Network Virtualization for Future Mobile Networks: General Architecture and Applications

Based on the expected future requirements this paper describes a general network architecture enabled by network virtualization. This architecture consists of three major building blocks which we call virtualized physical resources, virtual resource manager and virtual network controller. Such an architecture will facilitate network sharing deployments, which might exist in the form of network consolidation or service specific networks. Furthermore the ability of our framework to combine control over various domains allows a resource optimization across IT and network infrastructure, multiple network layers and heterogeneous networks.