  Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications have attracted great attention from
both academia and industry. In this paper, with recent advances in wireless
network virtualization and software-defined networking (SDN), we propose a
novel framework for M2M communications in software-defined cellular networks
with wireless network virtualization. In the proposed framework, according to
different functions and quality of service (QoS) requirements of machine-type
communication devices (MTCDs), a hypervisor enables the virtualization of the
physical M2M network, which is abstracted and sliced into multiple virtual M2M
networks. In addition, we develop a decision-theoretic approach to optimize the
random access process of M2M communications. Furthermore, we develop a feedback
and control loop to dynamically adjust the number of resource blocks (RBs) that
are used in the random access phase in a virtual M2M network by the SDN
controller. Extensive simulation results with different system parameters are
presented to show the performance of the proposed scheme.
