Virtual MAC concept and its protocol design in virtualised heterogeneous wireless network. Issue 1 (1st January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fan, Bo; Tian, Hui; Zhang, Yuexia; Zhang, Yuan
• Is Part Of: IET communications. Volume 11:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 53
• Page End: 60
• Publication Date: 2017-01-01
• Subjects: mobility management (mobile radio) -- radio access networks -- virtualisation -- access protocols; virtual MAC -- virtualised heterogeneous wireless network -- radio access technology -- physical infrastructure sharing -- virtual medium access control -- resource offloading -- resource allocation -- mobility management -- handover protocols -- grey relational analysis -- matching theory; Telecommunication systems -- Periodicals; Speech processing systems -- Periodicals; 621.38205
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-com.2016.0293
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-8628

Abstract

Abstract : As a prevailing concept in 5G, virtualisation provides efficient coordination among multiple radio access technologies (RATs) and enables multiple service providers to share different RATs' physical infrastructures. This study proposes a generic framework for virtualising heterogeneous networks with different RATs. A novel virtual medium access control concept is introduced to realise resource offloading (allocation) and mobility management of the framework. The offloading and handover protocols are designed in detail. A novel resource offloading strategy is devised: First, to model the fact that different RATs possess different adaptability to different services, an 'adaptability ratio' concept is introduced and calculated using grey relational analysis. After that, a matching theory based framework is proposed to formulate the resource offloading problem and a 'deferred acceptance' algorithm is introduced to solve it. Through simulation, it is proved that the proposed protocols can efficiently reduce the service interruptions and improve the resource usage.