The fifth generation (5G) wireless communication networks are being deployed worldwide from 2020 and more capabilities are in the process of being standardized, such as mass connectivity, ultra-reliability, and guaranteed low latency. However, 5G will not meet all requirements of the future in 2030 and beyond, and sixth generation (6G) wireless communication networks are expected to provide global coverage, enhanced spectral/energy/cost efficiency, better intelligence level and security, etc. To meet these requirements, 6G networks will rely on new enabling technologies, i.e., air interface and transmission technologies and novel network architecture, such as waveform design, multiple access, channel coding schemes, multi-antenna technologies, network slicing, cell-free architecture, and cloud/fog/edge computing. Our vision on 6G is that it will have four new paradigm shifts. First, to satisfy the requirement of global coverage, 6G will not be limited to terrestrial communication networks, which will need to be complemented with non-terrestrial networks such as satellite and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication networks, thus achieving a space-air-ground-sea integrated communication network. Second, all spectra will be fully explored to further increase data rates and connection density, including the sub-6 GHz, millimeter wave (mmWave), terahertz (THz), and optical frequency bands. Third, facing the big datasets generated by the use of extremely heterogeneous networks, diverse communication scenarios, large numbers of antennas, wide bandwidths, and new service requirements, 6G networks will enable a new range of smart applications with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data technologies. Fourth, network security will have to be strengthened when developing 6G networks. This article provides a comprehensive survey of recent advances and future trends in these four aspects. Clearly, 6G with additional technical requirements beyond those of 5G will enable faster and further communications to the extent that the boundary between physical and cyber worlds disappears.

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Towards 6G wireless communication networks: vision, enabling technologies, and new paradigm shifts

Network slicing has been identified as the backbone of the rapidly evolving 5G technology. However, as its consolidation and standardization progress, there are no literatures that comprehensively discuss its key principles, enablers, and research challenges. This paper elaborates network slicing from an end-to-end perspective detailing its historical heritage, principal concepts, enabling technologies and solutions as well as the current standardization efforts. In particular, it overviews the diverse use cases and network requirements of network slicing, the pre-slicing era, considering RAN sharing as well as the end-to-end orchestration and management, encompassing the radio access, transport network and the core network. This paper also provides details of specific slicing solutions for each part of the 5G system. Finally, this paper identifies a number of open research challenges and provides recommendations toward potential solutions.

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Network Slicing and Softwarization: A Survey on Principles, Enabling Technologies, and Solutions

The fifth generation (5G) wireless network technology is to be standardized by 2020, where main goals are to improve capacity, reliability, and energy efficiency, while reducing latency and massively increasing connection density. An integral part of 5G is the capability to transmit touch perception type real-time communication empowered by applicable robotics and haptics equipment at the network edge. In this regard, we need drastic changes in network architecture including core and radio access network (RAN) for achieving end-to-end latency on the order of 1 ms. In this paper, we present a detailed survey on the emerging technologies to achieve low latency communications considering three different solution domains: 1) RAN; 2) core network; and 3) caching. We also present a general overview of major 5G cellular network elements such as software defined network, network function virtualization, caching, and mobile edge computing capable of meeting latency and other 5G requirements.

A Survey on Low Latency Towards 5G: RAN, Core Network and Caching Solutions

5G network slicing using SDN and NFV: A survey of taxonomy, architectures and future challenges

Security has become the primary concern in many telecommunications industries today as risks can have high consequences. Especially, as the core and enable technologies will be associated with 5G network, the confidential information will move at all layers in future wireless systems. Several incidents revealed that the hazard encountered by an infected wireless network, not only affects the security and privacy concerns, but also impedes the complex dynamics of the communications ecosystem. Consequently, the complexity and strength of security attacks have increased in the recent past making the detection or prevention of sabotage a global challenge. From the security and privacy perspectives, this paper presents a comprehensive detail on the core and enabling technologies, which are used to build the 5G security model; network softwarization security, PHY (Physical) layer security and 5G privacy concerns, among others. Additionally, the paper includes discussion on security monitoring and management of 5G networks. This paper also evaluates the related security measures and standards of core 5G technologies by resorting to different standardization bodies and provide a brief overview of 5G standardization security forces. Furthermore, the key projects of international significance, in line with the security concerns of 5G and beyond are also presented. Finally, a future directions and open challenges section has included to encourage future research.

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A Survey on Security and Privacy of 5G Technologies: Potential Solutions, Recent Advancements, and Future Directions

The emergence of two new technologies, namely, software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV), have radically changed the development of network functions and the evolution of network architectures. These two technologies bring to mobile operators the promises of reducing costs, enhancing network flexibility and scalability, and shortening the time-to-market of new applications and services. With the advent of SDN and NFV and their offered benefits, the mobile operators are gradually changing the way how they architect their mobile networks to cope with ever-increasing growth of data traffic, massive number of new devices and network accesses, and to pave the way toward the upcoming fifth generation networking. This survey aims at providing a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art research work, which leverages SDN and NFV into the most recent mobile packet core network architecture, evolved packet core. The research work is categorized into smaller groups according to a proposed four-dimensional taxonomy reflecting the: 1) architectural approach, 2) technology adoption, 3) functional implementation, and 4) deployment strategy. Thereafter, the research work is exhaustively compared based on the proposed taxonomy and some added attributes and criteria. Finally, this survey identifies and discusses some major challenges and open issues, such as scalability and reliability, optimal resource scheduling and allocation, management and orchestration, and network sharing and slicing that raise from the taxonomy and comparison tables that need to be further investigated and explored.

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SDN/NFV-Based Mobile Packet Core Network Architectures: A Survey

Software-defined networking (SDN) features the decoupling of the control plane and data plane, a programmable network and virtualization, which enables network infrastructure sharing and the "softwarization" of the network functions. Recently, many research works have tried to redesign the traditional mobile network using two of these concepts in order to deal with the challenges faced by mobile operators, such as the rapid growth of mobile traffic and new services. In this paper, we first provide an overview of SDN, network virtualization, and network function virtualization, and then describe the current LTE mobile network architecture as well as its challenges and issues. By analyzing and categorizing a wide range of the latest research works on SDN and virtualization in LTE mobile networks, we present a general architecture for SDN and virtualization in mobile networks (called SDVMN) and then propose a hierarchical taxonomy based on the different levels of the carrier network. We also present an in-depth analysis about changes related to protocol operation and architecture when adopting SDN and virtualization in mobile networks. In addition, we list specific use cases and applications that benefit from SDVMN. Last but not least, we discuss the open issues and future research directions of SDVMN.

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SDN and Virtualization-Based LTE Mobile Network Architectures: A Comprehensive Survey

Recently, several researchers have proposed adopting software‐defined networking (SDN) concepts for mobile network architectures, particularly for LTE‐evolved packet core (LTE/EPC). Although several new designs have been introduced for architectures based on SDN or its concrete realization, Openflow, few studies have presented in‐depth discussions of real procedures that are relevant to such architectures. To this end, this paper first surveys the current approaches and solutions for adopting SDN/Openflow in LTE/EPC architectures and then introduces a new Openflow‐enabled EPC (OEPC) architecture. This work provides detailed analyses of five procedures that commonly occur in LTE/EPC architectures, and the analyses are further elaborated with the separation of the control and data planes and the support of extended Openflow protocol. The analysis shows that the data management of these procedures is simpler relative to traditional LTE/EPC. In addition, in order to prove that efficient data management takes place for these procedures relative to a traditional LTE/EPC architecture, the numbers of signalling messages that are processed by control entities (i.e., the MME and the controller) are taken into account as a metric to evaluate the OEPC architecture. Moreover, the results of a numerical evaluation also show the benefits of this proposal relative to another Openflow‐based LTE/EPC architecture.

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Proposal and evaluation of SDN‐based mobile packet core networks

The mobile network plays an important role in the evolution of humanity and society. However, due to the increase of users as well as of mobile applications, the current mobile network architecture faces many challenges. In this paper we describe V-Core, a new architecture for the mobile packet core network which is based on Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization. Then, we introduce a MobileVisor which is a machine to slice the above mobile packet core network into different control platforms according to either different mobile operators or different technologies (e.g. 3G or 4G). With our architecture, the mobile network operators can reduce their costs for deployment and operation as well as use network resources efficiently.

Van-Giang Nguyen

Papers

SDN/NFV-Based Mobile Packet Core Network Architectures: A Survey

SDN and Virtualization-Based LTE Mobile Network Architectures: A Comprehensive Survey

Proposal and evaluation of SDN‐based mobile packet core networks

Slicing the next mobile packet core network

Modeling and experimenting combined smart sleep and power scaling algorithms in energy-aware data center networks