Software Defined Wireless Network Architecture Research Articles

Unsticking the Wi-Fi Client: Smarter Decisions Using a Software Defined Wireless Solution

This paper presents a novel software-defined wireless network architecture that integrates coordination mechanisms to enhance the capabilities of a set of central managed Wi-Fi access points (APs). The global architecture is presented in detail, where the handoff mechanism is integrated with a set of active and passive monitoring tools and other functionalities, resulting in a solution that is able to provide smart functionalities using low-cost commercial APs. The framework includes a central controller that has all the information available, and is therefore able to make smart decisions about the assignment of clients to APs. This avoids the problem of the “sticky client” that remains connected to the original AP it is associated with, rather than moving to a nearby AP, which would be a better choice. Two different test scenarios are used to compare a proactive and a reactive handoff mechanism in realistic conditions, with different walking speeds. The results illustrate the advantage of the proactive handoff, as it is more scalable and allows a better integration with other functionalities such as load balancing. The delay incurred by the handoff between APs in different channels is measured with three wireless devices, using five values for the inter-beacon time, proving that fast and seamless handoffs are possible in the scenario. The paper shows that these advanced functionalities, usually available in proprietary solutions, can also be achieved using off-the-shelf equipment.

On Software-Defined Wireless Network (SDWN) Network Virtualization: Challenges and Open Issues

Software-defined networking (SDN) is new network architecture that emerges as to implement network virtualization (NV) with vast features, especially when it is applied it in multi-tenant scenarios. The rapid growth of wireless network applications and services, let to adopt NVs into software-defined wireless network (SDWN). This is because wireless networks require specific features that can be hindered of implementing NVs such as updated location information, dynamic channel configuration, and rapid client re-association. This paper presents state-of-the-art NV methods for SDWN with the aim of highlighting issues and challenges of applying NVs techniques of SDN into SDWN. We discuss three SDN techniques that facilitate NV in the cloud, namely proxy-based virtualization, layer two prefixes-based virtualizations and programing language-based virtualization. Moreover, the paper points out the possibility of providing effective VNs in the SDWN architecture. We also taxonomies the SDWN proposed virtualization methods based on hypervisor controller in the different networks. Finally, the potential requirements and challenges and open issues of SDWN NVs are also identified and presented as the future directions in SDWN research.

A Novel Multipath-Transmission Supported Software Defined Wireless Network Architecture

The inflexible management and operation of today’s wireless access networks cannot meet the increasingly growing specific requirements, such as high mobility and throughput, service differentiation, and high-level programmability. In this paper, we put forward a novel multipath-transmission supported software-defined wireless network architecture (MP-SDWN), with the aim of achieving seamless handover, throughput enhancement, and flow-level wireless transmission control as well as programmable interfaces. In particular, this research addresses the following issues: 1) for high mobility and throughput, multi-connection virtual access point is proposed to enable multiple transmission paths simultaneously over a set of access points for users and 2) wireless flow transmission rules and programmable interfaces are implemented into mac80211 subsystem to enable service differentiation and flow-level wireless transmission control. Moreover, the efficiency and flexibility of MP-SDWN are demonstrated in the performance evaluations conducted on a 802.11 based-testbed, and the experimental results show that compared to regular WiFi, our proposed MP-SDWN architecture achieves seamless handover and multifold throughput improvement, and supports flow-level wireless transmission control for different applications.

A novel software-defined wireless network architecture to improve ship area network performance

In this paper, we design a new software-defined wireless network architecture to enable high performance in the next generation of ship area networks (ShAN). We first introduce the current problem of end-to-end transmission delay in ship area networks, and then claim that both network and routing layers protocol will require improvement to guarantee data transmission. Hence, we propose a new network architecture, which combines SOTDMA and SDWN advantages to reduce end-to-end transmission delay to achieve high performance in ship area networks. We sketch out the changes and extensions of an SDWN network controller and switches to enable high performance. The complete design of an SDWN architecture using SOTDMA is an exciting avenue for future ship area networks. Using our proposed network architecture, our evaluation results show that for one wireless AP station, we can obtain 3 Mbps throughput.

Network virtualization and resource description in software-defined wireless networks

Future networks will be defined by software. In contrast to a wired network, the software defined wireless network (SDWN) experiences more challenges due to the fast-changing wireless channel environment. This article focuses on the state-of-the-art of SDWN architecture, including control plane virtualization strategies and semantic ontology for network resource description. In addition, a novel SDWN architecture with resource description function is proposed, along with two ontologies for the resource description of the latest wireless network. Future research directions for SDWN, control strategy design, and resource description are also addressed.

Software Defined Wireless Network Architecture for the Next Generation Mobile Communication: Proposal and Initial Prototype

Software Defined Wireless Network Architecture for the Next Generation Mobile Communication: Proposal and Initial Prototype