Mobility management in 5G heterogeneous networks

In recent years, mobile data traffic has increased exponentially as a result of widespread popularity and uptake of portable devices, such as smartphones, tablets and laptops. This growth has placed enormous stress on network service providers who are committed to offering the best quality of service to consumer groups. Consequently, telecommunication engineers are investigating innovative solutions to accommodate the additional load offered by growing numbers of mobile users. The fifth generation (5G) of wireless communication standard is expected to provide numerous innovative solutions to meet the growing demand of consumer groups. Accordingly the ultimate goal is to achieve several key technological milestones including up to 1000 times higher wireless area capacity and a significant cut in power consumption. Massive deployment of small cells is likely to be a key innovation in 5G, which enables frequent frequency reuse and higher data rates. Small cells, however, present a major challenge for nodes moving at vehicular speeds. This is because the smaller coverage areas of small cells result in frequent handover, which leads to lower throughput and longer delay. In this thesis, a new mobility management technique is introduced that reduces the number of handovers in a 5G heterogeneous network. This research also investigates techniques to accommodate low latency applications in nodes moving at vehicular speeds

Closed-loop Orchestration for Cloud-native Mobile IPv6

With the advent of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN), every network service type faces significant challenges induced by novel requirements. Mobile IPv6, the well-known IETF standard for network-level mobility management, is not an exemption. Cloud-native Mobile IPv6 has acquired several new capabilities due to the technological advancements of NFV/SDN evolution. This paper presents how automatic failover and scaling can be envisioned in the context of cloud-native Mobile IPv6 with closed-loop orchestration on the top of the Open Network Automation Platform. Numerical results are also presented to indicate the usefulness of the new operational features (failover, scaling) driven by the cloud-native approach and highlight the advantages of network automation in virtualized and softwarized environments