SDN-Sim: Integrating a System-Level Simulator with a Software Defined Network

With the introduction of diverse technology paradigms in next-generation cellular and vehicular networks, design and structural complexity are skyrocketing. The beyond-5G use cases such as mobile broadband, 5G-V2X, and UAV communications require support for ultra-low latency and high throughput and reliability with limited operational complexity and cost. These use cases are being explored in 3GPP Releases 16 and 17. To facilitate end-to-end performance evaluation for these applications, we propose SDN-Sim -- an integration of a system-level simulator (SLS) with a software defined network (SDN) infrastructure. While the SLS models the communication channel and evaluates system performance on the physical and data link layers, the SDN performs network and application tasks including routing, load balancing, and so on. The proposed architecture replicates the SLS-defined topology into an SDN emulator for offloading control operations. It uses link and node information calculated by the SLS to compute routes in SDN and feeds the results back to the SLS. Along with the architecture, data modeling, and processing, replication and route calculation frameworks are proposed.