Virtualized Wireless SDNs: Modelling Delay Through the Use of Stochastic Network Calculus

Software-defined networks (SDN) have attracted much attention recently because of their flexibility in terms of network management. Increasingly, SDN is being introduced into wireless networks to form wireless SDN. One enabling technology for wireless SDN is network virtualization, which logically divides one wireless network element, such as a base station, into multiple slices, and each slice serving as a standalone virtual BS. In this way, one physical mobile wireless network can be partitioned into multiple virtual networks in a software-defined manner. Wireless virtual networks comprising virtual base stations also need to provide QoS to mobile end-user services in the same context as their physical hosting networks. One key QoS parameter is delay. This paper presents a delay model for software-defined wireless virtual networks. Network calculus is used in the modelling. In particular, stochastic network calculus, which describes more realistic models than deterministic network calculus, is used. The model enables theoretical investigation of wireless SDN, which is largely dominated by either algorithms or prototype implementations.