Multi-Carrier MVNO Architecture for Mission-Critical Services

In recent years, disruptions in the core networks of Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) have led to widespread communication failures. There is still no service available that can ensure highly reliable communication across multiple carriers, despite the diversification of mobile network services with the emergence of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs). Meanwhile, next-generation mobile networks have the potential to enable mission-critical services, such as remote vehicle control, which require a stable and low-delay mobile network. However, the Internet and handover disrupt the stable and low-delay mobile network; the former causes unstable delays as a public network, while the latter leads to inevitable delays due to momentary communication disruptions during base station switches. In this study, we propose a Multi-carrier MVNO (M-MVNO) architecture. In the architecture, M-MVNO manages an Edge Server (ES) and multiple gateways of MVNO placed in its own core network apart from the core networks of the MNOs. The ES can process mission-critical services without relying on the Internet, and communication across multiple MVNOs can cooperatively compensate for disruptions caused by handovers. Furthermore, we develop a portable mobile network measurement system to enable easy scalability and conduct measurements assuming mission-critical service use to demonstrate its effectiveness. From the measurement data, our analysis indicates that the remote vehicle control service is fully available with our architecture in a given route of an urban area while it fails with the probability of a few percent when utilizing a single MNO.