ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we propose a software-defined networking (SDN)-based unified wireless network architecture, which enables distributed mobility management. The proposed approach envisions a virtualized control plane, placed in the cloud. The user plane is free of typical tunneling mechanisms and utilizes layer 2 and layer 3 traffic forwarding. In the first part, our work describes the network architecture for cellular users. We discuss about traffic flow in both upstream and downstream directions, different mobility scenarios, and an efficient address assignment scheme. We then use an analytical model to estimate the signaling overhead in evolved packet core (EPC), and an OpenFlow-based test bed to demonstrate the handover performance. The architecture is further extended to support WLAN users in fixed networks, with a description of the signaling schemes required in a number of mobility events.
