Big-data-enabled software-defined cellular network management

Abstract

With the development of big data collection and analysis technologies, the abundant mobile network information and traffic data provide opportunities for researchers to analyze and understand mobile networks better. However, the existing cellular network architecture do not facilitate the deployment of big mobile data analysis in practical networks. In order to use these data for network management, in this paper, we propose a new software-defined cellular network (SDCN) architecture, namely Big-Data-Enabled Architecture (BDEA), which can support big mobile data analysis and storage for efficient cellular network resource allocation. Based on BDEA, we also propose a virtuous network management cycle of data collection, data analysis and network deployment, which can increase the efficiency of network improvement and feedback. Several application cases of network resource allocation in BDEA are discussed to illustrate how big mobile data analysis can benefit network optimization. © 2016 IEEE.