Software Defined Mobile Networks (SDMN)

6LTE Architecture Integration with SDN

Jose Costa-Requena, Raimo Kantola, Jesús Llorente Santos, Vicent Ferrer Guasch, Maël Kimmerlin, Antti Mikola, and Jukka Manner

Department of Communications and Networking, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

6.1 Overview

This chapter proposes solutions to integrate software defined networking (SDN) technology with wide area mobile networks. The integration of SDN into mobile networks to become the software defined mobile network (SDMN) poses several architecture alternatives. To limit the discussion of the alternatives to a reasonable scope, in this chapter, we will discuss the issues and alternatives taking that the SDN uses the OpenFlow protocol.

We first need to define the proper location of the SDMN controller. It can be integrated with the Mobility Management Entity (MME) making the controller aware of mobility events, or it can be located in the Serving/Packet Gateway (S/P-GW) to control the transport network. The integration of SDN control with LTE network elements should follow a incremental process the idea being smooth deployment of SDN into a live mobile network. At best, the integration of SDN with LTE paves the way for 5G networks. For now, the objective is to keep using the current IP-based networks and add SDMN-based flexibility to the LTE network architecture.

Scalability, security, and resilience are key factors to be taken care of in order for SDMN to become the next infrastructure for 5G mobile networks. Finally, SDMN should ...