Comparative study of QoS Measures in LTE Networks based on Software Defined Networking

As an emerging concept in networking, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has significantly streamlined network management by utilizing a programmable control panel, compared to traditional network architectures. Due to its prospective benefits in enhancing network performance, this concept has been of much interest to mobile network operators. The combination of SDN and LTE (Long-Term Evolution) networks has been studied by the research community in the past decade. SDN-based functionality, implemented in the EPC (Evolved Packet Core) core of the LTE network, has proven an enhanced Quality of Service (QoS), which is suitable for the successful implementation of real-time multimedia applications in LTE networks. In this article, we investigate some QoS measures in an SDN-based LTE network using both TCP and UDP protocols, and compare with two topologies: a non-SDN and a mesh. Simulation results obtained using Mininet show that TCP demonstrates better performance compared to UDP in terms of delay, jitter and packet loss rate. Furthermore, comparison of results between ONOS and Floodlight controllers show that ONOS performs better than Floodlight in the aforementioned measures.