SoftMoW

Abstract

The current LTE network architecture is organized into very large regions, each having a core network and a radio access network. The core network contains an Internet edge comprised of packet data network gateways (PGWs). The radio network consists of only base stations. There are minimal interactions among regions other than interference management at the edge. The current architecture has several problems. First, mobile application performance is seriously impacted by the lack of Internet egress points per region. Second, the continued exponential growth of mobile traffic puts tremendous pressure on the scalability of PGWs. Third, the fast growth of signaling traffic known as the signaling storm problem poses a major challenge to the scalability of the control plane. To address these problems, we present SoftMoW, a recursive and reconfigurable cellular WAN architecture that supports seamlessly inter-connected core networks, reconfigurable control plane, and global optimization.