  Software-Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm provides many features including
hardware abstraction, programmable networking and centralized policy control.
One of the main benefits used along with these features is core/backhaul
network virtualization which ensures sharing of mobile core and backhaul
networks among Mobile Operators (MOs). In this paper, we propose a virtualized
SDN-based Evolved Packet System (EPS) cellular network architecture including
design of network virtualization controller. After virtualization of
core/backhaul network elements, eNodeBs associated with MOs become a part of
resource allocation problem for Backhaul Transport Providers (BTPs). We
investigate the performance of our proposed architecture where eNodeBs are
assigned to the MOs using quality-of-service (QoS)-aware and QoS-unaware
scheduling algorithms under the consideration of time-varying numbers and
locations of user equipments (UEs) through Monte-Carlo simulations. The
performances are compared with traditional EPS in Long Term Evolution (LTE)
architecture and the results reveal that our proposed architecture outperforms
the traditional cellular network architecture.
