Opportunistic SDN-controlled wireless mesh network for mobile traffic offloading
Résumé
The transit of cellular communications over WiFi networks is expected to account for 60% of mobile traffic in 2019. Consequently, mobile traffic management and advanced offloading have become hot topics that will enable operators to optimize resources, and improve QoS/QoE for high bandwidth mobile multimedia applications and services. On the other hand, concepts such as Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), Software Defined Network (SDN) and open protocols such as OpenFlow (OF) become the key enablers for the next generation of mobile networks. In this context, the objective of this paper is to investigate the opportunity of offloading the 3GPP Radio Access Network (RAN) traffic through WiFi access networks by the use of Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) that would be formed by the mobile phones themselves. This use case will demonstrate establishment and control of an IP wireless mesh network by the use of NFV controller (through the SDN control plane). We validated our work using NEON, an SDN solution developed by CEA LIST that supports fast devices configuration and services deployment in dynamic and unconfigured infrastructures contexts.
Mots clés
Mobile telecommunication systems
MESH networking
Mesh generation
Internet protocols
Network function virtualization
Multimedia systems
Multimedia services
Wi-Fi
Wireless local area networks (WLAN)
Wireless mesh networks (WMN)
Wireless networks
Mobile data offloading
Mobile multimedia applications
Mobile traffic
Network functions
Open protocols
Radio access networks
SDN deployment
Wireless Mesh networks (WMNs)