In order to meet the increasing demands of high data rate and low latencycellular broadband applications, plans are underway to roll out the FifthGeneration (5G) cellular wireless system by the year 2020. This paper proposesa novel method for adapting the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)'s5G architecture to the principles of Software Defined Networking (SDN). Wepropose to have centralized network functions in the 5G network core to controlthe network, end-to-end. This is achieved by relocating the controlfunctionality present in the 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) to the network core,resulting in the conversion of the base station known as the gNB into a puredata plane node. This brings about a significant reduction in signaling costsbetween the RAN and the core network. It also results in improved systemperformance. The merits of our proposal have been illustrated by evaluating theKey Performance Indicators (KPIs) of the 5G network, such as network attach(registration) time and handover time. We have also demonstrated improvementsin attach time and system throughput due to the use of centralized algorithmsfor mobility management with the help of ns-3 simulations.
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