دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی نرم افزارسازی و مجازی سازی در شبکه های موبایلی نسل پنجم (5G) - الزویر 2018

Abstract

The promise behind the effective deployment of 5G networks is an architecture able to provide flexibility, reconfigurability and programmability in order to support, with fine granularity, a wide and heterogeneous set of 5G use cases. This dictates a radical change in the design of mobile systems which, being usually based on the use of static deployment of vendor equipment characterized by monolithic functionality deployed at specific network locations, fail in providing the above mentioned features. By decoupling network functionalities from the underlying hardware, softwarization and virtualization are two disruptive paradigms considered to be at the basis of the design process of 5G networks. This paper analyses and summarizes the role of these two paradigms in enhancing the network architecture and functionalities of mobile systems. With this aim, we analyze several 5G application scenarios in order to derive and classify the requirements to be taken into account in the design process of 5G network. We provide an overview on the recent advances by standardization bodies in considering the role of softwarization and virtualization in the next-to-come mobile systems. We also survey the proposals in literature by underlining the recent proposals exploiting softwarization and virtualization for the network design and functionality implementation of 5G networks. Finally, we conclude the paper by suggesting a set of research challenges to be investigated.

CONCLUSION

The need for flexibility, reconfigurability and customization in 5G mobile networks is pushing vendors and operators to exploit novel paradigms for network deployment. In this direction, softwarization and virtualization are two candidates to play a key role in the design of 5G systems, as they allow to decouple network functionalities from the underlying hardware with consequent benefits in terms of easier network management and upgrade. This paper aimed to discuss softwarization and virtualization as enablers of 5G architecture deployment. We presented an overview of the evolution of mobile networks from 2G to 4G, highlighting the design drivers behind each generation of the architecture and the novelties that each generation introduced compared to the previous ones. This allowed to obtain a summary of functionalities and entities currently implemented and deployed in mobile systems. We thus illustrated the 5G ecosystem by providing a detailed discussion of its application scenarios. We highlighted the requirements that 5G use cases push on the network architecture and, accordingly, we analysed the limitations of 4G systems in fulfilling such requirements. This allowed to define a set of features to be considered in the design of 5G system architecture, and to define the role of softwarization and virtualization in implementing such features. We considered the recent advances by 3GPP looking at introducing softwarization and virtualization in the standardization of 5G network architecture. We provide a comprehensive overview of the state of the art by surveying the recent proposals in literature focusing on the exploitation of softwarization and virtualization for the implementation of network entities and functionalities of 5G systems. Moreover, we provided a discussion on the lessons learned according to the surveyed literature. Finally, we highlighted the future steps to be considered by the research community to bring into reality a softwarized and virtualized 5G network architecture.