Virtualized MME Design for IoT Support in 5G Systems.

Area of Science:

• Telecommunications Engineering
• Computer Networking
• Internet of Things (IoT)

Background:

• Cellular systems are increasingly considered for supporting the Internet of Things (IoT).
• The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) introduced procedures for cellular IoT, involving control plane signaling for device data.
• Massive IoT device transmissions can overload network control plane entities, particularly the Mobility Management Entity (MME).

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose Network Function Virtualization (NFV) based Mobility Management Entity (MME) designs for enhanced cellular Internet of Things (IoT) support.
• To reduce the processing load and associated costs on MME entities.
• To mitigate interference between different traffic classes, ensuring Quality of Service (QoS) for delay-sensitive applications.

Main Methods:

• Proposed two NFV-based MME designs: one with partial resource separation and another with traffic shaping.
• Considered three traffic classes: Mobile Broadband (MBB), low latency Machine to Machine (lM2M), and delay-tolerant M2M communications.
• Evaluated the designs based on processing resource reduction and inter-class impact mitigation.

Main Results:

• The proposed NFV-based MME designs effectively reduce required processing resources, leading to cost savings.
• Both designs demonstrated a reduced impact between different traffic classes.
• The designs facilitate compliance with the stringent delay requirements for MBB and lM2M communications.

Conclusions:

• NFV-based MME designs offer a viable solution for efficiently supporting massive IoT deployments within cellular networks.
• Resource separation and traffic shaping are effective strategies for managing diverse traffic demands and ensuring network performance.
• The proposed approaches enhance network scalability and cost-efficiency for future IoT services.