Abstract

The expected growth of IoT devices, coupled with the expected widespread adoption of 5G services, will necessitate a paradigm shift in how mobility is managed in mobile networks. Legacy mobility management approaches are often centralized and static, making them ill-suited for modern, heterogeneous networks. Software-Defined Mobility Management (SDMM) is a promising solution that applies Software-Defined Networking (SDN) concepts to provide programmable, scalable, and dynamic mobility management in future core networks. SDMM divides the mobility management unit into two distinct planes: control and data, enabling centralized control of user mobility management and dynamic resource scheduling across the access and core layers. This design improves mobility, enhances handover performance, reduces latency, and enables context-aware service-specific mobility policies. Also, the ability to integrate with Network Function Virtualization (NFV) enables the on-the-fly instantiation of lightweight distributed mobility functions. The flexibility offered by SDMM makes it well-suited to support ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), massive machine-type communications (mMTC), and network slicing. This study analyses SDMM's architecture and its components, speculates on the functioning of future core networks, and delves into major obstacles like scalability, interoperability, and security, while also pointing out unanswered questions in the field. The Smart Device Management Module (SDMM) enhances the intelligence and flexibility of mobile networks by viewing mobility as a software-powered function.