Future Mobile Communications - LTE Optimization and Mobile Network Virtualization

This paper presents the concepts of network virtualization, focusing specifically on wireless virtualization of the LTE mobile communication system. A novel wireless virtualization framework is proposed and developed, which allows mobile network operators to share the wireless spectrum, as well as, the infrastructure (i.e., hardwares equipment). The framework targets the concepts of wireless virtulization applied within the 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) system. LTE represents one of the new mobile communication systems that is just entering the market. Therefore, LTE was chosen as a case study to demonstrate the proposed wireless virtualization framework. The framework is implemented in a LTE network simulator and analyzed, highlighting the many advantages and potential gain that the virtualization process can achieve. Within this work two potential gain scenarios that can result from using network virtualization in LTE systems are studied and analyzed: Multiplexing gain coming from spectrum sharing, and multi-user diversity gain.