Efficient mobility and traffic management for delay tolerant cloud data in 5G networks

The explosive growth of the demand for higher data rates in mobile networks have been mainly driven by the increasing use of cloud based applications by smartphones. This has led the industry to investigate new radio access technologies to be deployed as part of 5G networks, while providing mechanisms to manage user mobility and traffic in a more efficient manner. In this paper, we consider a mobility and traffic management mechanism that proposes a close interaction between the cloud data servers and the radio access network to enable efficient network operation. Such a management mechanism is enabled by utilizing the application-dependent delay tolerance properties of the cloud data, with the delay values conveyed to the radio access network and UE to manage the service requests for the cloud data. The mechanism was evaluated using LTE-Advanced heterogeneous network scenario and 5G dense-urban information society scenario from EU FP7 METIS project, and relative gains in terms of packet delays and throughput values are presented. The results indicate significant gains using the proposed management mechanism as compared to the reference case where no such enhancements are used.