SoftRAN: software defined radio access network

Authors:
Aditya Gudipati;Daniel Perry;Li Erran Li;Sachin Katti
Affiliations:
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA;Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA;Bell Labs, New Providence, NJ, USA;Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the second ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Hot topics in software defined networking
Year:
2013

Citing 5
Cited 1

Ethane: taking control of the enterprise

Proceedings of the 2007 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications
Blueprint for introducing innovation into wireless mobile networks

Proceedings of the second ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Virtualized infrastructure systems and architectures
OpenRadio: a programmable wireless dataplane

Proceedings of the first workshop on Hot topics in software defined networks
CloudIQ: a framework for processing base stations in a data center

Proceedings of the 18th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking
Toward Software-Defined Cellular Networks

EWSDN '12 Proceedings of the 2012 European Workshop on Software Defined Networking

SoftCell: scalable and flexible cellular core network architecture

Proceedings of the ninth ACM conference on Emerging networking experiments and technologies

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

An important piece of the cellular network infrastructure is the radio access network (RAN) that provides wide-area wireless connectivity to mobile devices. The fundamental problem the RAN solves is figuring out how best to use and manage limited spectrum to achieve this connectivity. In a dense wireless deployment with mobile nodes and limited spectrum, it becomes a difficult task to allocate radio resources, implement handovers, manage interference, balance load between cells, etc. We argue that LTE's current distributed control plane is suboptimal in achieving the above objective. We propose SoftRAN, a fundamental rethink of the radio access layer. SoftRAN is a software defined centralized control plane for radio access networks that abstracts all base stations in a local geographical area as a virtual big-base station comprised of a central controller and radio elements (individual physical base stations). In defining such an architecture, we create a framework through which a local geographical network can effectively perform load balancing and interference management, as well as maximize throughput, global utility, or any other objective.