FME: A Flexible Management Entity for virtualizing LTE Evolved Packet Core

The 4G Evolved Packet Core (EPC) is the pillar of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile networks. Inspired by the current trend of designing distributed and more autonomous systems, we can notice that the complexity of the existing EPC seriously limits this possibility. We principally consider a reshaping of cellular networks in order to move towards virtual-distributed architectures allowing dynamic deployments of commercial/non-commercial, temporary or local networks. In this paper, we present Flexible Management Entity (FME), a distributed entity which leverages on virtualized EPC functionalities in 4G-LTE cellular systems. We highlight several conceptual and engineering trade-offs in realizing such a system.We also analyze the behavior and benefits of FME in various simulation settings that expose the dynamic deployment scenarios for 4G networks.