Software defined networking for 5G

5G networks will have several advanced features. Starting from the physical layer to all the way to the upper layers, there will be several new technologies and techniques. 5G will have gigantic data rates and many different data formats. In addition the devices and platforms for 5G will be very diverse and heterogeneous. There will be massive carrier aggregation and dynamic bandwidth provisioning. Optical integration with the wireless at both the fronthaul and backhaul looks eminent. Elastic optical networking will be used at the core to optimize the resource allocations. Massive MIMO and digital beam-forming techniques too need a lot of computing in 5G. All these applications and services cannot be handled without distributed software management which can be controlled from a few centralized locations in the network. Overall, the network and its elements have to be software defined in order to provide agile and flexible services. In this article, we show the needs and ways for software defined networking in 5G.