Virtualization and Slicing of Wireless Mesh Networks

Experiments performed on a network provide an exact performance of network algorithms and protocols. While initial research ideas can be evaluated through analysis, simulations, and emulations, implementation and deployment of these ideas on a realistic environment helps in systematically identifying and addressing many practical problems that systems typically encounter. There is no substitute for a real life environment to capture the complexity of multipath and fading that is inherent to wireless. Therefore, understanding wireless environments requires extensive prototyping and experimentation, in order to uncover new insights that lead to improvements in system design. Research idea approved at simulation level takes greater effort and sometimes impossible to port into a real network. Hence, network protocol development paradigm must change from simulation to testbed. For validating a research idea, constructing a testbed is economically unviable. Our Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) testbed WISEMESH [2] at KAIST is a shared testbed with virtualization capability that can accommodate several experiments in a space division or time division. The goal of our work is to design and implement a system that virtualizes a wireless network using a large-scale 802.11 mesh testbed. The objective of virtualization is to allow multiple experiments to co-exist on a wireless experimental facility in an efficient manner. GENI [1], a congress of several (wired and wireless) testbeds scattered around the world, is the forthrunner in promoting virtualization concept through its GENI Management and Control (GMC) platform that threads these testbeds together and facilitates simultaneous multiple experiments. VINI [3] is part of PLANETLAB development that implements virtualization to efficiently support a large number of slices on the limited physical resources of the testbed. Unfortunately, the virtualization techniques that have been used in the existing testbeds do not address the unique needs of wireless environments.