Mobility Management Architecture in Different RATs Based Network Slicing

Abstract

Network slicing is an architectural solution that enables the future 5G network to offer a high data traffic capacity and efficient network connectivity. Moreover, software defined network (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) empower this architecture to visualize the physical network resources. The network slicing identified as a multiple logical network, where each network slice dedicates as an end-to-end network and works independently with other slices on a common physical network resources. Most user devices have more than one smart wireless interfaces to connect to different radio access technologies (RATs) such as WiFi and LTE, thereby network operators utilize this facility to offload mobile data traffic. Therefore, it is important to enable a network slicing to manage different RATs on the same logical network as a way to mitigate the spectrum scarcity problem and enables a slice to control its users mobility across different access networks. In this paper, we propose a mobility management architecture based network slicing where each slice manages its users across heterogeneous radio access technologies such as WiFi, LTE and 5G networks. In this architecture, each slice has a different mobility demands and these demands are governed by a network slice configuration and service characteristics. Therefore, our mobility management architecture follows a modular approach where each slice has individual module to handle the mobility demands and enforce the slice policy for mobility management. The advantages of applying our proposed architecture include: i) Sharing network resources between different network slices; ii) creating logical platform to unify different RATs resources and allowing all slices to share them; iii) satisfying slice mobility demands.

A centralized architecture for autonomic quality of experience oriented handover in dense networks

“…In [9], the author proposes a framework for integrating different heterogeneous wireless networks based on network slicing and utilizing the SDN paradigm in a wireless environment. In this proposed solution, the framework uses the Virtual Network Function (VNF) to facilitate the functionality of each network slicing controlled by the SDN controller.…”

“…We can rewrite vector W as below: As we see from the equation above, we need to compute the standard deviation which is denoted 𝜎 𝑖 of value i from association functions. The equation below shows the calculation of the standard deviation: (9) Making use of both eq. (6, 7) will now represent the FHOD for 𝐴𝑃 𝑘 which is shown below: (10) We can then rewrite this equation as below:…”

“…Software-Defined Wireless Networking (SDWN), is a promising concept where a control and data plane are separated from each other, which is enabling a centralised programmable network. SDWN could offer several features and advantages over traditional hardware-centric networks, and this will lead to decrease cost, promising better QoE and QoS [9], [10]. In this context, the main goal of this work is the design and the development of a novel SDWN-based architecture that supports handover (HO), which addresses QoE and QoS requirements of the MNs.…”

Efficient Handover Mechanism for Radio Access Network Slicing by Exploiting Distributed Learning

“…The authors of [2] and [11] point out that the handover should be one of the key issues in RAN slicing, while no handover mechanisms or algorithms are studied in their work. The authors of [23] propose a new network architecture based on NS to support mobility management between different radio access technologies, including 4G, Wi-Fi and 5G. They investigate the problem from network architecture perspective, and no specific handover mechanism is proposed in their work either.…”

“…Before presenting the handover model considered in this paper, let us discuss two components of the handover procedure: its trigger condition and cost. In RAN slicing architecture, once the specific QoS of a UE is not satisfied, a handover should occur [23]. Thus, based on the QoS definition, the handover trigger condition for UE i can be expressed as Thus, based on the QoS definition, the handover trigger condition for UE i can be expressed as…”