FME: A Flexible Management Entity for virtualizing LTE Evolved Packet Core

Author

Gomez, Karina ; Rasheed, Tinku ; Reynaud, Laurent ; Goratti, Leonardo

Author_Institution

CREATE-NET, Trento, Italy

fYear

2014

fDate

5-9 May 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

The 4G Evolved Packet Core (EPC) is the pillar of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile networks. Inspired by the current trend of designing distributed and more autonomous systems, we can notice that the complexity of the existing EPC seriously limits this possibility. We principally consider a reshaping of cellular networks in order to move towards virtual-distributed architectures allowing dynamic deployments of commercial/non-commercial, temporary or local networks. In this paper, we present Flexible Management Entity (FME), a distributed entity which leverages on virtualized EPC functionalities in 4G-LTE cellular systems. We highlight several conceptual and engineering trade-offs in realizing such a system.We also analyze the behavior and benefits of FME in various simulation settings that expose the dynamic deployment scenarios for 4G networks.

Keywords

4G mobile communication; Long Term Evolution; cellular radio; mobility management (mobile radio); 4G evolved packet core; 4G networks; 4G-LTE cellular systems; EPC; FME; LTE evolved packet core; Long Term Evolution mobile networks; autonomous systems; cellular networks; dynamic deployment scenarios; flexible management entity; virtual-distributed architectures; virtualized EPC functionalities; Broadband communication; Computer architecture; Delays; Mobile communication; Mobile computing; Streaming media; Virtualization; Distributed Cellular Entities; Long Term Evolution; Virtual Evolved Packet Core;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS), 2014 IEEE

Conference_Location

Krakow

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NOMS.2014.6838344

Filename

6838344