An integrated architecture for software defined and virtualized radio access networks with fog computing

Today, billions of communication devices connecting to wireless networks impose serious challenges in network deployment, management, and data processing. Amongst all emerging technologies tackling these challenges, software defined networks (SDNs) decouple control plane from data plane to provide network programmability and virtualization, which can share network and radio resources among various applications. On the other hand, fog computing offloads computing services from cloud to the edge of networks, offering real time data services to nearby data terminals. In this paper, we present an integrated architecture for software defined and virtualized radio access networks with fog computing. We propose a design of software-as-a-service (SaaS) called OpenPipe, which enables network level virtualizaiton. To integrate SDNs and network virtualization with fog computing, we adopt a hybrid control model with two hierarchical control levels, where a SDN controller forms the higher level, and local controllers comprise the lower level. Typical user cases of the proposed network architecture are validated through laboratory demonstrations.