Service delivery to a roaming user equipment using a software-defined networking (SDN) controller

A container software and management system for delivering of services to a roaming UE, the services being to be offered by a set of micro-services hosted on a source radio base station, and being initially delivered to the roaming UE via a radio interface of the source radio base station, wherein the roaming UE being to roam from a radio coverage area of the source radio base station into a radio coverage area of a target radio base station, the container software and management system comprising:

• a processor and a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that coupled to the processor, the non-transitory machine-readable storage medium containing instructions, which when executed by the processor, cause the container software and management system to:
• identify a trigger condition for handing-over delivery of at least a subset of the services from the radio interface of the source radio base station to a radio interface of the target radio base station,
• transfer the subset of the services to the target radio base station through a route based on information from a software-defined networking (SDN) controller of a SDN system that includes the source radio base station and the target radio base station, wherein the transferring of the subset of the services to the target radio base station comprising:
• causing the SDN controller to set up the route from the source radio base station to the target radio base station based on a bandwidth required to transfer a replicate of at least one micro-service from the source radio base station to the target radio base station, and
• replicating the at least one micro-service hosted on the source radio base station;
• cause the at least one replicated micro-service to be deployed on the target radio base station, the at least one replicated micro-service on the target radio base station being adapted to offer the subset of the services to the roaming UE;
• and
• the subset of the services being offered continuously by the source radio base station prior to the subset of the services being offered by the target radio base station.

A non-transitory machine-readable medium having instructions stored therein, which when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations in a container software and management system for delivering of services to a roaming UE, the services being offered by a set of micro-services hosted on a source radio base station, and being initially delivered to the roaming UE via a radio interface of the source radio base station, wherein the roaming UE is to roam from a radio coverage area of the source radio base station into a radio coverage area of a target radio base station, the operations comprising:

• identifying a trigger condition for handing-over delivery of at least a subset of the services from the radio interface of the source radio base station to a radio interface of the target radio base station;
• transferring the subset of the services to the target radio base station through a route based on information from a software-defined networking (SDN) controller of a SDN system that includes the source radio base station and the target radio base station, wherein transferring the subset of the services to the target radio base station comprises causing the SDN controller to set up the route from the source radio base station to the target radio base station based on a bandwidth required to transfer a replicate of at least one micro-service from the source radio base station to the target radio base station;
• and
• causing the at least one replicated micro-service to be deployed on the target radio base station;
• causing the at least one replicated micro-service on the target radio base station being adapted to offer the subset of the services to the roaming UE;
• and
• the subset of the services being interrupted prior to the subset of the services being offered by the target radio base station and the bandwidth required being based on an acceptable interruption time for the at least the subset of the services,
• causing the SDN controller to set up the route for the target radio base station to obtain construction information on the subset of the services to deploy the at least one replicated micro-service on the target radio base station, and the construction information being retrieved from a database.