Software Defined Wireless Network Architecture for the Next Generation Mobile Communication: Proposal and Initial Prototype

—In this paper, we propose a network architecture and a methodology to implement a network simulator and a system prototype for the software defined wireless networks with the reprogrammable capability brought by a SDWN controller. The software defined wireless network architecture oriented for the 5G network is defined with a multi-tiered cloud controller and the Openflow interface. The implementation architecture of system prototype for the software defined wireless network is based on Openflow. Finally, we evaluate and implement some new features and scenarios as applications and services with the Floodlight controller. The new features and scenarios include the cloud radio access/handover, the radio topology discovery, the extended location monitoring and the energy management. The experiments results show us that the proposed network architecture and the implementation methodology works well in this prototype.