Software Defined Mobile Networks (SDMN)

5Leveraging SDN for the 5G NetworksTrends, Prospects, and Challenges

Akram Hakiri and Pascal Berthou

Univ de Toulouse, LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France

5.1 Introduction

Mobile and wireless connectivities have made tremendous growth during the last decade. Today 3G and 4G mobile systems are becoming an essential part of the terrestrial back-haul to provide connectivity through IP core network (i.e., evolved packet core (EPC)). They also focus toward providing seamless connection to cellular networks such as 3G, LTE, WLAN, and Bluetooth. The fifth generation (5G) is being seen as a user-centric concept instead of operator centric as in 3G or service centric as in 4G. Mobile terminals will be able to combine multiple flows coming from different technologies. Multimode mobile terminals have been seen toward the 4G cellular network. They aim to provide single user terminal that can cooperate in different wireless networks and overcome the design problem of power consumption and cost old mobile terminals. The Open Wireless Architecture (OWR) [1] is targeted to support multiple existing wireless air interfaces as well as future wireless communication standard in an open architecture platform. Nevertheless, the growing demand and the diverse patterns of mobile traffic place an increasing strain on cellular networks. To cater to the large volumes of traffic delivered by the new services and applications, the future 5G wireless/mobile broadband [2] network will provide the fundamental infrastructure ...