and provides computing
ability to a base station in the radio network. The mobile edge cloud includes service functions
of the application platform such as a traffic offloading function, radio network information
service, communication services, and a service registry [10, 16]. The mobile edge cloud is
implemented in the MEC server and the MEC is operated using these service functions. The

Fig. 1 The OTT Service Network

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service functions are abstracted functions for MEC applications. The MEC applications use the
service functions for computing in the mobile edge cloud instead of mobile terminals.
The mobile edge cloud enables computation offloading of mobile terminals. There have
been several studies performed on the computation offloading considering energy consump-
tion in the network [21, 23, 24]. Energy consumption in computation offloading occurs in two
parts: transmitting files and computing. The computation offloading studies focus on deter-
mining the offloading considering the transmitting and computing energy consumption under
latency limitations. In addition, the mobile edge cloud can collect various pieces of information
from traffic that is transmitted to or received from the Internet cloud. The obtained information
is used to control network operations. There are several methods that use the mobile edge
cloud for network control [12, 13]. In [13], the mobile edge cloud monitors transmitted traffic
and analyzes transmission status. The analysis results are applied to the access network control
to improve the quality of user experience of mobile video service. The mobile edge cloud
considers a media buffer status, bit rate of video contents, and received transmission rate to
control the radio networks. In [12], the mobile edge cloud is integrated to Internet of Things
(IoT) gateways. Data from the IoT network is delivered to the Internet cloud via the mobile
edge cloud. Thus, the MEC server of the mobile edge cloud monitors the incoming data from
the IoT networks.
As mentioned in the previous section, the proposed approach attempts to control traffic in
fronthaul networks with the MEC server. As data volume increases in 5G mobile networks, the
fronthaul efficiency becomes more important; that is, if the fronthaul network isn’t efficiently
managed, it becomes a bottleneck point of mobile multimedia services. Thus, it is necessary to
adjust the incoming traffic according to the fronthaul condition. This paper proposes a method
that controls incoming traffic according to current fronthaul network conditions.

3 Proposed approach

3.1 Traffic control

Regarding 5G mobile networks, they should allow large amounts of data traffic; however, a
fronthaul network has capacity limitations. If massive multimedia traffic flows into the
fronthaul network, traffic congestion will occur and affect multimedia services. The traffic
congestion decreases efficiency of mobile services. For efficient mobile multimedia services,
this problem must be overcome. Thus, this paper proposes an incoming traffic control scheme
and a network architecture for the fronthaul. The proposed network architecture includes the
MEC server in a BBU. The MEC server controls incoming data traffic according to the
fronthaul network condition. For management in the MEC server, the BBU pool periodically
broadcasts fronthaul bandwidth usage information to the BBUs, or the bandwidth usage
information can be piggybacked in ACK messages of the BBU pool. Figure 2 shows the
proposed network architecture. The proposed scheme uses priorities of data packets. All data
packets have priority of four steps (P1 through P4) according to a type of service (ToS) field
from the IP header.
The MEC server recognizes the bad condition of the fronthaul network when the
bandwidth usage status in the fronthaul (Cfront) is greater than the upper threshold (Bup).
Under the bad condition, fronthaul network experiences serious network congestion.
Owing to the congestion, long transmission delays and traffic drops frequently happen.
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Fig. 2 The Proposed Network Architecture

Thus, the quality of mobile multimedia services cannot be guaranteed and user satisfac-
tion might be lowered. To maintain the multimedia service quality, the MEC server
changes the operation mode step by step to reduce the amount of data traffic in the
fronthaul. The changed mode is maintained for a given time using a timer (Fig. 2,lines 1–
3. In step1, the MEC server decreases the bandwidth throttle to 70% to reduce the
amount of incoming traffic in the fronthaul and passes data packets with priority from P2
to P4 using a packet filter (Fig. 2, lines 4–5). If the bandwidth usage status in the
fronthaul does not improve within a given time, the MEC server decreases bandwidth
throttle to 50% and passes data packets with priority from P3 to P4 (Fig. 2, lines 6–7).
Then, the incoming traffic in the fronthaul network can be reduced and the network
condition will be stable. Moreover, the quality of mobile multimedia services can be
restored. The MEC server also provides edge storage in the access network and is used
as a buffer system for mobile networks. Thus, the throughput of the mobile networks can
be maintained during traffic throttling in the fronthaul network. The multimedia service
quality of mobile terminals is guaranteed. Table 1 represents the bandwidth throttling
operation modes in the MEC server of the edge cloud. Figure 3 shows the algorithm for
traffic control in the fronthaul of the bad condition.
When the fronthaul network overcomes the bad condition, it is necessary to increase
the bandwidth throttle for multimedia services. Thus, if the traffic status in the fronthaul
(Cfront) is observed to be below the lower threshold (Blow), the MEC server gradually
increases the amount of data traffic for the fronthaul network. If traffic control is
performed in step2, the operation mode becomes step1 and the bandwidth throttle is
increased to 70%. In addition, more priorities are allowed to pass and they enter the
fronthaul network (Fig. 3, lines 4–5). The changed state is maintained for a given time
(Fig. 3, lines1–3). If the fronthaul bandwidth usage in the fronthaul network doesn’t
exceed the lower threshold after the given time, the proposed method changes the
operation mode to step0. Then, full bandwidth throttling is performed and all data traffic

Table 1 Bandwidth Throttling Operation Modes

State Operation

step0 Full throttling (100%), no priority control

step1 Bandwidth throttling (70%), priority control (P2 – P4)
step2 Bandwidth throttling (50%), priority control (P3 – P4)
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0: If Cfront ุ Bup:
1: If Timer.isBusy = false:
2: Set Timer
3: Timer.isBusy ← true
4: If state = step0:
5: state ← step1
6: Else if state = step1:
7: state ← step2
8: End if
9: Else:
10: If Timer is expired:
11: Timer.isBusy ← false
12: End if
13: End if
14: End if

Fig. 3 Traffic Control in the Bad Condition of the Fronthaul Network

can enter the fronthaul network (Fig. 3, lines 6–7). Thus, the rate of the incoming traffic
to the fronthaul network can be restored. Figure 4 shows the algorithm of traffic control
in a fronthaul in a good condition.
Delivering a lot of multimedia traffic in the fronthaul network means supporting high
quality mobile multimedia services. To increase delivery efficiency, it is important not to
exceed the limit of the fronthaul capacity, even if the amount of data traffic increases. As
mentioned earlier, if the amount of data traffic exceeds the limit, traffic congestion can
occur, which causes poor user experiences because of delay and packet loss. Therefore,
the proposed approach provides a proper solution for mobile multimedia services by
controlling the amount of data traffic in the fronthaul network.

0: If Cfront ≤ Blow:
1: If Timer.isBusy = false:
2: Set Timer
3: Timer.isBusy ← true
4: If state = step2:
5: state ← step1
6: Else if state = step1:
7: state ← step0
8: End if
9: Else:
10: If Timer is expired:
11: Timer.isBusy ← false
12: End if
13: End if
14: End if

Fig. 4 Traffic Control in the Good Condition of the Fronthaul Network

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3.2 Analysis

The fronthaul network is deployed between a radio network and a data core network (i.e., the
backhaul network). As shown in Fig. 2, data traffic from the RRHs and BBUs is delivered to
the data core network via the BBU pool. The fronthaul network has a lower traffic capacity
than the data core network. In 5G mobile networks, multimedia data traffic is rapidly
increasing. Thus, the amount of traffic in the fronthaul network should be controlled for
efficient multimedia services.
The fronthaul network can be modeled by the MM1 queue of queuing theory. The MM1
queue describes a system using two parameters: inter-arrival rate (λ) and service rate (μ). The
fronthaul network can be explained as a system with incoming data traffic and outgoing data
traffic; that is, the incoming traffic rate in the fronthaul network from the MEC server of the
BBU is represented by λ. It means the inter-arrival rate for the traffic of the N MEC servers
connected to the BBUs is

N
λ ¼ λ1 þ λ2 þ ⋯ þ λN ¼ ∑ λi ð1Þ
i¼1

The outgoing traffic in the fronthaul network is traffic for the BBU pool and its outgoing rate
as the service rate is represented by μ. This is the delivered rate of traffic from the BBU pool to
the data core network. Both λ and μ are exponentially distributed (Fig. 5).
In general, when all traffic is aggregated in a cell site, traffic capacity in a fronthaul network
of C-RAN is usually tens of Gbps. In one antenna sector, 4.915 Gbps in LTE-A and 2.457
Gbps in LTE are required for CPRI, respectively [7]. For analysis, we assume that the fronthaul
capacity is used as the mean service rate and the required data rate for CPRI is used as the
mean inter-arrival rate. If radio units (N) are set to 16, the inter-arrival rate is computed using
Eq. (1).

Fig. 5 MM1 Queue Model for the Fronthaul Network

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Then, the utilization (ρ) of the fronthaul network is represented as

ρ ¼ λ=μ: ð2Þ

The mean amount of data traffic (E[M]) in the fronthaul network is calculated by multiplying
the average response time (E[R]) by λ. The response time is the time elapsed between entering
the fronthaul network and leaving the network. Then, E[R] is

E ½R ¼ E ½M =λ: ð3Þ

According to Little’s formula [7, 14],

 
1 ρ 1
E ½R ¼ ¼ : ð4Þ
λ 1−ρ μð1−ρÞ

The average consumed time (E[W]) in the fronthaul network is represented as the difference
between the average response time and the service time in the fronthaul network. The service
time is obtained by μ:

1 1 ρ
E ½W  ¼ − ¼ : ð5Þ
μð1−ρÞ μ μð1−ρÞ

Therefore, if congestion occurs in the fronthaul network, traffic intensity increases, and the
average consumed time in the fronthaul also increases. This causes long service delays in
mobile multimedia services and decreases the satisfaction levels for users. Controlling data
traffic in the fronthaul network is important for mobile multimedia services and the proposed
approach can provide a proper solution by controlling incoming data traffic to the fronthaul
network.

4 Performance evaluation

The bandwidth of the fronthaul network is insufficient for massive multimedia services in the
mobile networks. Thus, the proposed approach, which controls incoming data traffic to the
fronthaul network according to the fronthaul state, is needed for stable mobile multimedia
services. In this section, we evaluate the performance of the proposed approach using
computer simulation. The proposed approach is compared with a conventional approach that
doesn’t perform traffic control in the fronthaul network. As mentioned in the previous section,
the fronthaul network is modeled by the queue with the incoming traffic rate and outgoing
traffic rate. For performance evaluation, computer simulation implemented by SMPL library
[14] is used. The library has been employed to implement event-driven computer simulations
and is based on C language.

4.1 Simulation model

The computer simulation is carried out according to the simulation diagram shown in Fig. 6. It
has six states: INIT, TIMER, NET, SERV, TCON, and STAT. The simulation begins with the
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INIT state; initialization for the simulation is performed in this state. Simulation parameters are
applied to the simulation. The INIT state calls the TIMER state. The TIMER state recalls every
unit time and performs simulation operations. The TIMER state calls the NET, SERV, TCON,
and STAT states. The fronthaul network conditions are changed in the NET state and media
services are requested at the SERV state. The STAT state collects statistical data of the
simulation. The proposed method is run in the TCON state.
The network condition in the NET state can be modeled by a two-state Markov chain [7,
14] with Good and Bad states. The state transition occurs with given probabilities. Figure 7
shows a representative diagram, where the probability from Good to Bad is p and the
probability from Bad to Good is q.
In the GOOD state, the network condition can change BAD with the probability p or
maintain the current condition with the probability (1 − p). In the BAD state, the network
condition can change GOOD with the probability q or maintain the current condition with the
probability (1 − q). The Markov model shown in Fig. 7 can be described as a matrix:

 
1−p p
P¼ : ð6Þ
q 1−q

From Eq. (6), state probabilities can be calculated using limiting probability [18, 20]:

q p
P½X ¼ GOOD ¼ ; P½X ¼ BAD ¼ : ð7Þ
pþq pþq
In the simulation, the probability p is set to 0.3 and the probability q is set to 0.7. When the
condition is GOOD, we assume that the background traffic is randomly selected between 20%
and 50% in total capacity. When the condition is BAD, we assume that the background traffic
is randomly selected between 50% and 80% in the fronthaul capacity. The fronthaul capacity is
set to 15 Gbps. The state transitions in the network condition occur every time given by an

Fig. 6 Simulation diagram

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1-p Good Bad 1-q

q

Fig. 7 Two state Markov model for the network condition

exponential distribution with an average time of 30 min. In the SERV state of Fig. 6, mobile
networks request multimedia traffic for mobile services. Thus, a large amount of traffic enters
the fronthaul network. In the simulation, the service request occurs with an exponential
distribution with an average time of 10 min. The incoming data traffic by the service request
is set to 4.8 Gbps. In the TCON state of Fig. 6, the approach is operated. The proposed
approach monitors bandwidth usage in the fronthaul network and controls incoming traffic
using the algorithms in section 3.1. In the simulation, the upper threshold of the bandwidth
usage (Bup) is set to 12 Gbps and the lower threshold of the bandwidth usage (Blow) is set to 4
Gbps. To check bandwidth usage, the proposed approach monitors every 1 min in the BBU
pool. The simulation time is set to 24 h. Table 2 shows the simulation parameters.

4.2 Simulation results

The proposed approach can be compared with the conventional approach regarding average
delays, good counts, and bad counts for requested services in the fronthaul network for
performance evaluation. The proposed approach exploits traffic control in the fronthaul
network, whereas the conventional approach doesn’t use traffic control. The average delays
for requesting data traffic to be delivered through the fronthaul network are measured. The
good count increases when the service request makes the data transmission within the available
bandwidth of the fronthaul network. The bad count increases when the requested bandwidth is
insufficient for the service request. Transmission delays can occur if the requested bandwidth
exceeds the available bandwidth of the fronthaul network.
Figure 8 shows the average delays of both the proposed and conventional approaches in the
fronthaul network. There are 155 service requests made during the simulation in both cases.
After the simulation finished, the average delay of the proposed approach and the conventional
approach is 119.957 s and 150.081 s, respectively. Overall, the average delay of the

Table 2 Simulation Parameters

Parameters Value

Simulation time 24 h
Fronthaul capacity 15 Gbps
Probability p 0.3
Probability q 0.7
Background traffic in Good Random(20~50%)
Background traffic in Bad Random(50~80%)
Network transition interval Exponential distribution(30 min)
Service request interval Exponential distribution(10 min)
Incoming traffic 4.8 Gbps
Bup 12 Gbps
Blow 4 Gbps
Traffic control interval 1 min
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conventional approach is higher. The proposed approach monitors the fronthaul conditions to
control incoming data traffic to the fronthaul network. It employs the mobile edge cloud to
maintain the quality of mobile multimedia services when incoming data traffic decreases; that
is, it uses the mobile edge cloud as a local storage for mobile multimedia services. The
proposed approach reduces data traffic loads in the fronthaul network and thus results in lower
transmission delays in the fronthaul network.
Figure 9 shows the good and bad counts for service requests in the fronthaul network. As
mentioned earlier, if the fronthaul condition is bad and doesn’t improve, the bad counts will
increase. The graphs in Fig. 10 show that the proposed approach has 133 good counts and 22
bad counts. The conventional approach has 123 good counts and 32 bad counts. The proposed

(a) Proposed approach

(b) Conventional approach

Fig. 8 Average Fronthaul Delays
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approach can improve the fronthaul condition by adjusting data traffic in the fronthaul
network. Thus it reduces bad counts and increases good counts. Regarding mobile multimedia
services, the good counts indicate that stable services are being provided to users. To improve
multimedia service quality, it is necessary to control the fronthaul traffic.
The results of Figs. 8 and 9 are related with the analysis in section 3.2. Equation (5)
describes the waiting time in the fronthaul network, which is also known as the transmission
delay. Because the waiting time depends on the utilization of the fronthaul network, if the
utilization increases, waiting time also increases. More specifically, this means that the
utilization is very high and that heavy data traffic loads occur in the fronthaul network. This

(a) Proposed approach

(b) Conventional approach

Fig. 9 Good Counts and Bad Counts
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Fig. 10 Fronthaul Waiting Time Graph according to Network Utilization

causes transmission delays and high bad counts, as shown in Figs. 8 and 9. Figure 10
represents the graph from Eq. (5).
Figure 11 shows delays according to background traffic changes in the bad fronthaul
condition. When the fronthaul network condition is bad, available bandwidth in the network
is very low. As the service request counts increase, the delay increases as well. The phenom-
enon is prominent in the conventional approach. In contrast, the proposed approach uses
bandwidth throttling according to the available bandwidth in the fronthaul network. Therefore,
it is possible to reduce delays that occur because of increased background traffic. As shown in
the figure, when the background traffic is highest, the delay with the conventional approach
sharply increases in the fifth hour of the simulation. The proposed approach, however, prevents
the increase of the sudden delay. That is, the proposed approach enables efficient traffic control
and can effectively support mobile multimedia services.

5 Conclusions

Mobile data services have increased in 5G mobile networks. Vast amounts of data traffic are
transmitted over the mobile network elements. Mobile multimedia traffic occupies most of the
total data traffic. As multimedia traffic of the mobile network grows, the wired network must
be able to support growing traffic. However, a fronthaul network that consists of BBUs can
have bandwidth constraints. The fronthaul network is an optical network but doesn’t consider
traffic loads in the network. In addition, it is necessary to extends the optical bandwidth to
support growing data traffic, but this is not easy, owing to expensive cost. Therefore, a new
method has been proposed to control the amount of incoming traffic according to the network
condition. In the proposed mobile network architecture, a mobile edge cloud is employed. It
can be operated as a local storage. Thus, the mobile edge cloud becomes a buffer system for
the mobile access network. Even if the fronthaul network throughput is low, the mobile edge
cloud can keep the multimedia player’s content bit rate on the mobile client.
Through the simulation, the performance of the proposed approach was validated. Regard-
ing delays, the delays of the proposed approach and of the conventional approach were 120 s
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(a) Proposed approach

(b) Conventional approach

Fig. 11 Delays (in seconds) according to Background Traffic Change in the Bad Condition

and 150 s, respectively. The proposed approach could reduce 20% of the transmission delay of
the fronthaul network. In addition, the proposed approach provided better environments for
mobile multimedia services. The proposed approach achieved 86% as the rate of good counts
among total service request counts. In contrast, the conventional approach achieved only 79%.
That is, the proposed approach improved the service environment for mobile multimedia
services by 7%. Therefore, the proposed approach is helpful for efficient management of the
fronthaul network for mobile multimedia services.

Acknowledgements This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National
Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education(NRF-2017R1D1A1B03032777), and
this work was supported by the Soonchunhyang University Research Fund.
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 Multimedia Tools and Applications

Prof. Dae-Young Kim received his B.E. degree in Electronics Engineering, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer
Engineering from Kyung Hee University, Korea in 2004, 2006, and 2010, respectively. From 2010 to 2013, he
was a Research Staff in the Communication R&D Lab. at LIG Nex1 Co., Ltd., Korea. From 2013 to 2015, he
was a Research Staff at AirPlug, Inc., Korea. From 2015 to 2017, he was an Assistant Professor in the
Department of Software Engineering at Changshin University, Korea. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor
in the School of Computer Software at Daegu Catholic University, Korea. His research interests include Mobile
Networking & Computing, IoT Networking and Machine Learning for Network Systems.

Prof. Seokhoon Kim received the B.E. and Ph.D. degrees in computer engineering from Kyunghee University,
Korea, in 2000 and 2004, respectively. From 2004 to 2006, he was with IPOne, Inc., Seoul, Korea, where he led
various research projects as a Research Engineer. From 2006 to 2009, he was a Research Engineer at Neowave,
Inc., Anyang, Korea, where he developed Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) devices. He was an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Mobile Communications Engineering at Changshin University, Changwon,
Korea. Since March 2016, he has been with the Department of Computer Software Engineering, Soonchunhyang
University, Asan, Korea, where he is currently an Assistant Professor. His research interests comprise Cloud
Computing, Internet of Things, Software Defined Networking, Mobile System/Communications, and Machine
Learning based on Bigdata.