Radio access technology selection in SDN controlled reconfigurable base station

摘要

Several Software Defined Networking (SDN) based architectures have been proposed for wireless networks. Among them, the proposal of Reconfigurable Base Station (RBS) programmable with different Radio Access Technologies (RATs) dynamically by an SDN controller has the potential to improve mobility. This improvement can be achieved by dynamically converting expensive inter-RAT mobility procedures into efficient intra-RAT ones by deploying RBSs along with traditional base stations. This conversion requires development of algorithms for optimal RAT selection in RBSs by the SDN controller, to increase the proportion of intra-RAT mobility procedures in the network. We propose three novel algorithms using parameters such as mobility procedure counts and execution time of each procedure. Simulation results compare these algorithms and suggest their applicability under various deployment scenarios and User Equipment (UE) mobility patterns. Also, the algorithm based on mobility procedure counts with preference only to incoming UEs in a cell, performs better in most scenarios. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.