Wireless software-defined networks (W-SDNs) and network function virtualization (NFV) for 5G cellular systems: An overview and qualitative evaluation
Wireless software-defined networks (W-SDNs) and network function virtualization (NFV) for 5G cellular systems: An overview and qualitative evaluation
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DOI：
10.1016/j.comnet.2015.10.013
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发表时间：
2015-12
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
I. Akyildiz;Shih-Chun Lin;Pu Wang
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
I. Akyildiz;Shih-Chun Lin;Pu Wang
蜂窝网络技术已经发展到支持不断增长的无线数据流量，这是由快速发展的互联网和无线网络上广泛采用的云应用程序造成的。然而，基于硬件的设计依赖于当前蜂窝系统的封闭和不灵活的架构，新一代无线网络的标准化和部署通常需要10年的周期。为了克服这一限制，提出了软件定义网络（SDN）的概念，通过在整个网络上提供可编程性，有效地创建集中的网络抽象。此外，还进一步提出了网络功能虚拟化（NFV）的补充概念，通过将数据转发平面与控制平面解耦，有效地将功能抽象与硬件分离。这两个概念为蜂窝网络提供了根据不断变化的网络环境发展和适应所需的灵活性，并为5G蜂窝系统引入了无线软件定义网络（w - sdn）。因此，迫切需要研究新一代软件定义蜂窝网络的基本体系结构原则，以及支持和管理这种新兴体系结构的使能技术。在本文中，首先，研究了最先进的w - sdn解决方案及其相关的NFV技术。然后，强调了这些W-SDN解决方案之间的主要区别以及它们的局限性。为了克服这些限制，推出了用于5G蜂窝系统的新型SDN架构SoftAir。
Cellular network technologies have evolved to support the ever-increasing wireless data traffic, which results from the rapidly-evolving Internet and widely-adopted cloud applications over wireless networks. However, hardware-based designs, which rely on closed and inflexible architectures of current cellular systems, make a typical 10-year cycle for a new generation of wireless networks to be standardized and deployed. To overcome this limitation, the concept of software-defined networking (SDN) has been proposed to efficiently create centralized network abstraction with the provisioning of programmability over the entire network. Moreover, the complementary concept of network function virtualization (NFV) has been further proposed to effectively separate the abstraction of functionalities from the hardware by decoupling the data forwarding plane from the control plane. These two concepts provide cellular networks with the needed flexibility to evolve and adapt according to the ever-changing network context and introduce wireless software-defined networks (W-SDNs) for 5G cellular systems. Thus, there is an urgent need to study the fundamental architectural principles underlying a new generation of software-defined cellular network as well as the enabling technologies that supports and manages such emerging architecture. In this paper, first, the state-of-the-art W-SDNs solutions along with their associated NFV techniques are surveyed. Then, the key differences among these W-SDN solutions as well as their limitations are highlighted. To counter those limitations, SoftAir, a new SDN architecture for 5G cellular systems, is introduced.