• 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.