In mobile networks, the mobile core plays a crucial role in providing connectivity between mobile user devices and external packet data networks such as the Internet. Through the years, along with the dramatical changes in radio access networks, the mobile core has also been evolved from being a circuit-based analog telephony system in its first generation (1G) to become a purely packet-based network called the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) in the current generation (4G). In recent years, the explosion of mobile data traffic and devices and the advent of new services have led to the investigation of the next generation of mobile networks, i.e., 5G. A wide range of technologies has been proposed as candidates for the development of 5G. Among other technology candidates, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) have been widely considered to be key enablers for the network architecture of 5G, especially the mobile packet core (MPC) network.

This thesis aims at identifying benefits and challenges of introducing SDN and NFV to re-achitect the current MPC network architecture towards 5G and addressing some of the challenges. To this end, we conduct a comprehensive literature review of the state-of-the-art work leveraging SDN and NFV to re-design the 4G EPC architecture. Through this survey work, several research questions for future work have been identified and we contribute to address two of them in this thesis. Firstly, since most of the current works focus on unicast services, we propose an SDN/NFV-based MPC architecture for providing multicast and broadcast services. Our numerical results show that the proposed architecture can reduce the total signaling cost compared to the traditional architecture. Secondly, we address the question regarding the scalability of the control plane. We take the Mobility Management Entity (MME) - one of the EPC key control plane entities - as a case study. In our work, the MME is deployed as a cluster of multiple virtual instances (vMMEs) and a front-end load balancer. We focus on investigating different approaches to achieve better load balancing among these vMMEs, which in turn improves scalability. Our experimental results suggest that carefully selected load balancing algorithms can significantly reduce the control plane latency.

In mobile networks, the mobile core plays a crucial role in providing connectivity between mobile user devices and external packet data networks such as the Internet. After more than three decades, the mobile core has been gradually evolved through four generations and is called the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) in the current generation (4G). In recent years, the explosion of mobile data traffic and devices and the advent of new services have led to the investigation of the next generation of mobile networks, i.e., 5G. Among other technology candidates, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) have been widely considered to be key enablers for the network architecture of 5G, especially the mobile packet core (MPC) network.

This thesis aims at identifying benefits and challenges of introducing SDN and NFV to re-achitect the current MPC architecture towards 5G and addressing some of the challenges. To this end, we conduct a comprehensive survey of the existing SDN/NFV-based MPC architectures. Through this survey work, several research questions for future work have been identified and we contribute to address two of the research questions. Firstly, we propose an SDN/NFV-based MPC architecture for providing multicast and broadcast services. Secondly, we tackle the scalability problem of the Mobility Management Entity (MME) - one of the EPC key control plane entities. In particular, we investigate different approaches to achieve better load balancing among virtual MMEs in a virtual and distributed MME design, which in turn improves scalability.

The mobile packet core – a central part of the overall mobile cellular network – has a long history of evolution. Through the years, its architecture has been drastically changed to meet the demand coming from the fast growth in the number of devices as well as the introduction of new types of applications and services. On one hand, the number of new devices and subscribers keeps increasing at an unprecedented rate, which can still give rise to scalability issues in the mobile packet core if it is not properly managed. On the other hand, the introduction of new types of services brings with it a new set of requirements, such as low-latency and high reliability. The network softwarization is widely considered as a promising approach to address these two challenges.

This thesis focuses on enhancing the scalability of a softwarized mobile packet core network for 5G and beyond, and the communication latency it provides. Moreover, the thesis provides an extensive survey of existing softwarized mobile packet core network solutions, identifying important questions and gaps for future research. This thesis also explores the possibility of leveraging the network softwarization concept to design a softwarized mobile packet core network to support multicast and broadcast services. In order to tackle the scalability issue in a softwarized mobile packet core, the thesis proposes several dynamic and adaptive load-balancing algorithms to efficiently manage the traffic load in both the control and the user plane. These load-balancing algorithms take into account different factors such as the current load of virtualized network functions and the estimation of the communication latency. On the latency aspect, the thesis studies the feasibility of using a softwarized mobile packet core for delivering time-critical messages in a smart-grid environment, and proposes several deployable communication solutions to support the study.