Opportunistic SDN-controlled wireless mesh network for mobile traffic offloading

2017 International Conference on Selected Topics in Mobile and Wireless Networking, MoWNeT 2017 ; Conference Date: 17 May 2017 Through 19 May 2017; Conference Code:130902 ; International audience ; The transit of cellular communications over WiFi networks is expected to account for 60% of mobile traffic in 2019. Consequently, mobile traffic management and advanced offloading have become hot topics that will enable operators to optimize resources, and improve QoS/QoE for high bandwidth mobile multimedia applications and services. On the other hand, concepts such as Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), Software Defined Network (SDN) and open protocols such as OpenFlow (OF) become the key enablers for the next generation of mobile networks. In this context, the objective of this paper is to investigate the opportunity of offloading the 3GPP Radio Access Network (RAN) traffic through WiFi access networks by the use of Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) that would be formed by the mobile phones themselves. This use case will demonstrate establishment and control of an IP wireless mesh network by the use of NFV controller (through the SDN control plane). We validated our work using NEON, an SDN solution developed by CEA LIST that supports fast devices configuration and services deployment in dynamic and unconfigured infrastructures contexts.