Architecture of unified network based on programmable control gateway

Due to the long-term coexistence of Internet Protocol (IP) and non-IP networks, there exist interconnection and interworking difficulties in heterogeneous networks for the difference of network architectures and protocols. Focusing on the gateway, the key node of heterogeneous networks interconnection, a unified network architecture based on programmable gateway is proposed to solve this problem, which separated the control plane from the data forwarding plane and extracted the combination of the management and control functionality and application service. The unified network architecture divides the network into three layers, which were unified network collaborative management and control unit, programmable gateway, and heterogeneous subnet. The interconnection protocol stack for the typical heterogeneous networks is designed to integrate different protocols. Then the key techniques and theory for the programmable gateway are given and analyzed based on the unified network architecture, including the abstraction and description of heterogeneous networks, intelligent adaptation technology based on programmable gateway, resource management and optimization of unified network, etc. Finally, a typical application case of interconnection networks in civil aviation is given as an illustration to demonstrate the proposed network architecture.