Delay Analysis of Base Station Flow Table in SDN-enabled Radio Access Networks

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the delay caused by limited-capacity flow tables in SDN-enabled base stations within wireless networks, providing a mathematical model to predict delays based on user density and cell size.

Contribution

It introduces a mathematical expression for delay analysis in SDN-enabled base stations considering flow table capacity constraints.

Findings

Derived a delay model based on user density and cell area.

Highlights the impact of flow table limitations on network delay.

Provides insights for optimizing SDN-based wireless network performance.

Abstract

Future generation wireless networks are designed with extremely low delay requirements which makes even small contributed delays important. On the other hand, software defined networking (SDN) has been introduced as a key enabler of future wireless and cellular networks in order to make them more flexible. In SDN, a central controller manages all network equipments by setting the match-action pairs in flow tables of the devices. However, these flow tables have limited capacity and thus are not capable of storing the rules of all the users. In this paper, we consider an SDN-enabled base station (SD-BS) in a cell equipped with a limited capacity flow table. We analyze the expected delay incurred in processing of the incoming packets to the SD-BS and present a mathematical expression for it in terms of density of the users and cell area.