CROWD Dynamic Network Reconfiguration in Wireless DenseNets

Traffic in wireless access networks is expected to grow substantially in the next years, both in terms of total volume and of data rate required by individual users. The commonly agreed solution to overcome the current limitations of wireless access networks is to deploy very dense and heterogeneous wireless networks, the so-called DenseNets. Simply scaling existing networks by orders of magnitude, as required to fulfil traffic forecasts, would bring along several problems because of the limited backhaul capacity, the increased energy consumption, and the explosion of signalling. Hence, the FP7 project CROWD proposes a novel architecture for DenseNets, based on SoftwareDefined Networking (SDN), as a solution to tame the density of wireless networks. Within this architecture, dynamic controller placement/reassignment supported by dynamic backhaul reconfiguration is the crucial component to both maximize the amount of users that can be served simultaneously in high load situations and to minimize the energy consumption to reduce costs for the service providers. We present both approaches and outline how they are integrated into the overall CROWD architecture.