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Network Functions Virtualization for Mobile Core and Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

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A Correction to this article was published on 22 November 2021

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Abstract

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is a network architecture concept to improve network performance. This concept empowers the network capacities and reduces the cost and accelerates the network services and moving them to virtual severs. Mobility Management Entity (MME) is one of the feasible components for virtualization to control the plane due to its non-handling features for user data traffic. However, the MME does not handle the user data and not using any sort of hardware for data processing towards the cloud. The deployment of MME on the cloud is not an appropriate strategy due to the heavy load and complex processes. The main objective of this paper is to develop a suitable software deployment architecture Software-Defined Network-based Network Functions Virtualization (SDN-NFV) that can provide a cloud-optimized design for the MME. The proposed architecture is based on SDN networks to boost and enhance the traditional cellular network processes and functionalities. The proposed architecture contains three tiers including the data plane, control plane, and application plane. The data plane contains the switches, open flow protocol, and OpenSwitch virtual software and responsible to handle the data traffic and forward it to the correct destination based on flow entries in its flow table. The control plane is responsible for the entire network topology and contains the functionalities of traditional non-SDN routers and policies that come from the application plane. The application plane uses a virtualization environment where all the requirements are defined to the corresponding controller. The proposed architecture is evaluated in a simulation where it achieved better performance in terms of latency and throughput.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Incheon National University Research Concentration Professors Grant in 2020.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Bahria University, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Kashif Naseer Qureshi & Ejaz Ahmad

  2. Department of Computer Science, NFC Institute of Engineering and Fertilizer Research, Faisalabad, Pakistan

    Muhammad Anwar

  3. Department of Computer Science, Knowledge University, University Park, Kirkuk Road, Erbil, 44001, Iraq

    Kayhan Zrar Ghafoor

  4. Department of Embedded Systems Engineering, Incheon National University, Incheon, South Korea

    Gwanggil Jeon

Authors
  1. Kashif Naseer Qureshi
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  2. Ejaz Ahmad
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  3. Muhammad Anwar
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  4. Kayhan Zrar Ghafoor
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  5. Gwanggil Jeon
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Contributions

KNQ: Conceptualization, Methodology, IA Software, Validation, Data curation, Writing; MA: Visualization, Investigation, Reviewing and Editing, Software, Validation; KZG: Visualization, Investigation, Reviewing and Editing, Software, Validation; GJ: Visualization, Investigation, Reviewing and Editing.

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Correspondence to Gwanggil Jeon.

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The original version of this article was revised: In this article the author name Kayan Zrar Ghafoor was incorrectly written as Kayhan Zarar Ghafoor. The original article has been corrected.

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Qureshi, K.N., Ahmad , E., Anwar, M. et al. Network Functions Virtualization for Mobile Core and Heterogeneous Cellular Networks. Wireless Pers Commun 122, 2543–2559 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-021-09011-z

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