Enhancing Mobile Networks with Software Defined Networking and Cloud Computing

In the past decade, mobile devices and applications have experienced an explosive growth, and users are expecting higher data rates and better quality services every year. In this paper, we propose several ideas to increase wireless network functionality and capacity using software-defined networking and cloud computing. Connections in mobile networks typically have to pass through a required set of middleboxes. The complex routing is one of the major impetus for the Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm. The SDN paradigm enables flexible policy-aware routing in next generation mobile networks. In this paper, we consider both offline planning and online routing problems for mobile networks in SDN framework. The offline planning problem is one where aggregate demands are specified and the objective is to determine whether there is enough capacity in the network to handle the demands. We develop a fast FPTAS for the problem based on segmentation and lazy dual update. In the online routing problem, connections requests are given one at a time (as in a real mobile system) and the objective is to steer the flows to maximize the total amount of traffic accepted over time. We develop a log-competitive algorithm based on time-dependent duals.