Wireless network virtualization can have a very broad scope ranging from spectrum sharing, infrastructure virtualization, to air interface virtualization. Similar to wired network virtualization, in which physical infrastructure owned by one or more

providers can be shared among multiple service providers, wireless network virtualization needs the physical wireless infrastructure and radio resources to be abstracted and isolated to a number of virtual resources, which then can be offered

to different service providers. In other words, virtualization, regardless of wired or wireless networks, can be considered as a PROCESS splitting the entire network system. However, the distinctive properties of the wireless environment, in terms

of time-various channels, attenuation, mobility, broadcast, etc., make the problem more complicated. Furthermore, wireless network virtualization depends on specific access technologies, and wireless network contains much more access technologies compared to wired network virtualization and each access

technology has its particular characteristics, which makes convergence, sharing and abstraction difficult to achieve. Therefore, it may be inaccurate to consider wireless network virtualization as a subset of network virtualization. Wireless network infrastructure refers to the whole wireless physical substrate network, including sites (towers and antennas), base stations (macrocell, smallcell, relay, RF, baseband processors, radio resource controllers, etc. in cellular networks), access points (in wireless local area networks (WLANs)), core network elements (gateway, switchers, routers, etc.), transmission networks (backhaul and links between RANs and CN).  Network function virtualization (NFV) is a network architecture CONCEPT

which is used by technologies of IT virtualization to virtualize network node functions  into building blocks that may connect, or chain together, to create communication services.

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Thanks!

So whether NFV means creating virtual appliances by implementing network function? I am confused with NFV .

Wireless network Virtualization : Virtualization has been extended from wired to wireless networks.

It improves efficiency and utilization and enables customized service and multi-tenancy. 

New architectures involving virtualization have been proposed in the major wireless domains such as WiFi, cellular network and wireless application in Internet of things (IoT). Additionally, the use of Software Defined Radio (SDR) gives more and better options for virtualization. 

While Network function virtualization:  is a network architecture concept that uses the technologies of IT virtualization to virtualize entire classes of network node functions into building blocks that may connect, or chain together, to create communication services.

A virtualized network function, or VNF, may consist of one or more virtual machines running different software and processes, on top of standard high-volume servers, switches and storage, or even cloud computing infrastructure, instead of having custom hardware appliances for each network function.

Thank you.

So we use a Hypervisor to create virtual networks. Right?

Is this VNF is the network virtualization controller for NFV?

Whether SDN is needed for implementing NFV?

A hypervisor can establish multiple virtual SDN networks (vSDNs) based on a given physical network. Each vSDN corresponds to a “slice” of the overall network. The virtualization of a given physical SDN network infrastructure through a hypervisor allows multiple tenants (such as service providers and other organizations) to share the SDN network infrastructure. Each tenant can operate its own virtual SDN network, i.e., its own network operating system, independent of the other tenants.

 VNF is a Software implementation of NF that can be deployed in a virtualized infrastructure and NFV is a network services using NFs with at least one VNF.

The term NFV was coined by a group of Tier-1 telecommunications operators and introduced in a White Paper published in October 2012. Network function virtualization is defined as the process of “implementing network functions in software that can run on a range of industry standard server hardware, and that can be moved to, or instantiated in, various locations in the network as required, without the need to install new equipment”. Such locations include – but are not limited to - highly-centralized data centres and smaller regional data centres in network points of presence (PoPs).

Network Virtualization allows multiple Virtual Networks to coexist on a single physical substrate in isolation from each other.

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