Network slicing is a key to supporting different quality-of-service requirements for users and application in the 5G network. However, allocating network slices efficiently while providing a minimum guaranteed level of service in a mobile core is challenging. To address this question, in our previous work we proposed an optimization model to allocate slices. It provided a static and manual allocation of slices. In this paper, we extend our work to dynamically allocated slices. We propose a dynamic slice allocation framework for the 5G core network. The proposed framework provides user-interaction to request slices and any required services that need to run on a slice(s). It can accept a single or multiple allocation requests, and it dynamically allocates them. Additionally, the framework allocates slices in a balanced fashion across available resources. We compare our framework with the First Come First Serve and First Available allocation scheme.
A Practical Open Source Solution for End-to-End Network Slicing (POSENS) has been proposed by G. Aviles @cite_1 . POSENS uses open source software and hardware to create end-to-end slices. Authors used srsLTE for radio access network and open-air interface EPC for the core network. The independence of slices and performance throughput is discussed in the paper. It also supports an efficient and flexible deployment of network slices. L. Zanzi @cite_11 demonstrated a real testbed named OVerbooking NEtwork Slices (OVNES). In the testbed, authors considered three different vertical slices, i.e., Public Safety communications, enhanced Mobile BroadBand (eMBB) for voice calls, and eMBB for Internet (best-effort). OpenEPC is used to emulate mobile core and several LTE devices to generate traffic.
@cite_1 @cite_11
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Network slicing represents a new paradigm to operate mobile networks. With network slicing, the underlying infrastructure is "sliced" into logically separate networks that can be customized to the specific needs of their tenant. Hands-on experiments on this technology are essential to understand its benefits and limits, and to validate the design and deployment choices. While some network slicing prototypes have been built for RANs, leveraging on the wide availability of radio hardware and open source software, there is currently no open source suite for end-to-end network slicing available to the research community. In this article we fill this gap by developing an end-to-end network slicing protocol stack, POSENS, which relies on a slice-aware shared RAN solution. We design the required algorithms and protocols, and provide a full implementation leveraging on state-of-the-art software components. We validate the effectiveness of POSENS in achieving tenant isolation and network slices customization, showing that no price in performance is paid toward this end. We believe that our tool will prove very useful to researchers and practitioners working on this novel architectural paradigm. The next generation mobile transport networks shall transform into flexible and agile SDN NFV-based transport and computing platforms, capable of simultaneously supporting the needs of different vertical industries, e.g., automotive, e-health and media, by meeting a diverse range of networking and computing requirements. Network slicing, has emerged as the most promising approach to address this challenge by enabling per-slice management of virtualized resources and provisioning and managing slices tailored to the needs of different vertical industries. Service orchestration is the key enabler for slicing that allows efficient placement of virtual network functions over the infrastructure as well as optimal allocation of virtual resources among all network slices to deliver guaranteed, reliable and scalable services of different verticals. Besides, due to the limited footprint of infrastructure operators, it is also required to enable the interconnection and federation of multiple administrative domains, to effectively allow services to span across several providers. This paper presents the design of Service Orchestrator (SO) in the 5G-TRANSFORMER system, which deals with service orchestration and federation across multiple domains. Wireless industry nowadays is facing two major challenges: 1) how to support the vertical industry applications so that to expand the wireless industry market and 2) how to further enhance device capability and user experience. In this paper, we propose a technology framework to address these challenges. The proposed technology framework is based on end-to-end vertical and horizontal slicing, where vertical slicing enables vertical industry and services and horizontal slicing improves system capacity and user experience. The technology development on vertical slicing has already started in late 4G and early 5G and is mostly focused on slicing the core network. We envision this trend to continue with the development of vertical slicing in the radio access network and the air interface. Moving beyond vertical slicing, we propose to horizontally slice the computation and communication resources to form virtual computation platforms for solving the network capacity scaling problem and enhancing device capability and user experience. In this paper, we explain the concept of vertical and horizontal slicing and illustrate the slicing techniques in the air interface, the radio access network, the core network and the computation platform. This paper aims to initiate the discussion on the long-range technology roadmap and spur development on the solutions for E2E network slicing in 5G and beyond. 5G mobile network is expected to serve flexible requirements hence dynamically allocate network resources according to the demands. Network slicing, where network resources are packaged and assigned in an isolated manner to set of users according to their specific requirements, is considered as a key paradigm to fulfil diversity of requirements. There will clearly be conflicting demands in allocation of such slices, and the effective provisioning of network slicing poses several challenges. Indeed, network slicing has a twofold impact in terms of user traffic prioritization as it dictates for the simultaneous management of the priority among different slices (i.e., interslice) and the priority among the users belonging to the same slice (i.e., intra-slice). In this paper, we propose a novel heuristicbased admission control mechanism able to dynamically allocate network resources to different slices in order to maximize the satisfaction of the users while guaranteeing to meet the requirements of the slices they belong to. Through simulations, we demonstrate how our proposal provides (i) higher user experience in individual slices, (ii) increased utilization of network resources and (iii) higher scalability when the number of users in each slice increases.