Abstract
A software-defined network paradigm has been recently proposed as a solution to tackle several issues in legacy networking, specifically, in cellular networks. In cellular networks such as LTE, SDN has been incorporated into different parts, especially into the Evolved Packet Core (EPC). The current SDN-based centralized EPC controller architecture for the cellular network displays weaknesses on handover efficiency and scalability. In this paper, we present a distributed approach for implementing EPC controller architecture that utilizes functional entities to handle handover procedures asynchronously in order to improve system efficiency and scalability. Moreover, we carried out a comparative analysis of current centralized EPC controller architecture and our proposed distributed EPC controller architecture. The simulation results quantify the advantages of the distributed EPC controller architecture over centralized EPC controller architecture in terms of handover latency and average throughput per user. We demonstrate that the proposed architecture offers better performance on handover and data transmission in general.