A hybrid SDN/NFV architecture for future LTE networks

In the LTE EPC, many network entities and interfaces have to be maintained and updated regularly. Moreover, to accommodate more users, new hardware must be integrated, although rarely used. To address these challenges, the EPC can be moved to the cloud using two modern technologies: SDN and NFV. In this paper, we study the impact of integrating these novel technologies on LTE networks. We propose a hybrid approach for selecting whether to apply NFV or SDN on each gateway at a given time while minimizing the network load taking into consideration key network parameters such as the number of active datacenters, the deployment city population, the intensity at a given time, the QoS class identifier (QCI), and the delay budget. We formulate the SDN decomposition/NFV virtualization selection as an optimization problem where the objective is to minimize the network load subject to a set of constraints. Our results show that our proposed solution is more responsive to the dynamic state of the network such that for a given gateway, at a certain time slot, an SDN decomposition might be the optimal choice; while at another time slot with a different network state, the NFV architecture might be more suitable.