• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.2085-2094
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• 2012

In this paper, we propose a wireless access network virtualization algorithm based on a digital unit (DU)-radio unit (RU) separated network structure in a cellular network with multiple radio access technologies (RATs). The proposed wireless access network virtualization algorithm consists of a baseline access network virtualization, RAT virtualization, and access path migration algorithms. Final wireless access network virtualization is performed by sequentially performing these procedures. Through system-level simulations which assume 3GPP LTE and WiMAX systems, the performance of the proposed wireless access network virtualization is evaluated in terms of system throughput for two scenarios according to asymmetry of network traffic load. Numerical results show that our proposed wireless access network virtualization algorithm achieves significant system throughput gain even in asymmetric traffic load and user distribution situations.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.2150-2162
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• 2012

In accordance with evolution of next-generation mobile Internet, 2G, 3G, 4G, and B4G mobile communication wireless access networks will be co-existed and service providers will be merged as an integrated service provider. In addition, multiple virtual service operators will appear. In order to provide complicated unified-services, in the future Internet, wireless network virtualization where network resource is shared by various service operators is necessary. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate network architectures and virtualization scenarios for wireless access network virtualization where various wireless access technologies are flexibly operated by multiple service providers over next-generation wireless access networks. We expect that the virtualization scenario and network architecture yielded from this study can play a role as a basis for development of wireless access network virtualization algorithms.