SDN-based Mobility Management in a Dense Small Cells scenario

Abstract

The proposed SDN-based Mobility Management solution uses OpenFlow 1.3 as Southbound API and RYU as Network Controller. The Network Controller it is responsible to store the users’ mobility sessions and to configure properly the anchors. By the access network’s point of view, any OpenFlow-enabled node can play the role of anchor. Unlike classical protocol such as GPT and PMIPv6, our solution does not involve any tunnelling mechanism. This can be done by having an IP-based access network where the internal routing is independently driven by MPLS or 802.1Q VLANs. Our implementation deals only the case where the whole access network is Ethernet-based. The internal routing is thus performed using 802.1Q VLANs. As a use case to show the benefits of our SDN-based solution, the MN run multiple flows and a different anchor is selected for each flow. The anchor selection is based on the characteristics of the flows. Furthermore, we cover the use case of network reconfiguration, namely the case when a branch of the network is switched-off for energy saving purpose. In case of anchors placed in the switched-off branch, that have been already assigned and are still active, we show the anchor reassignment mechanism where new anchors are selected in the active branch of the network.