A software-defined 5G cellular network with links virtually pooled for public safety operators

During disaster relief operations, public safety personnel performs data communication almost exclusively through terrestrial commercial networks. However, common cellular infrastructures are often unable to provide acceptable throughput and even basic availability owing to congestion or infrastructural disruption. In order to overcome these issues, this paper proposes the implementation of a network abstraction that we define as virtual resource pooling. This allows to virtually pool the resources provided by the cellular channels on which field operators are connected. The proposal aims to harmoniously blend together the multihoming capabilities of modern devices and their collaborative potential by leveraging the software-defined networking facilities that are expected to be present in the core infrastructures of fifth-generation networks. Coupled with the envisioned performance and packet core plasticity of the latter, such a system may have the potential to provide future public safety operators with broadband capabilities and high quality of experience in day-to-day tasks and major planned events while providing improved communication guarantees in unplanned disasters. To experimentally assess our proposal, we present a test bed that has been built and used to perform network emulation runs and to extract their results. These indicate that a system with virtual resource pooling may greatly enhance not only throughput and quality of service properties but also the resilience guarantees that network tenants may offer to field operators. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.