Policy-Based Management for Green Mobile Networks Through Software-Defined Networking

• Published in: Mobile networks and applications 2019-04, Vol.24 (2), p.657-666
• Main Authors: Huertas Celdrán, Alberto, Gil Pérez, Manuel, García Clemente, Félix J., Martínez Pérez, Gregorio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communications Engineering; Communications traffic; Computer Communication Networks; Electrical Engineering; Energy conservation; Energy consumption; Energy management; Energy policy; Engineering; Infrastructure; IT in Business; Networks; Run time (computers); Software-defined networking; Switching theory; Wireless networks
• ISSN: 1383-469X; 1572-8153
• DOI: 10.1007/s11036-016-0783-8

Traditional networks are characterized by wasting considerable amount of energy that could be reduced drastically. The challenge of energy saving should be managed efficiently, where the mobility of users and services are nominated to play a significant role as well as the use of the Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm. Besides the network management supported by the SDN paradigm, we highlight the management of the network infrastructure at run-time, considering aspects like the energy efficiency. In this paper, we present an energy-aware and policy-based system oriented to the SDN paradigm, which allows managing the network infrastructure dynamically at run-time and on demand through policies. With these policies, any network using our solution will be able to reduce energy consumption by switching on/off its resources when they are inefficient, and creating virtualized network resources like proxies to reduce the network traffic. The experiments conducted demonstrate how the energy consumption is reduced when enforcing the proposed policies, considering aspects such as the number of base stations, their cell sizes, and the number of active devices in a given time, among other.