Software-Defined and Virtualized Future Mobile and Wireless Networks: A Survey

TL;DR

This survey explores how software-defined networking and network virtualization can address the challenges of future mobile and wireless networks, highlighting their potential for improved flexibility, efficiency, and management.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of SDWN and WNV, their integration, and their potential to solve key issues in mobile and wireless network evolution.

Findings

SDWN and WNV can effectively address MWN challenges

Integration of SDWN and WNV offers significant benefits

Open issues and future research directions identified

Abstract

With the proliferation of mobile demands and increasingly multifarious services and applications, mobile Internet has been an irreversible trend. Unfortunately, the current mobile and wireless network (MWN) faces a series of pressing challenges caused by the inherent design. In this paper, we extend two latest and promising innovations of Internet, software-defined networking and network virtualization, to mobile and wireless scenarios. We first describe the challenges and expectations of MWN, and analyze the opportunities provided by the software-defined wireless network (SDWN) and wireless network virtualization (WNV). Then, this paper focuses on SDWN and WNV by presenting the main ideas, advantages, ongoing researches and key technologies, and open issues respectively. Moreover, we interpret that these two technologies highly complement each other, and further investigate efficient joint design between them. This paper confirms that SDWN and WNV may efficiently address the crucial challenges of MWN and significantly benefit the future mobile and wireless network.