Efficient network slicing is vital to deal with the highly variable and dynamic characteristics of network traffic generated by a varied range of applications. The problem is made more challenging with the advent of new technologies such as 5G and new architectures such as SDN and NFV. Network slicing addresses a challenging dynamic network resource allocation problem where a single network infrastructure is divided into (virtual) multiple slices to meet the demands of different users with varying requirements, the main challenges being --- the traffic arrival characteristics and the job resource requirements (e.g., compute, memory and bandwidth resources) for each slice can be highly dynamic. Traditional model-based optimization or queueing theoretic modeling becomes intractable with the high reliability, and stringent bandwidth and latency requirements imposed by 5G technologies. In addition these approaches lack adaptivity in dynamic environments. We propose a deep reinforcement learning approach to address this dynamic coupled resource allocation problem. Model evaluation using both synthetic simulation data and real workload driven traces demonstrates that our deep reinforcement learning solution improves overall resource utilization, latency performance, and demands satisfied as compared to a baseline equal-slicing strategy.
Network slicing enabled by fifth generation (5G) systems has the potential to satisfy diversified service requirements from different vertical industries. As a typical vertical industry, smart distribution grid poses new challenges to communication networks. This paper investigates the behavior of network slicing for smart grid applications in 5G radio access networks with heterogeneous traffic. To facilitate network slicing in such a network, we employ different 5G radio access numerologies for two traffic classes which have distinct radio resource and quality of service requirements. Three m…
As progressive densification of cells, deployment of Cloud-RAN and \ac{MEC} are coming into reality to support the ultra-low latency with high reliability in 5G and beyond, it generates mesh traffic pattern across fronthaul network. This led to evolution of PON architectural enhancements with virtualization in order to support such mesh traffic pattern. However, allocation of virtual PON slices dynamically over such mesh-PON based fronthaul transport is becoming a research challenge. In this paper, we provide a mixed analytical-iterative model to compute optimal virtual PON slice allocation, p…
Recent standardization efforts in IEEE 802.15.4-2015 Time Scheduled Channel Hopping (TSCH) and the IETF 6TiSCH Working Group (WG), aim to provide deterministic communications and efficient allocation of resources across constrained Internet of Things (IoT) networks, particularly in Industrial IoT (IIoT) scenarios. Within 6TiSCH, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has been identified as means of providing centralized control in a number of key situations. However, implementing a centralized SDN architecture in a Low Power and Lossy Network (LLN) faces considerable challenges: not only is control…
Logistics is a key economic sector where any optimization that reduces costs or improves service has a great impact on society at large. In this paper, the role of two 5G Network Slicing (NS) strategies in Smart Logistics is studied: the use of a static slice with a balance division of network resources and the use of a dynamic slice. To validate the potential gains of these strategies, a Distribution Center with 5G connectivity is simulated, recreating the activity that takes place in a real Smart Logistics scenario. Results show that a dynamic slice makes a more efficient usage of the networ…
Network slicing and resource allocation play pivotal roles in software-defined network (SDN)/network function virtualization (NFV)-assisted 5G networks. In 5G communications, the traffic rate is high, necessitating high data rates and low latency. Deep learning is a potential solution for overcoming these constraints. Secure slicing avoids resource wastage; however, DDoS attackers can exploit the sliced network. Therefore, we focused on secure slicing with resource allocation under massive network traffic. Traffic-aware scheduling is proposed for secure slicing and resource allocation over SDN…
Network slicing enables multiple virtual networks to be instantiated and customized to meet heterogeneous use case requirements over 5G and beyond network deployments. However, most of the solutions available today face scalability issues when considering many slices, due to centralized controllers requiring a holistic view of the resource availability and consumption over different networking domains. In order to tackle this challenge, we design a hierarchical architecture to manage network slices resources in a federated manner. Driven by the rapid evolution of deep reinforcement learning (D…
Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) is a 5G New Radio (NR) application that requires strict reliability and latency. URLLC traffic is usually scheduled on top of the ongoing enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) transmissions (i.e., puncturing the current eMBB transmission) and cannot be queued due to its hard latency requirements. In this letter, we propose a risk-sensitive based formulation to allocate resources to the incoming URLLC traffic while minimizing the risk of the eMBB transmission (i.e., protecting the eMBB users with low data rate) and ensuring URLLC reliability. Specific…
Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) facilitates the deployment of critical applications with stringent QoS requirements, latency in particular. This paper considers the problem of jointly planning the availability of computational resources at the edge, the slicing of mobile network and edge computation resources, and the routing of heterogeneous traffic types to the various slices. These aspects are intertwined and must be addressed together to provide the desired QoS to all mobile users and traffic types still keeping costs under control. We formulate our problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear p…
Private deployments of 4G and 5G networks in industrial environments are beneficial from various aspects. Private 4G/5G networks typically face the challenge of supporting heterogeneous industrial applications. This technology demonstration highlights the importance of network slicing in private 4G/5G networks. It shows that network slicing is crucial for performance guarantees in multi-service co-existence scenarios. With network slicing, our private 4G/5G network successfully supports closed-loop control, event-driven control and video streaming applications.
The widespread adoption of 5G cellular technology will evolve as one of the major drivers for the growth of IoT-based applications. In this paper, we consider a Service Provider (SP) that launches a smart city service based on IoT data readings: in order to serve IoT data collected across different locations, the SP dynamically negotiates and rescales bandwidth and service functions. 5G network slicing functions are key to lease an appropriate amount of resources over heterogeneous access technologies and different site types. Also, different infrastructure providers will charge slicing servic…
Network slicing of multi-access edge computing (MEC) resources is expected to be a pivotal technology to the success of 5G networks and beyond. The key challenge that sets MEC slicing apart from traditional resource allocation problems is that edge nodes depend on tightly-intertwined and strictly-constrained networking, computation and storage resources. Therefore, instantiating MEC slices without incurring in resource over-provisioning is hardly addressable with existing slicing algorithms. The main innovation of this paper is Sl-EDGE, a unified MEC slicing framework that allows network opera…
One of the most challenging services fifth-generation (5G) mobile network is designed to support, is the critical services in-need of very low latency, and/or high reliability. It is now clear that such critical services will also be at the core of beyond 5G (B5G) networks. While 5G radio design accommodates such supports by introducing more flexibility in timing, how efficiently those services could be scheduled over a shared network with other broadband services remains as a challenge. In this paper, we use network slicing as an enabler for network sharing and propose an optimization framewo…
Next generation wireless architectures are expected to enable slices of shared wireless infrastructure which are customized to specific mobile operators/services. Given infrastructure costs and the stochastic nature of mobile services' spatial loads, it is highly desirable to achieve efficient statistical multiplexing amongst such slices. We study a simple dynamic resource sharing policy which allocates a 'share' of a pool of (distributed) resources to each slice-Share Constrained Proportionally Fair (SCPF). We give a characterization of SCPF's performance gains over static slicing and general…
The concept of network slice, i.e.,a service customized virtual network (VN) is attracting more and more attentions in the telecommunication industry. A slice is a set of network resources which fits the service attributes and requirements of customer services. The network resources consist of cloud resources and communication link resources. A slice can serve one or more customer services which share the similar service attributes and requirements. To define, create and manage a slice (VN) is one aspect of future networks. Another aspect is the slice operation, i.e., the provisioning of servi…
Over the past few years, the concept of VR has attracted increasing interest thanks to its extensive industrial and commercial applications. Currently, the 3D models of the virtual scenes are generally stored in the VR visor itself, which operates as a standalone device. However, applications that entail multi-party interactions will likely require the scene to be processed by an external server and then streamed to the visors. However, the stringent Quality of Service (QoS) constraints imposed by VR's interactive nature require Network Slicing (NS) solutions, for which profiling the traffic g…
The emergence of diverse network applications demands more flexible and responsive resource allocation for networks. Network slicing is a key enabling technology that provides each network service with a tailored set of network resources to satisfy specific service requirements. The focus of this paper is the network slicing of access networks realized by Passive Optical Networks (PONs). This paper proposes a learning-based Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) algorithm for PON access networks, considering slice-awareness, demand-responsiveness, and allocation fairness. Our online convex optimiz…
With the advancement of IoT technology, various domains such as smart factories, smart cities and smart cars use the IoT to provide value-added services. In addition, technologies such as MEC and network slicing provide another opportunity for the IoT to support more advanced and real-time services that could not have been previously supported. However, the simple integration of such technologies into the IoT does not take full advantage of MEC and network slicing or the reduction of latency and traffic prioritization, respectively. Therefore, there is a strong need for an efficient integratio…
Over the past few years, eXtended Reality (XR) has attracted increasing interest thanks to its extensive industrial and commercial applications, and its popularity is expected to rise exponentially over the next decade. However, the stringent Quality of Service (QoS) constraints imposed by XR's interactive nature require Network Slicing (NS) solutions to support its use over wireless connections: in this context, quasi-Constant Bit Rate (CBR) encoding is a promising solution, as it can increase the predictability of the stream, making the network resource allocation easier. However, traffic ch…
Network slicing is a critical driver for guaranteeing the diverse service level agreements (SLA) in 5G and future networks. Inter-slice radio resource allocation (IS-RRA) in the radio access network (RAN) is very important. However, user mobility brings new challenges for optimal IS-RRA. This paper first proposes a soft and hard hybrid slicing framework where a common slice is introduced to realize a trade-off between isolation and spectrum efficiency (SE). To address the challenges posed by user mobility, we propose a two-step deep learning-based algorithm: joint long short-term memory (LSTM)…
The combination of recent emerging technologies such as network function virtualization (NFV) and network programmability (SDN) gave birth to the Network Slicing revolution. 5G networks consist of multi-tenant infrastructures capable of offering leased network "slices" to new customers (e.g., vertical industries) enabling a new telecom business model: Slice-as-aService (SlaaS). In this paper, we aim i ) to study the slicing admission control problem by means of a multi-queuing system for heterogeneous tenant requests, ii ) to derive its statistical behavior model, and iii ) to provide a utilit…
Ultra-reliable vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is essential for enabling the next generation of intelligent vehicles. V2X communication is a growing area of communication, that connects vehicles to neighboring vehicles (V2V), infrastructure (V2I) and pedestrians (V2P). Network slicing is one of the promising technology for connectivity of the next generation devices, creating several logical networks on a common and programmable physical infrastructure. Network slicing offers an efficient way to satisfy the diverse use case requirements by exploiting the benefits of shared physical i…
Ultra-reliable vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is essential for enabling the next generation of intelligent vehicles. V2X communication refers to the exchange of information between vehicle and infrastructure (V2I) or between vehicles (V2V). Network slicing is one of the promising technologies for the next generation of connected devices, creating several logical networks on a common and programmable physical infrastructure. Following this idea, we propose a network slicing based communication model for vehicular networks. In this paper, we have modelled a multi-lane highway scenario…
Heterogeneous applications could be assimilated within the same wireless sensor network with the aid of modern motes that have multiple sensor boards on a single radio board. Different types of data generated from such types of motes might have different transmission characteristics in terms of priority, transmission rate, required bandwidth, tolerable packet loss, delay demands etc. Considering a sensor network consisting of such multi-purpose nodes, in this paper we propose Prioritized Heterogeneous Traffic-oriented Congestion Control Protocol (PHTCCP) which ensures efficient rate control fo…
The grand objective of 5G wireless technology is to support three generic services with vastly heterogeneous requirements: enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine-type communications (mMTC), and ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC). Service heterogeneity can be accommodated by network slicing, through which each service is allocated resources to provide performance guarantees and isolation from the other services. Slicing of the Radio Access Network (RAN) is typically done by means of orthogonal resource allocation among the services. This work studies the potential adva…
A recent approach in modeling and analysis of the supply and demand in heterogeneous wireless cellular networks has been the use of two independent Poisson point processes (PPPs) for the locations of base stations (BSs) and user equipments (UEs). This popular approach has two major shortcomings. First, although the PPP model may be a fitting one for the BS locations, it is less adequate for the UE locations mainly due to the fact that the model is not adjustable (tunable) to represent the severity of the heterogeneity (non-uniformity) in the UE locations. Besides, the independence assumption b…
In this paper, we study the resource slicing problem in a dynamic multiplexing scenario of two distinct 5G services, namely Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) and enhanced Mobile BroadBand (eMBB). While eMBB services focus on high data rates, URLLC is very strict in terms of latency and reliability. In view of this, the resource slicing problem is formulated as an optimization problem that aims at maximizing the eMBB data rate subject to a URLLC reliability constraint, while considering the variance of the eMBB data rate to reduce the impact of immediately scheduled URLLC traffi…
The notions of softwarization and virtualization of the radio access network (RAN) of next-generation (5G) wireless systems are ushering in a vision where applications and services are physically decoupled from devices and network infrastructure. This crucial aspect will ultimately enable the dynamic deployment of heterogeneous services by different network operators over the same physical infrastructure. RAN slicing is a form of 5G virtualization that allows network infrastructure owners to dynamically "slice" and "serve" their network resources (i.e., spectrum, power, antennas, among others)…
Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven zero-touch network slicing is envisaged as a promising cutting-edge technology to harness the full potential of heterogeneous 5G and beyond 5G (B5G) communication systems and enable the automation of demand-aware resource management and orchestration (MANO). In this paper, we tackle the issue of B5G radio access network (RAN) joint slice admission control and resource allocation according to proposed slice-enabling cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) setup by invoking a continuous deep reinforcement learning (DRL) method. We present a no…
Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) has been proposed as a new architecture to provide efficient store-carry-and-forward data transport in satellite networks. Since these networks relay on scheduled contact plans, the Contact Graph Routing (CGR) algorithm can be used to optimize routing and data delivery performance. However, in spite of the various improvements that have been made to CGR, there have been no significant proposals to prioritize traffic with different quality of service requirements. In this work we propose adaptations to CGR that allow performance improvements when sending traffic …
For the past decades, networks have evolved to increase their performances, their capacities, to reduce latencies and optimize their resource management in order to remain competitive and adapted to the market. Today, the way consumers use networks has changed and more heterogeneous services with their own requirements have emerged. This has led network operators to define the network slicing paradigm. Network slicing creates multiple partitions in the network, each partition can be dedicated to a particular service allowing vertical markets and multiple services with different requirements to…
Integrating Wi-Fi into 3GPP 5G Network Slicing: An Experimental Prototype Study
Telecommunication Research and Development Center (CPQD)（电信研发中心 (CPQD)）；Federal University of Ceará（塞阿拉联邦大学）；Instituto Atlântico（大西洋研究所）；Leading Advanced Technologies Center of Excellence (LANCE) at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte（北里奥格兰德联邦大学领先先进技术卓越中心 (LANCE)）
With small cell base stations (SBSs) densely deployed in addition to conventional macro base stations (MBSs), the heterogeneous cellular network (HCN) architecture can effectively boost network capacity. To support the huge power demand of HCNs, renewable energy harvesting technologies can be leveraged. In this paper, we aim to make efficient use of the harvested energy for on-grid power saving while satisfying the quality of service (QoS) requirement. To this end, energy-aware traffic offloading schemes are proposed, whereby user associations, ON-OFF states of SBSs, and power control are join…
The ever increasing number of connected devices and of new and heterogeneous mobile use cases implies that 5G cellular systems will face demanding technical challenges. For example, Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) and enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) scenarios present orthogonal Quality of Service (QoS) requirements that 5G aims to satisfy with a unified Radio Access Network (RAN) design. Network slicing and mmWave communications have been identified as possible enablers for 5G. They provide, respectively, the necessary scalability and flexibility to adapt the network to each …
Technology Innovation Institute（技术创新研究院）；Trinity College Dublin（都柏林圣三一学院）
Network slicing is a well assessed approach enabling virtualization of the mobile core and radio access network (RAN) in the emerging 5th Generation New Radio. Slicing is of paramount importance when dealing with the emerging and diverse vertical applications entailing heterogeneous sets of requirements. 5G is also envisioning Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to be a key element in the cellular network standard, aiming at their use as aerial base stations and exploiting their flexible and quick deployment to enhance the wireless network performance. This work presents a UAV-assisted 5G network,…
Due to emerging technology, efficient multitasking approach is highly demanded. But it is hard to accomplish in heterogeneous wireless networks, where diverse networks have dissimilar geometric features in service and traffic models. Multitasking loss examination based on Markov chain becomes inflexible in these networks owing to rigorous computations is obligatory. This paper emphases on the performance of heterogeneous wireless networks based on multitasking. A method based on multitasking of the interrelated traffic is used to attain an approximate performance in heterogeneous wireless netw…
The coexistence of diverse services with heterogeneous requirements is a fundamental feature of 5G. This necessitates efficient radio access network (RAN) slicing, defined as sharing of the wireless resources among diverse services while guaranteeing their respective throughput, timing, and/or reliability requirements. In this paper, we investigate RAN slicing for an uplink scenario in the form of multiple access schemes for two user types: (1) broadband users with throughput requirements and (2) intermittently active users with timing requirements, expressed as either latency-reliability (LR)…
One of the most important aspects of moving forward to the next generation networks like 5G/6G, is to enable network slicing in an efficient manner. The most challenging issues are the uncertainties in computation and communication demand. Because the slices' arrive to the network in different times and their lifespans vary, the solution should dynamically react to online slice requests. The joint problem of online admission control and resource allocation considering the energy consumption is formulated mathematically. It is based on Binary Linear Programming (BLP), where, the $Γ$-Robustness …
To meet the diverse demands for wireless communication, fifth-generation (5G) networks and beyond (B5G) embrace the concept of network slicing by forging virtual instances (slices) of its physical infrastructure. While network slicing constitutes dynamic allocation of core network and radio access network (RAN) resources, this article emphasizes RAN slicing (RAN-S) design. Forming on-demand RAN-S that can be flexibly (re)-configured while ensuring slice isolation is challenging. A variety of machine learning (ML) techniques have been recently introduced for traffic forecasting and classificati…
LEO-Aware DRL Meta-Scheduler for 5G Non-Terrestrial Network Slicing
Professional School of Computing Science, National University of San Agustin（圣奥古斯丁国立大学计算机科学专业学院）；Institute of Computing, University of Campinas（坎皮纳斯大学计算研究所）
In this work, we propose and experimentally assess the automatic and flexible NSs configurations of optical OPSquare DCN controlled and orchestrated by an extended SDN control plane for multi-tenant applications with differentiated QoS provisioning. Optical Flow Control (OFC) protocol has been developed to prevent packet losses at switch sides caused by packet contentions.Based on the collected resource topology of data plane, the optical network slices can be dynamically provisioned and automatically reconfigured by the SDN control plane. Meanwhile, experimental results validate that the prio…
Radio access network (RAN) slicing is a key technology that enables 5G network to support heterogeneous requirements of generic services, namely ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) and enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB). In this paper, we propose a two time-scales RAN slicing mechanism to optimize the performance of URLLC and eMBB services. In a large time-scale, an SDN controller allocates radio resources to gNodeBs according to the requirements of the eMBB and URLLC services. In a short time-scale, each gNodeB allocates its available resources to its end-users and requests, if nee…
