Network Coding Function Virtualization

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Network Coding (NC) have attracted much attention in recent years as key concepts for providing 5G networks with flexibility and differentiated reliability, respectively. In this paper, we present the integration of NC architectural design and NFV. In order to do so we first describe what we call a virtualization process upon our proposed architectural design of NC that should help to offer the reliability functionality to a network. The process consists of identifying the required functional entities of NC and analyzing when the functionality should be activated towards complexity/energy efficiency. The relevance of our proposed NC function virtualization is its applicability to any underlying physical network, satellite or hybrid thus enabling softwarization, and rapid innovative deployment. Finally, we validate our framework to a study case of geo-control of network reliability that is based on device's geographical location-based signal/network information.