Protocols and use cases for media independent management in SDN-based wireless access networks

This paper presents protocol messages, signalling procedures, and use cases for Media Independent Management (MIM) in Software-Defined Networking (SDN)-based wireless access networks. MIM control framework allows to control and to acquire information in a media independent way through a generic interface between higher layers and existing media-specific link layers. Focusing on tightly-coupled integration between SDN and MIM control planes, this paper describes signalling architecture, protocol messages, high-level signalling procedures for resource management and seamless handover, and three use cases of MIM in SDN-based heterogeneous wireless access networks.