Improved Performance of 5G Based Software Defined Networks

Abstract

With the growth of processed data for wireless networks and the establishment of new applications and services, mobile operators keep searching for solutions to deal with the issues raised by nextgeneration networks (NGN). The fifth generation (5G) mobile networks, for example, should enhance their performance without consuming a lot of energy. For these reasons, software-defined networks (SDN) appear to be the promising technology that will make achieving the architectural agility required for the upcoming 5G mobile networks easier. SDN is a clever solution for providing innovation and enforcing the primary drivers in 5G mobile networks, such as flexibility, dependability, service-oriented management, and cost reduction through the control and management of the 5G core network. In this paper, the integration of SDN and multiple controllers with the 5G core network is investigated to determine how these two technologies can affect mobile IP network performance. An energy model suitable for the proposed network architecture has been developed. A widely used Diamond network is being considered for the core network. Open-Flow controllers were used to improve the routing performance by considering load balancing of IP traffic. According to such a model, reduced energy consumption is experienced with SDN. The addition of an SDN controller results in a 11% reduction in consumed energy. The results also show that the use of SDN and multi-controller with NGN can improve the performance further. Using SDN reduced the average delay of the network by 14%. A great reduction in packet error rate (PER) is also achieved when SDN is used.

Keywords

• 5G
• NGN
• SDN
• energy consumption
• throughput
• packet error rate