An architecture for 5G mobile network based on SDN and NFV

The fifth generation (5G) mobile network is expected to support a multitude of new services and applications with very diverse requirements, mainly including higher traffic volume, lower latency, huge number of devices, etc. In order to meet these challenges, 5G should not only improve the link efficiency through exploiting new technologies, but also need a more flexible and scalable architecture for adaption to various scenarios. Therefore, this paper firstly analyzes and concludes the necessary features of 5G architecture based on the demands for future network. Secondly, the 5G architecture is proposed based on the potential technologies, which are Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Through enhancing the programmability of the network fabric, decoupling the network functionalities from hardware, separating the control plane from data plane and centralizing the network intelligence in the network controller, the proposed architecture can improve the network capacity, flexibility and scalability as well as other performance (energy efficiency, cost, etc). Meanwhile, the advantages of the proposed 5G architecture are also discussed in detail. Finally, in order to describe the implementation of proposed architecture clearly, we present an implementation example in LTE ultra dense Heterogeneous Network (HetNet).