SPECIAL SECTION ON RECENT ADVANCES IN SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING FOR 5G NETWORKS

Date of current version January 13, 2016.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2514898

EDITORIAL

IEEE ACCESS SPECIAL SECTION EDITORIAL:RECENT ADVANCES IN SOFTWARE DEFINEDNETWORKING FOR 5G NETWORKS

The demand for flexible network management has beengrowing significantly over the last several decades, whichcomes with a series of other related demands in networkvirtualization, stringent security, tenant isolation in cloud,and high performance and reliability for broadband access.To meet these demands from both users and enterprises,numerous networking protocols had been designed anddeveloped. However, these protocols were usually definedindependently targeting various specific problems usingdifferent systems and sub-systems, without a holisticapproach. On the other hand, cloud computing brings manychallenges to traditional networking, from naming andaddressing to the traditional routing. In addition, companiesseek to usemore standard and vendor-independent equipmentto reduce the Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and OperationalExpenditure (OPEX).

SoftwareDefinedNetworking (SDN) has attracted increas-ing attention from both industry and academia since it alsobrings potential benefits in terms of network management,new network function deployment, network architectureevolvement, and so on. Such benefits could be invaluable formany different networking environments including datacen-ter networks, wireless networks, broadband access networks,campus networks, and those experimental environments.In fact, a large number of successful SDN applications havealready been developed, for example, those applications forinter-datacenter traffic engineering with high link utilization,flexible multi-tenant virtualization with low overhead, andsoftware-defined radio access with effective load balancingand interference management. With attractive features andpotential advantages, SDN is gaining momentum in the net-working industry and research communities for the develop-ment of the fifth generation (5G)wireless networks during thelast several years. However, SDN for 5G networks also comeswith many challenges and technical issues that still need to beaddressed before wide deployment.

By bringing together academic and industrial researchersto identify and discuss technical challenges and recentadvances related to SDN for 5G networks, this SpecialSection aims to attract attention from both academia

and industry in developing advanced and innovativeSDN methods and techniques for 5G networks. In total wehave received 13 original submissions, out of which 5 regularpapers plus 1 invited paper were accepted for publication aftera rigorous peer reviewing process. We regret that we were notable to accept other good papers due to the length limit of thisSpecial Section.

The invited paper titled ‘‘Spatial domain management andmassive MIMO coordination in 5G SDN’’ by S. Sun et al.explores the probability of utilizing SDN technology toform a centralized architecture of control plane, in which alightweight channel state information acquisition basednull-space precoding scheme is proposed for the implemen-tation. Numerical simulation results justify that the pro-posed centralized architecture can significantly improve thethroughput of intended users in small cells, while oppressingthe impact on neighboring users.

The SDN implementations are gaining momentum, butits control plane is still suffering from scalability andperformance issues for a very large 5G network. In thework by A. Aissioi et al. (Towards elastic distributedSDN/NFV controller for 5G mobile cloud managementsystems), an elastic distributed SDN controller tailored formobile cloud computing and follow-me cloud (FMC)-basedsystems is proposed, in which the building blocks of thecontrol plane framework are presented. The results obtainedvia analysis show that the proposed solution ensures bettercontrol plane management, performance maintenance andnetwork resources preservation.

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication can potentiallysolve the capacity bottleneck problem of legacy cellularsystems, while it should be flexible and powerful to meetthe needs of commercial cellular scenarios as well as publicsafety applications. In a paper titled ‘‘A software-defineddevice-to-device communication architecture for publicsafety applications in 5G networks’’ by M. Usman et al.,the authors present a hierarchal D2D architecture where acentralized SDN controller communicates with the cloudhead to reduce the number of requested long-term evo-lution (LTE) communication links, thereby improving

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energy consumption. Meanwhile, the robustness and poten-tial of the proposed architecture by presenting a public safetyscenario are evaluated.

To survey 5G cellular network architecture and some ofthe key emerging technologies that are helpful in improvingthe architecture and meeting the demands of users, a papertitled ‘‘A survey of 5G network: Architecture and emergingtechnologies’’ by A. Gupta et al. presents 5G cellular networkarchitecture, massive multiple input multiple output technol-ogy, and D2D.

To realize ubiquitous spectrum access and improve thespectrum efficiency in a SDN, in work by D. Wang et al.(Reciprocally-benefited spectrum access scheme with jointpower and subcarrier allocation in software-definednetwork), a joint subcarrier and power allocation schemefor reciprocally benefiting spectrum access with secondaryusers (SUs) cooperating with primary users (PUs) is pre-sented, in which the closed-form expressions about the outageprobability and average transmission of both PUs and SUs arederived.

In the work by Z. Ding et al. (A new evaluation criterionfor non-orthogonal multiple access in 5G software definednetworks), a new evaluation criterion is developed toinvestigate the performance of non-orthogonal multipleaccess (NOMA) for 5G networks from an information theo-retic point of view. Using this evaluation criterion, the perfor-mance of awireless NOMA systemwith user pairing has been

evaluated in terms of both the sum rate and users’ individualrates, by considering time division multiple access as thebenchmark.

We are excited about the technical depth and span of thisSpecial Section, and also recognize that it cannot cover allemerging SDN technologies for 5G networks. Before theend of this editorial, we would like to thank the anonymousreviewers for their great efforts in reviewing the submittedmanuscripts, without which this Special Section would nothave been published with such high quality. We would like tothank the Editor-in-Chief, the Managing Editor, the editorialstaff, M. Pecht, B. M. Onat, K. Shumard, and M. Meyer,for their supportive guidance during the whole process in theorganization of this Special Section.

MUGEN PENG, EditorBeijing University of Posts and Telecommunication

Beijing, China

TAO HUANG, Guest EditorBeijing University of Posts and Telecommunication

Beijing, China

Y. RICHARD YU, Guest EditorCarleton University

Canada

JIANLI PAN, Guest EditorUniversity of Missouri - St. Louis

USA

MUGEN PENG (M’05–SM’11) received the B.E. degree in electronics engineering fromthe Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China, in 2000, and thePh.D. degree in communication and information systems from the Beijing University of Postsand Telecommunications (BUPT), Beijing, China, in 2005. Afterward, he joined BUPT, wherehe has been a Full Professor with the School of Information and Communication Engineeringsince 2012. In 2014, he was an Academic Visiting Fellow with Princeton University, Princeton,NJ, USA. He leads a Research Group focusing on wireless transmission and networkingtechnologies with the Key Laboratory of Universal Wireless Communications (Ministry ofEducation), BUPT. He has authored or co-authored over 40 refereed IEEE journal papers andover 200 conference proceeding papers. His main research areas include wireless communi-cation theory, radio signal processing, and convex optimizations, with a particular interests incooperative communication, radio network coding, self-organization networking, heterogeneousnetworking, and cloud communication.

Dr. Peng was a recipient of the 2014 IEEE ComSoc AP Outstanding Young Researcher Award, and the best paper award inGameNets 2014, CIT 2014, ICCTA 2011, ICBNMT 2010, and IET CCWMC 2009. He received the First Grade Award of theTechnological Invention Award in the Ministry of Education of China for the hierarchical cooperative communication theoryand technologies, and the Second Grade Award of Scientific and Technical Progress from the China Institute of Communicationsfor the co-existence of multiradio access networks and the 3G spectrum management. He is on the Editorial/Associate EditorialBoard of the IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE ACCESS, IET Communications, the International Journal of Antennasand Propagation, China Communication, and the International Journal of Communications System. He has been the LeadingGuest Editor of the special issues on the IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, the International Journal of Antennas andPropagation, and the International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks.

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TAO HUANG is an Associate Professor with the Beijing University of Posts and Telecom-munications. In areas such as network architecture and software defined networking,he carried out a number of basic research, put forward the definition of service oriented softwaredefined network architecture, and led research and development of the future network innova-tion experiment platform at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, whichachieved network interconnection in universities in Beijing, Nanjing, Xian, and Chongqing.In addition, he developed the platform and related systems of software defined networkingand a new generation of content distribution, which has been widely applied and promotedin CCTV and China Unicom. He has authored over 100 academic papers, holds 32 nationaltechnology invention patents, and submitted 25 international standard proposals. He publishedfour individual monographs.

F. RICHARD YU (S’00–M’04–SM’08) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering fromthe University of British Columbia in 2003. From 2002 to 2004, he was with Ericsson, Lund,Sweden, where he worked on the research and development of wireless mobile systems. From2005 to 2006, he was with a start-up in California, USA, where he worked on research anddevelopment in the areas of advanced wireless communication technologies and new standards.He joined the Carleton School of Information Technology and the Department of Systemsand Computer Engineering, Carleton University, in 2007, where he is currently an AssociateProfessor. He received the IEEE Outstanding Leadership Award in 2013, the Carleton ResearchAchievement Award in 2012, the Ontario Early Researcher Award (formerly the Premier’sResearch Excellence Award) in 2011, the Excellent Contribution Award at the IEEE/IFIPTrustCom 2010, the Leadership Opportunity Fund Award from the Canada Foundation ofInnovation in 2009, and the Best Paper Awards at the IEEE ICC 2014, Globecom 2012, theIEEE/IFIP TrustCom 2009, and the International Conference on Networking 2005. His research

interests include cross-layer/cross-system design, security, green IT, and QoS provisioning in wireless-based systems.He serves on the Editorial Boards of several journals, including the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Ad Hoc & Sensor Wireless

Networks, a Lead Series Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, the IEEE COMMUNICATIONS

SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, the EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications Networking, the Wiley Journal on Security andCommunication Networks, and the International Journal of Wireless Communications and Networking, and a Guest Editorof the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EMERGING TOPICS IN COMPUTING of the Special Issue on Advances in Mobile CloudComputing, and the IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL of the Special Issue on Smart Grid Communications Systems. He has servedon the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of numerous conferences, as the TPC Co-Chair of the IEEE GreenCom’15,INFOCOM-MCV’15, Globecom’14, WiVEC’14, INFOCOM-MCC’14, Globecom’13, GreenCom’13, CCNC’13,INFOCOM-CCSES’12, ICC-GCN’12, VTC’12S, Globecom’11, INFOCOM-GCN’11, INFOCOM-CWCN’10, the IEEEIWCMC’09, VTC’08F, and WiN-ITS’07, the Publication Chair of ICST QShine’10, and the Co-Chair of ICUMT-CWCN’09.He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the province of Ontario, Canada.

JIANLI PAN received the Ph.D. degree in computer engineering from the Department ofComputer Science and Engineering, Washington University, Saint Louis. He is currently anAssistant Professor with the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University ofMissouri-Saint Louis. His current research interests include edge cloud and edge computing,Internet of Things, mobile networking, network virtualization, smart home, and smart energy.He served on the Technical Program Committees of multiple international conferences, suchas the IEEE Infocom, the IEEE Globecom, and the IEEE Healthcom.

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