Section: New Results

Software-Defined Networking Enabled Capacity Sharing in User Centric Networks

Contributors: Bruno Astuto Arouche Nunes and Thierry Turletti.

We proposed to use SDN to deploy capacity sharing mechanisms in the context of User Centric Networking (UCN). We consider user-centric networks as a way of considerably mitigating the problem of sharing limited network capacity and resources efficiently and in a fairly manner. UCNs are self-organizing networks where the end user plays an active role in delivering networking functions such as providing Internet access to other users. We propose to leverage the SDN paradigm to enable cooperation between wireless nodes and to provide capacity sharing services in UCNs. Our proposed approach allows coverage of existing network infrastructure (e.g., WiFi or 3GPP) to be extended to other end users or ad hoc networks that would otherwise not be able to have access to network connectivity and services. Moreover, it takes into account current network load and conditions, and QoS requirements of applications. This work has been published in a special issue of Communications Magazine [14] .