| Summary: | Network virtualisation has become one of the most prominent solutions for sus-tainability towards the dramatic increase of data demand in next-generation mobile networks. In addition, apart from increasing the overall infrastructure utilisation, it also greatly improves the manageability, the scalability and the robustness of the network. In order to allow multiple virtual networks to coexist in the same substrate network, the need for efficient network sharing techniques is imperative. The main purpose of this work is to provide a holistic optimization framework for vir-tual network embedding solutions, where the actual user mobility effect is explicitly considered. First, the main focus is given on the study of the mobility effect and the impact of the mobility management techniques on the end-to-end communication of the mobile user. A hybrid-distributed mobility management scheme is proposed and compared against the latest mobility management schemes. Then, an optimisation framework for efficient mobility-aware virtual network embedding is proposed and evaluated by comparison with other works from the literature. Moving deeper in the area of virtual network embedding, the focus is given on minimizing the end-to-end delay and providing service differentiation, allowing in this way delay sensitive services to use the formed virtual networks with the minimum possible delay, as op-posed to other more elastic services that use the same substrate network. The last part of this work is the study and the analysis of the stochastic nature of the virtual network embedding parameters and the proposal of an optimisation framework for adjustable-robustness virtual network embedding. Driven by the benefits from virtualising the network and its functions, research as well as industry are expected to exploit in a greater degree than today the merits of this concept. The co-existence of multiple tenants not only will greatly change the network industry from a business perspective, but also will emphasise the need for more efficient and flexible network sharing techniques. This work belongs to the initial efforts to embrace and adopt the virtualisation concept in the next-generation wireless networks.
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