The emergency relating to software-defined networking(SDN),especially in terms of the prototype associated with OpenFlow,pro-vides new possibilities for innovating on network design.Researchers have started to extend SDN to cellular networks.Such newprogrammable architecture is beneficial to the evolution of mobile networks and allows operators to provide better services.Thetypical cellular network comprises radio access network(RAN)and core network(CN);hence,the technique roadmap diverges intwo ways.In this paper,we investigate SoftRAN,the latest SDN solution for RAN,and SoftCell and MobileFlow,the latest solu-tions for CN.We also define a series of control functions for CROWD.Unlike in the other literature,we emphasize only software-defined cellular network solutions and specifications in order to provide possible research directions.
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