| Abstract |
Software defined networking (SDN) increases the flexibility and efficiency of network management via a separation of control plane and data plane. However, bringing this flexibility and efficiency into mobile tactical networks is non-trivial due to the dynamics of wireless channel, the device mobility and network topology, which leads to substantial overhead on both control path and data path. In this work, we design a new architecture for software defined mobile tactical networks (SD-MTN) to address this challenge. In particular, we leverage the broadcast nature of wireless communication to design a coding-based data path for reliable, low-cost data forwarding. In the control plane, we lever- age the global network view provided by the SDN controller to develop an efficient, centralized algorithm to compute and install proactive, resilient data forwarding decisions. In this way, data nodes forward redundant, coded traffic to proactively respond to transient node/link failures without waiting for the update from the controller or saturating the network. By supporting mobile networks to perform reliable, low-cost data traffic delivery and efficient, dynamic routing strategies adjustment simultaneously, this architecture significantly reduces the overhead of control path and data path in SD-MTN. |