Many network elements have long been software controlled and managed, and the concept of defining the functions and performance of a network through programming interfaces has been known for many years. In the late 1990s, researchers explored models for application programming interfaces (APIs) that would facilitate the application of software developed by a wide range of software vendors to network systems such as switches, routers, and network management entities.
After a brief review of this history, this presentation will discuss the application of SDN concepts in the evolving cloud radio access network, in which there are a great many small base stations, and signal processing operations serving a variety of services and needs are implemented in distributed computing resources. Active remote nodes such as radio node controllers will be programmed at standardized APIs mediated through secure sharing protocols. The goals, technical and business opportunities, and challenges are outlined in this presentation.
