Software Defined Networking to Improve Mobility Management Performance

In mobile networks, efficient IP mobility management is a crucial issue for the mobile users changing their mobility anchor points during handover. In this regard several mobility management methods have been proposed. However, those are insufficient for the future mobile Internet in terms of scalability and resource utilization as they mostly follow the centralized management approach owning several inherent restrictions. In this research a novel mobility management approach relying on the OpenFlow-based SDN architecture is proposed. Such an approach manages mobility in a scalable fashion while optimally utilizing the available resources. This approach is also appropriate for the cloud-based Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, in order to (i) keeping sessions active during handover, and (ii) providing traffic redirection when a virtual machine (e.g., a mobility anchor point), migrates from one virtualization platform to another, while keeping the on-going sessions running, as well. This research is currently in its initial phase and is planned to eventuate as a Ph.D. thesis at the end of a four year period.