A Scalable SDN-EPC Architecture Based on OpenFlow-Enabled Switches to Support Inter-domain Handover

The exponential increase of data consumption in mobile networks is putting a lot of strain in the core network part, resulting in more signaling overhead. The need for a flexible and scalable new core network is eminent. In this paper, we propose to leverage the concept of Software-Defined Networking into the LTE core network to produce a flat and efficient new architecture for mobile networks. The proposed architecture uses OpenFlow (OF) enabled switches as the main forwarding nodes, and centralizes all the control-plane functions in OF-Controllers. The OF-Controllers divide the architecture into "Controller-domains" making it more scalable. Furthermore, we propose new handover procedures for the architecture including the inter-domain handover. We evaluate and compare the SDN-EPC architecture with the 3GPP-EPC architecture based on calculated signaling cost overhead. Preliminary results show that the proposed architecture is able to significantly reduce the control-overhead inside the core network.