Truong-Xuan Do

SDN and Virtualization-Based LTE Mobile Network Architectures: A Comprehensive Survey

AbstractSoftware-defined networking (SDN) features the decoupling of the control plane and data plane, a programmable network and virtualization, which enables network infrastructure sharing and the “softwarization” of the network functions. Recently, many research works have tried to redesign the traditional mobile network using two of these concepts in order to deal with the challenges faced by mobile operators, such as the rapid growth of mobile traffic and new services. In this paper, we first provide an overview of SDN, network virtualization, and network function virtualization, and then describe the current LTE mobile network architecture as well as its challenges and issues. By analyzing and categorizing a wide range of the latest research works on SDN and virtualization in LTE mobile networks, we present a general architecture for SDN and virtualization in mobile networks (called SDVMN) and then propose a hierarchical taxonomy based on the different levels of the carrier network. We also present an in-depth analysis about changes related to protocol operation and architecture when adopting SDN and virtualization in mobile networks. In addition, we list specific use cases and applications that benefit from SDVMN. Last but not least, we discuss the open issues and future research directions of SDVMN.

Distributed network mobility management

All current network mobility management protocols such as NEMO, NPMIPv6 which provide seamless Internet access on vehicles are based on a central mobility anchor. These protocols suffer several big issues such as a single point of failure, long handover delay and scalability. Mobile network is evolving toward a flat architecture and distributed schemes are researching for the purpose of replacing current centralized schemes. In this paper, we survey existing network mobility management schemes and propose a distributed scheme to support mobile networks in vehicular scenarios and in flat network architecture. Our new architecture takes advantages of distributed mobility management, meanwhile provide Internet access to users on vehicles in efficient manner. By numerical analysis, we show that our new scheme improves existing network mobility schemes in term of handover latency.

EPD-NEMO: efficient PMIPv6-based distributed network mobility management

Current network mobility management protocols allow users to access broadband Internet while moving in vehicles or from vehicles to fixed locations without breaking ongoing sessions. These protocols rely on a central mobility anchor such as home agent or local mobility anchor. Thus, some issues, including a single point of failure, long handover delay, and scalability, are exposed in these existing approaches. Ever-increasing demand for mobile Internet traffic changes the mobile network from a hierarchical architecture to a flat architecture and distributed schemes are being researched for the purpose of adapting to new flat architecture and overcoming the aforementioned issues. In this paper, we do a survey of existing network mobility management protocols, current solutions for distributed mobility management, and present an efficient PMIPv6-based distributed network mobility management scheme. The proposed scheme consists of characteristics of distributed mobility management and a new handover mechanism to reduce the packet delivery overhead while keeping seamless Internet access to users in vehicles. By numerical analysis, we prove that our new approach improves service disruption time and packet delivery cost compared to exiting solutions under various environment conditions.

SDN-based mobile packet core for multicast and broadcast services

The current mobile packet core network is evolving to cope with the pressure of the mobile traffic explosion and the advent of new services. Software-defined networking (SDN) is currently being adopted as one of the promising drivers for redesigning the mobile packet core network toward a 5G network. SDN-based mobile packet core approaches are expected to deliver features, such as fast service deployment, flexibility, and capital expenditure and operational expenditure reduction within future 5G networks. However, current SDN-based mobile packet core approaches only focus on providing unicast services without considering multicast and broadcast services. In this article, we propose an efficient SDN-based mobile packet core network architecture for supporting multicast and broadcast services. The proposed architecture takes advantage of the SDN paradigm and enables multicast and broadcast service deployment. In addition, a new SDN-based multicast subscription procedure is introduced to reduce network bandwidth resources. By numerical analysis, our scheme improves the current multicast and broadcast solution in terms of signaling cost.

TOSCA-based clustering service for network function virtualization

Network function virtualization (NFV) is a promising solution for cost reduction, service agility, and scalability to cope with the dynamic changes of traffic volume and business requirements. In the NFV framework, management and orchestration framework (MANO) plays an important roles in the automated provisioning, configuration, lifecycle management, and high availability of virtual network functions (VNF). In order to achieve high availability and auto-scaling for VNFs, the MANO needs to integrate with cluster management service for scaling VNF in and out on demand basis. In this paper, we introduce an architecture which integrates clustering service into the MANO framework and define policies for cluster management in TOSCA template. Our architecture exploits policies-based cluster management and TOSCA service description template to provide the high availability and scalability to the NFV framework. We also shows our implementation using related open source projects.

Information-centric wireless sensor and actor network in the industrial network

Information-centric networking (ICN) approach has been emerging as a promising technology for the future Internet. This technology enables in-network caching and content replication, which improves efficiency in term of data bandwidth and latency. These characteristics make it suitable for wireless sensor and actor network (WSAN) in the industrial environment. In this paper, we present a scheme to apply the ICN concept into the industrial WSAN. The information-centric approach will overcome the bandwidth overhead caused by periodical traffic in the industrial WSAN.