Design And Implementation Of SDN-based Load Balancing In EPC

According to Cisco VNI,the number of connected devices will be three times as high as the global population in 2019(there will be nearly three networked devices per user).Also,it is anticipated that mobile device-generated data traffic will reach an annual run rate of 367 Exabytes and continue to grow significantly as a result of the increase of connected devices and the capabilities these devices possess.The significant growth in mobile traffic,new network services and applications are pushing carrier network operators to upgrade their systems in order to meet new requirements and increasing customer demands.This imposes challenges on the current cellular network architecture,such as high upgrade costs,complex operation and maintenance,and slow deployment of new innovations and other services.Meanwhile,the simultaneous connection establishment of multiple devices to the core network has also brought load balancing challenges inside the core network.Today's mobile core network has several issues regarding its inherent design,which makes it harder to address the afore-mentioned load balancing challenges without radically changing core network architecture.In addition,the current implementation of mobile core networks is very expensive and difficult to modify.In this dissertation,we are interested in introducing OpenFlow(OF)protocol into the current Long Term Evolution/Evolved Packet Core(LTE/EPC)architecture to achieve dynamic load balancing while improving the programmability of the network.This dissertation begins with introducing Software-Defined Networking(SDN),the current LTE mobile core network system and presents other basic concepts and technologies related to our research as the foundation for our dissertation work.Previous research relevant to our work is also briefly presented.Then,we present SDN-EPC network system architecture-our proposed LTE/EPC network system architecture based on SDN concepts.The architectural model design and implementation is discussed as our main objective of introducing SDN concepts into the mobile core network.In addition,we present details of our own designed dynamic load balancing algorithm that is based on SDN:-the algorithm design and implementation is discussed,and simulation results analyzed.Meanwhile,our overall findings suggest that introducing SDN technologies in core networks improves network programmability and we believe it is a key to defining future mobile networks.We finalize our work by presenting a summarized conclusion and other future perspectives.