SDN-based control and operation of the IP Ran in 4G and LTE environments

Chen, Huaimo and Zhao, Quintin and King, Daniel (2013) SDN-based control and operation of the IP Ran in 4G and LTE environments. In: MPLS SDN 2013 : ISOCORE. UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

The adoption of IP within the 3G Radio Access Network (RAN) to facilitate the enormous increase in mobile data and reduce the operational costs of operating such networks has been highly effective. According to Infonetics Research [1], the ratio of Mobile Broadband (MBB) subscribers to total mobile subscribers is expected to grow from 15% in 2011 to nearly 40% in 2016. However it is well-known that further evolution and development is needed, to deliver the myriad of technical requirements to support MBB across 4G and LTE networks. These technical requirements for MBB include: greater virtualization, effective management of large AS internal topologies, reduce internal AS convergence times, supporting large numbers of VPNs with point-to-multipoint and multipoint-to-multipoint service connectivity, and carrier grade reliability. In addition, the ability to deploy and manage services using a centralized traffic engineering control system within the 4G and LTE IP RAN for MBB services would be highly advantageous. Most of these requirements are addressed in the technologies to be presented. The technologies highlighted within this presentation include the Topology-Transparent Zone (TTZ) [2] which may be deployed for network virtualization, resolving internal AS scalability and convergence, Multi-topology MPLS [3] procedures and protocol extensions to support separation of traffic across low latency (for mobile voice) and high capacity (for mobile data) links, and the use of the SDN Application-based Network Operations (ABNO) [4] architecture to provide underlying transport (Ethernet and optical) path protection. ABNO provides the mechanisms to request and setup transport protection services, using well-defined standards based path computation, provisioning and reservation protocols and procedures. This presentation will demonstrate how the combination of existing and new standards-based interoperable technologies will provide an architecture and key features to dramatically change the way IP RANs will be designed, deployed and operated for 4G and LTE environments. This presentation belongs to the following categories: SDN IP/MPLS Mobile / 4G & LTE Network Virtualization Centralized Traffic Engineering References [1] Infonetics Research, “Mobile broadband demand will push mobile services to $976 billion by 2016; SMS, voice persevere”, July 2012. [2] OSPF Topology-Transparent Zone (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-chen-ospf-ttz), February 2013. [3] Extensions for Multi Topology Routing (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-mpls-ldp-multi-topology), January, 2013. [4] A PCE-based Architecture for Application-based Network Operations (ABNO) (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-farrkingel-pce-abno-architecture), February 2013.