Service Differentiation in Software Defined Virtual Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Wireless network virtualization is seen as a key component for future 5G networks. Virtualization enables flexible, on demand, elastic network provisioning. We deem software defined networking (SDN) as a key enabling technology for virtualizing future wireless networks. In this regard, we introduce HetNet cloud, a software- defined cloud infrastructure for heterogeneous virtual wireless networks. As a use case, we implement two virtual network slices and study service differentiation in a HetNet wireless environment. We implement the emulation scenario in Mininet platform using high-level programming abstract of Pyretic north bound API. Emulation results show that, in the HetNet cloud model, virtual wireless networks are able to achieve the quality of service (QoS) requirement of carrier networks while ensuring efficient resource utilization through sharing a common subset of network infrastructure.