Ghaderi, MajidAbbasi, Ali2016-02-022016-02-022016-02-022016http://hdl.handle.net/11023/2815The main mechanism to cope with the increasing traffic demand in cellular networks is to deploy base stations more densely. A consequence of such a deployment is the higher operational expenditure imposed on mobile network operators. This happens while the revenue per bit transferred is decreasing at a fast rate which motivates designing new methods to curb the operational expenditure. A promising approach to achieve this goal is virtualization. Virtualization refers to decoupling of the physical infrastructure from its services, pooling the infrastructure’s resources, and sharing them among multiple mobile virtual network operators which can lead to better utilization of the infrastructure and lower operational expenditure for each operator. In such a system, two problems arise: 1. How to minimize the infrastructure provider’s operational cost? While there are several places to look for saving opportunities, we focus on minimizing the infrastructure’s energy consumption via dynamic activation of base stations. 2. How to minimize a mobile virtual network operator’s operational cost? The operational cost of a virtual network operator is largely dependent on the cost of acquiring bandwidth from the infrastructure provider. We focus on minimizing this cost where reservation-based and on-demand bandwidth acquisition modes are provided. The goal of this thesis is to answer these two problems. With regard to the former problem, based on the Lyapunov optimization framework, a controller is designed that dynamically adapts the network capacity to the traffic demand. Algorithms for implementing the controller in centralized and distributed settings are presented. The latter problem is formulated as a robust optimization problem. The optimal bandwidth reservation policies are derived when the low order statistics of the traffic demand are known to the mobile virtual network operator.engUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.Computer ScienceComputer ScienceComputer NetworkingCellular NetworksEnergy EfficiencyVirtualizationdoctoral thesis10.11575/PRISM/27647