Abstract
As one of the key enabling technologies of the fifth generation wireless network (5G), software defined network (SDN) offers a logically centralized control model, flexible programmability, and a flow-based paradigm that is ideally suited for highly scalable wireless networks, from access to core part. Following this paradigm, a novel software-defined radio access network (SDRAN) architecture and the function modules have been proposed in this paper. In particular, the motivation, challenge, and deployment roadmap of SDRAN framework are discussed. The relationships between alternative solutions (Cloud RAN, network function virtualization) and complementary technologies (cognitive radio, self-organizing network, big data analysis) are analyzed in detail. Taking interference management of heterogeneous mobile network as the example use case, scheme design and preliminary system evaluations are given to show the benefit of SDRAN architecture.
Highlights
With the maturing of the fourth generation wireless (4G) technologies and the ongoing widely deployment of 4G networks, research activities on 5G communication technologies have emerged in both the academic and industrial communities
We observe that the improvement on the signal-to-interferenceplus noise (SINR) distribution for logically centralized interference management facilitated by the software-defined radio access network (SDRAN) architecture is about 2 dB compared with the distributed scheme
5 Conclusions In this article, we have identified the key benefits and challenges that software-defined networking can bring to radio access networks
Summary
With the maturing of the fourth generation wireless (4G) technologies and the ongoing widely deployment of 4G networks, research activities on 5G communication technologies have emerged in both the academic and industrial communities. As a networking paradigm that separates the control and data forwarding planes, software-defined networking (SDN) is currently being considered as an alternative to traditional distributed approaches based on highly specialized hardware. A SDN-like mobile network architecture was proposed in [6] with the example case on mobility management Both RAN side and CN side are enhanced with programmability. Mobile network SDN controller manages the shared radio access and core network among multiple (virtual) operators. Xu et al EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking (2016) 2016:264 provided a SDN-based control framework to coordinate radio access functions(including mobility, load balancing, spectrum allocation, interference management, etc.) in heterogeneous networks. The paper represents deep rethinking on the architecture of SDN-based wireless access network (SDRAN), including the driving force, challenge, and the evolution roadmaps from mobile operators’ view.
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