SDN and NFV Dynamic Operation of LTE EPC Gateways for Time-Varying Traffic Patterns

The introduction of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) to mobile networks allows operators to control and dimension their network resources with higher granularity and on a more fine-grained time scale. This dynamic operation allows operators to save costs reacting to the rapid growth of traffic and user demands. In this paper, we model and analyze a realization of the mobile core network as virtualized software instances running in datacenters (DC) and SDN transport network elements (NE), with respect to time-varying traffic demands. It is our objective to determine the datacenters placement that achieves the minimum transport network load considering time-varying traffic and under a data-plane delay budget. A second objective is to achieve power savings considering the variation of traffic over time using the available datacenter resources or by acquiring additional resources.