University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.As the mobile networks evolve towards 5G, the infrastructure network will have the capability to handle operational complexities and support unforeseen services that are diverse and likely to grow with demand for applications that include M2M (machine-to-machine) modules, video surveillance, smart cities, mobile industrial automation, and vehicle connectivity \cite{Hakiri2015}. These applications include requirements that are divergent and will trigger mobile network performance and capabilities requirements at their extremity with more scalability and flexibility to be included. SDN technology using cloud computing as a carrier will play a critical and enabling role in designing the 5G wireless networks for Quality of Experience (QoE), service performance and network resilience as parameters to give greater freedom for balanced operations in these networks.
In this thesis, an investigation was carried out with the Software-Defined Network (SDN) controllers architecture for addressing many of IP Mobility issues primarily focusing on handover optimisation case studies. It is demonstrated through handover network simulations that SDN can handle next-generation mobility handover situations with the help of proper SDN interfacing, control layout and control logic algorithms. The experiments conducted predominantly benefitted from the OpenFlow protocol based SDN control and data forwarding plane as a proof of concept for deploying into real-world devices for mobile network management. The simulations showed a definite and considerable performance gain when using SDN based solution compared to the traditional Mobile IP for mobility management from the perspective of the user equipment.
To accomplish a realistic simulation goal, careful consideration was given while selecting a network emulation platform which is flexible and can be modified and extended easily by external simulation processing modules. Mininet-WiFi emulator was selected and by synthesising SDN architecture a number of functionalities were implemented for the emulator which allowed designing realistic mobile network mobility use case scenarios and also scenarios pertaining to 5G networks applications for the network simulations. All the simulations carried out were extensively substantiated by the mobile network and SDN literature studies and reviews which helped define simulation parameters appropriately
