Split Control Plane Functionality in Millimeter-Wave Overlay Access

The millimeter-wave band is a candidate to over- come the spectrum shortage in future mobile radio networks. As the coverage area of base stations operating at these frequencies is expected to be more limited than at the sub 6 GHz bands, they will supplement existing base stations instead of replacing them. With these additional small cells a split plane architecture becomes an interesting architectural candidate, where capacity is provided by the small cells while continuous connectivity is guaranteed as it is available today. The introduction of such a split between the control and the data plane introduces new options and degrees of freedom of system and protocol design that are investigated in this paper.