SDN/NFV‐based handover management approach for ultradense 5G mobile networks

Abstract

With the great increase of connected devices and new types of applications, mobile networks are witnessing exponential growth of traffic volume. To meet emerging requirements, it is widely agreed that the fifth-generation mobile network will be ultradense and heterogeneous. However, the deployment of a high number of small cells in such networks poses challenges for the mobility management, including frequent, undesired, and ping-pong handovers, not to mention issues related to increased delay and failure of the handover process.The adoption of software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) technologies into 5G networks offers a new way to address the above-mentioned challenges. These technologies offer tools and mechanisms to make networks flexible, programmable, and more manageable. The SDN has global network control ability so that various functions such as the handover control can be implemented in the SDN architecture to manage the handover efficiently. In this article, we propose a Software-Defined Handover (SDHO) solution to optimize the handover in future 5G networks. In particular, we design a Software-Defined Handover Management Engine (SDHME) to handle the handover control mechanism in 5G ultradense networks. The SDHME is defined in the application plane of the SDN architecture, executed by the control plane to orchestrate the data plane. Simulation results demonstrate that, compared with the conventional LTE handover strategy, the proposed approach significantly reduces the handover failure ratio and handover delay. KEYWORDS 5G ultradense networks, fast handover, network function virtualization, software-defined networking, virtual cell Int J Commun Syst. 2019;32:e3831. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/dac FIGURE 1 Topology of ultradense network (UDN) toward 5G. SDN, software-defined networkingexperience. The topology of UDN toward 5G is illustrated in Figure 1. In UDN, a high number of point of attachment (PoA) are distributed randomly without network planning. 3 The next-generation network is characterized by heterogeneous networks having different coverage ranges such as picocell, femtocell, attocell, and multiple radio access technologies (RATs) such as 4G, 5G, and WLAN. In this way, a greater number of simultaneous device connections are enabled by the ultradense heterogeneous small cells.Although UDN helps to solve coverage, capacity, spectrum efficiency, and data rates problems on the access side, it issues many challenges to the mobility management such as handover problems faced by mobile users and poor performance like long handover delay, failures, and increased signaling overhead. This causes disconnection and quality of service (QoS) degradation. Accordingly, ultradense 5G mobile networks require innovations in the management of the network and necessitate a novel and accurate handover management mechanism to deal with these challenges. Recently, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) organization has focused on software-defined networking (SDN) and netwo...

Uma Solução de Decisão de Handover inter-V-Cell para Veı́culos Conectados em Redes 5G Ultradensas

“…A Tabela 5 apresenta os resultados obtidos nas simulações dos dois cenários. Para fins de validação, avaliamos e comparamos a proposta desenvolvida com os cenários apresentados pelos trabalhos da literatura: [Polese et al 2017], [Rizvi and Akram 2018], [Prados-Garzon et al 2016] e [Gharsallah et al 2018]. Polese et al [Polese et al 2017] apresentou um número médio de eventos de HO entre 21 e 43 e PLR entre 7% e 15%, em um cenário de usuárioúnico, considerando umaárea de 200 x 115 m. Sob as mesmas condições, a solução desenvolvida apresentou um número médio de eventos de HO de 3,8 e PLR de 1,89%.…”

“…As redes 5G são ultradensas e heterogêneas, fato que, por si só, gera handovers frequentes, indesejados, desnecessários (efeito ping-pong) e falhos, além de aumentar o tempo do processo de handover [Bilen et al 2017]. Diferentes estratégias de handover são apresentadas em outros trabalhos [Polese et al 2017, Mouawad et al 2018, Rizvi and Akram 2018, Gharsallah et al 2018, Peng et al 2019, Zang et al 2019. Um mecanismo de handover suave (SoftH), que utiliza o conceito de SDNé capaz de realizar decisões de handovers de uma maneira mais assertiva [Oliveira et al 2019].…”

“…Para isso, a virtualização de funções de rede (NFV -Network Functions Virtualization) dissocia funções de rede da infraestrutura física. Ambas as tecnologias, SDN e NFV, permitem simplificar a implantação e o gerenciamento de serviços em redes ultradensas, tais como 5G [Gharsallah et al 2018]. Desta forma, as células virtuais são atualizadas dinamicamente, o que proporciona handovers mais rápidos e eficazes.…”

A Comprehensive Survey on Mobility Management in 5G Heterogeneous Networks: Architectures, Challenges and Solutions

“…Simulation results showed that the proposed method reduces HO times and provides uninterrupted HO. In [92], an SDN/NFV based network architecture that can be used in 5G ultra dense networks is proposed. The proposed network architecture consists of 3 planes: data plane consisting of several small cells that provide traffic to users and transmit measurement reports to controllers, control plane with SDN controller that controls and manages the mobile mobility of RATs and mobile nodes, and application plane consisting of programs keeping the network abstract to determine future behavior according to network requirements.…”

Dual Connectivity-Based Mobility Management and Data Split Mechanism in 4G/5G Cellular Networks

“…In [9], Gharsallah et al present a SDN and NFV (network function virtualization) based HO management approach for 5G UDN. The authors utilize all three planes of SDN architecture to design SDHO (SDN-based HO) scheme.…”