Service-Specific Network Virtualization to Reduce Signaling Processing Loads in EPC/IMS

This paper proposes a service-specific network virtualization to address the tremendous increase in the signaling processing load in the evolved packet core and IP multimedia subsystem of a fifth-generation mobile communication system. The proposal creates several virtual networks that are composed of functions specialized for particular services on a mobile communication network and efficiently forwards a sequence of signaling messages to the appropriate virtual networks. Using a prototype system, this paper verifies the overheads costs of the proposal that are incurred during the inspection of packet application headers needed to appropriately forward signaling messages as well as the overheads incurred when replicating state information from one virtual network to another. This paper shows that the proposal can reduce the signaling processing load by ~25% under certain assumptions.