Existing wireless networks rely on closed and inflexible architectures that impose significant challenges into adopting new wireless networking technologies. The notion of
software defined networking (SDN) has therefore been recently introduced to simplify network
control and to make it easier to introduce and deploy new applications and services.
However, to date, existing SDN architecture are far from fulfilling the requirements of next-generation wireless networks because (i) the separate-then-centralize architecture of most existing SDNs requires high backhaul network capacity that can exceed the currently available capacity
in large-scale and densely-deployed wireless networks; (ii) network engineers are typically required to have a thorough, expert understanding of the wireless network protocol stack, including
the lower layers, to be able to define complex control behaviors.
This project proposes and explores a radically different approach to SDN for next-generation
wireless networks. It studies the core building principles of a Wireless Network Operating System (WNOS) that provides the network designer with a centralized abstract representation of the wireless network hiding the lower-level details of the network operations and of
their distributed implementation. Based on this abstract representation, the WNOS takes
network control programs written on a centralized, high-level view of the network and auto-matically generate distributed cross-layer control programs based on distributed optimization
theory, which are then executed by local base stations and possibly at the mobile stations on
an abstract representation of the radio hardware.
