Juan Carlos Zuniga

An architecture for software defined wireless networking

Software defined networking, characterized by a clear separation of the control and data planes, is being adopted as a novel paradigm for wired networking. With SDN, network operators can run their infrastructure more efficiently, supporting faster deployment of new services while enabling key features such as virtualization. In this article, we adopt an SDN-like approach applied to wireless mobile networks that will not only benefit from the same features as in the wired case, but will also leverage on the distinct features of mobile deployments to push improvements even further. We illustrate with a number of representative use cases the benefits of the adoption of the proposed architecture, which is detailed in terms of modules, interfaces, and high-level signaling. We also review the ongoing standardization efforts, and discuss the potential advantages and weaknesses, and the need for a coordinated approach.

IP flow mobility: smart traffic offload for future wireless networks

The recent proliferation of smartphone-based mobile Internet services has created an extraordinary growth in data traffic over cellular networks. This growth has fostered interest in exploring alternatives to alleviate data congestion while delivering a positive user experience. It is known that a very small number of users and applications cause a big percentage of the traffic load. Hence, adopting smarter traffic management mechanisms is one of the considered alternatives. These mechanisms allow telecom operators to move selected IP data traffic, for instance, between the cellular infrastructure and the WLAN infrastructure, which is considered a key feature in the latest 3GPP and IETF specifications. This article presents and compares two possible approaches to IP flow mobility offloading that are currently being considered by the IETF. The first one is based on extending existing client-based IP mobility solutions to allow flow mobility where the user terminal is fully involved in the mobility process, and the second one is based on extending current network- based IP mobility solutions where the user terminal is not aware of the mobility.

Extremely dense wireless networks [Guest Editorial]

The ever growing demand from mobile network users is pushing the current wireless technologies toward their limits. As a matter of fact, not even the most optimistic promises from emerging standards, such as LTEAdvanced and IEEE 802.11ac/ad/af, will be able to satiate the huge appetite for bandwidth of the future users of 5G networks — at least, unless the size of cells is reduced dramatically. This situation will soon create a desperate need for extremely dense wireless networks (DenseNets).