5G and Software-defined

Networking (SDN)

Toktam Mahmoodi
Kings College London

www.ctr.kcl.ac.uk/Toktam/index.htm

17 March 2015 IET 5G Radio Technology Seminar

Who is Online?

People have gone online with multi-user computers for

over half a century. Military pioneers in the 1950 were
joined by academics and business people in the 1960s,
and by the first general users in the 1970s. The 1980s saw
an explosion of choices. The 1990s boiled them down to
the Web and Internet, which went mobile in the 2000s.
 Change of Online Pattern

Mobile media usage throughout the day, InMobile & On Device Research, mobile
media consumption, February 2012.
Endless Races:
Controlling small cells & limited Spectrum

They envision only 100

channels (far more would be
needed).

Because the cells were so

small, a moving vehicle might
now pass through many cells
during a call. This would add
complexity to both the mobile
unit and the base station, and
would require a massive
central computer.

Notes from first cellular meeting, Cellular Dreams and Cordless

Jan 17, 1966 Nightmares: Life at Bell Laboratories
in Interesting Times
50Y of Evolution to 5G

Convergence
Blended wireless infrastructure

Autonomy
Devices are the cells

More capable devices Over the top services

Predictability
Cloud-based services
Rich set of applications
Mobility/content/usage patterns are predictable
Open interfaces

Central control: a machine that solves it all

Turing Machine by Tom

Dunne, in American
Scientist
Big list of advantages of SDN in Mobile

Flexible support of middleboxes

Better inter-cell interference management

Scalable distributed enforcement of QoS and firewall policies in

data plane

Flexible support of virtual operators by partitioning flow space

Seamless subscriber mobility across technologies

L. Li, M. Mao, and J Rexford, Towards Software Defined Cellular Networks, EWSDN 2012.
The real importance

Abstraction is fundamental
to separate concerns
to make problems modular and tractable.

Abstraction is fundamental
to enable innovative new businesses
Abstraction

Deliver Convergence
Blended wireless infrastructure

Deal with Autonomy

Devices are the cells

Use the Predictability

Mobility/content/usage patterns are predictable
Management plane BSS/Operator scripts

Resourc
Diffserv Mobility Value-added
e mgmt services
Subscriber
3GPP State Routing NFV Pica-8 p-3290
Topology Platform and UE
clients Distrib and GTP control essentials info OpenFlow switch

Controller

End User
domain
Management plane Core network
BSS/OS MME HSS PCR
Emulate access and S F
backhaul
(L2/3 routers, BSs)

SDN
Controller Data analysis
machine

Gateway(s)
OpenFlow
enabled

General purpose
machines
Device Centric Taking the race of small cells to the limit
Networking Every device is the cell
Autonomous devices
Predictable patterns
Using location profile for selecting access

Bringing device to the centre of network architecture

Device measurements
Integrating abstract network view through open interface
Integrating Location profile
Device-only
Network view
Location profile

Using Learning based

approach
KCL in H2020 5G
NORMA
5G Novel Radio Multiservice &
flexible Network Architecture
VirtuWind
Virtual and Programmable
industrial network prototype
deployed in operational Wind
park
Recent/Relevant Publications

[1] Radio resource sharing as a service in 5G: SDN approach, in

collaboration with UoA, to appear in IEEE Trans. NSM, 2015.

[2] Convergence of Radio Access in 5G, in collaboration with UoA,

to appear in Proc of IEEE, 2015.

[3] Handling the Increasing Volume of Mobile Data Traffic: On Using

SDN-based control plane in 5G, IEEE VT Magazine, Sept 2014.

[4] SDN-based Data Offloading for 5G Mobile Networks, ZTE

Communication Magazine, June 2014, and ICC 2014 proceeding.

[5] Network Selection for Autonomous Mobile Devices, in proc.

WoNS 2013.
 5G and Software-defined
Networking (SDN)

Toktam Mahmoodi
Kings College London

www.ctr.kcl.ac.uk/Toktam/index.htm

17 March 2015 IET 5G Radio Technology Seminar