Techniques for Offloading LTE Evolved Packet Core Traffic Using Openflow: A Comparative Survey & Design Reference

摘要

Cellular users of today have an insatiable appetite for bandwidth and data. Data-intensive applications,such as video on demand, online gaming and video conferencing, have gained prominence. This, coupledwith recent innovations in the mobile network such as LTE/4G, poses a unique challenge to networkoperators in how to extract the most value from their deployments while reducing their Total Cost ofOperations(TCO). To this end, a number of enhancements have been proposed to the a?Oconventionala?? LTEmobile network. Most of these recognize the monolithic and non-elastic nature of the mobile backend andpropose complimenting core functionality with concepts borrowed from Software Defined Networking(SDN). In this paper, we will attempt to explore some existing options within the LTE standard to addresstraffic challenges. We then survey some SDN-enabled alternatives and comment on their merits anddrawbacks.