Virtual wireless network mapping: An approach to housing MVNOs on wireless meshes

Virtual network (VN) mapping is a useful tool for mapping VNs to physical mesh networks. This study extends the idea of mapping VNs from the wired world to the wireless domain by showing its potential applications. Since the generic VN mapping problem is NP-Hard, this study shows how the wireless VN mapping problem can be simplified and be used instead as a mechanism for provisioning wireless points of presences (POPs) as additions to conventional cellular voice and data services. Two heuristic algorithms GSA and GDR are proposed for producing a 2-phase solution to the mapping problem, which corresponds to conventional network deployment process. The results obtained from the VN mapping algorithms proposed here can be used for comparison of overall performance achieved by deploying a particular type of physical network. Further, using this setup, the network operator can determine the costs and benefits associated with setting wired or wireless links on the physical network. Performance is determined based on perceived revenue, and substrate utilization.