SDWM: Software Defined Wi-Fi Mobility for Smart IoT Carriers

Abstract

More and more companies are advocating for additional unlicensed spectrum in next-generation Wi-Fi to cover the vast increase in internet connected devices. Additional 50 billion devices are projected to be connected by 2020. Wi-Fi is regarded as the “Oxygen for Innovation” that will incorporate new bunches of services in the smart IoT era as of low cost service delivery. This paper introduces a new mobility framework, called SDWM, based on Software Defined Networking (SDN) to extend residential/enterprise indoor real- time services across standard carriers and service providers with Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) in smart cities. Efficient date forwarding mechanism and traffic offload technique are adopted to avoid core network congestion. Indoor services are extended over any type of infrastructure without enforcing small cell setup. Mobility is achieved through SDN overlay network that dynamically establishes virtual path to roaming mobile node’s (MN) home network using a new unique identifier that is forwarded during DHCP IP allocation process. The distributed architecture simplifies the integration to existing infrastructures with unified access to both wireless and wired networks. A physical prototype is created to illustrate how mobile nodes can roam freely across carriers’ wireless hotspots with direct agreements with home networks while ensuring seamless accessibility to indoor services without violating involved entities’ security policies. Experimental results show clear improvements over existing mobility protocols or wireless controllers as of restricting tunnels overheads and VLAN/MPLS headers.