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Recent advances and future challenges for mobile network virtualization

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Abstract

Recently, network function virtualization (NFV) was proposed as a paradigm shift in the telecommunication industry. Both industry and academia have drawn significant attention in mobile network virtualization. NFV decouples the software implementation of network functions from the underlying hardware, leading to considerable reductions in operating expenses (OPEX) and capital expenses (CAPEX), and facilitating the network deployment. However, as an emerging technology, NFV brings both challenges and opportunities in developing new architectures, applying and deployment. In this paper, we first survey the related work of NFV, and then propose promising research directions in this area.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2014AA01A701), Nature and Science Foundation of China (Grants Nos. 61325006, 61421061), International Collaboration Project (Grant No. 2015DFT10160), Beijing Training Project for the Leading Talents in S&T (Grant No. Z141101001514026), and 111 Project of China (Grant No. B16006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Engineering Lab for Mobile Network Technologies, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876, China

    Xiaofeng Tao, Yan Han & Xiaodong Xu

  2. State Key Lab of Networking & Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876, China

    Ping Zhang

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Victor C. M. Leung

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  1. Xiaofeng Tao
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Correspondence to Xiaofeng Tao.

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Tao, X., Han, Y., Xu, X. et al. Recent advances and future challenges for mobile network virtualization. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 60, 040301 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-017-9045-1

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