Virtual network functions placement system for 5G mobile network architecture

Abstract

The mobile telecommunications market is experiencing new trends taking advantage of network virtualisation and cloud computing techniques. This article advances one of the most crucial challenges which are the placement of virtual network functions over the cloud. In this vein, we propose a virtual network functions placement system which is designed to have the maximum level of flexibility for meeting the operators’ preferences and adjusting to the users’ behaviour. The system finds a fair solution respecting the constraints conforming to the 3GPP standards which are minimising serving gateways relocations cost and the cost of the path between packet data network gateways and eNodeB base stations. Furthermore, the system aims at reducing the incurred cost of virtual machines. The proposed approach to implement the system solver is constraint programming and is compared to Boolean satisfiability, and game theory approaches. The proposed system solver is evaluated through computer simulations, and encouraging results are obtained.