Network slicing appears as a key enabler for the future 5G networks. Mobile Network Operators create various slices for Service Providers (SP) to accommodate customized services. As network slices are operated on a common network infrastructure owned by some Infrastructure Provider (InP), sharing the resources across a set of network slices is important for future deployment. Moreover, in many situations, slices have to be deployed over some geographical area: coverage as well as minimum per-user rate constraints have then to be taken into account. Usually, the various Service Function Chains (SFCs) belonging to a slice are deployed on a best-effort basis. Nothing ensures that the InP will be able to allocate enough resources to cope with the increasing demands of some SP. This paper takes the InP perspective and proposes a slice resource provisioning approach to cope with multiple slice demands in terms of computing, storage, coverage, and rate constraints. The resource requirements of the various Service Function Chains to be deployed within a slice are aggregated within a graph of Slice Resource Demands (SRD). Coverage and rate constraints are also taken into account in the SRD. Infrastructure nodes and links have then to be provisioned so as to satisfy all types of resource demands. This problem leads to a Mixed Integer Linear Programming formulation. A two-step deployment approach is considered, with several variants, depending on whether the constraints of each slide to be deployed are taken into account sequentially or jointly. Once provisioning has been performed, any slice deployment strategy may be considered on the reduced-size infrastructure graph representing the nodes and links on which resources have been provisioned. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach compared to a more classical direct slice embedding approach.
In @cite_36 , an heterogeneous spatial user density is considered, and the joint BS selection and adaptive slicing are formulated as a two-stage stochastic optimization problem. The first stage aims at defining the set of BSs to activate. The second stage aims at allocating wireless resources of the BSs to each point of the region to be covered by the SP. Several random realizations of user locations are generated to get a reduced-complexity deterministic optimization problem. A genetic algorithm is then used for the optimization.
@cite_36
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In this work we investigate optimal geographical caching in heterogeneous cellular networks where different types of base stations (BSs) have different cache capacities. Users request files from a content library according to a known probability distribution. The performance metric is the total hit probability, which is the probability that a user at an arbitrary location in the plane will find the content that it requires in one of the BSs that it is covered by. We consider the problem of optimally placing content in all BSs jointly. As this problem is not convex, we provide a heuristic scheme by finding the optimal placement policy for one type of base station conditioned on the placement in all other types. We demonstrate that these individual optimization problems are convex and we provide an analytical solution. As an illustration, we find the optimal placement policy of the small base stations (SBSs) depending on the placement policy of the macro base stations (MBSs). We show how the hit probability evolves as the deployment density of the SBSs varies. We show that the heuristic of placing the most popular content in the MBSs is almost optimal after deploying the SBSs with optimal placement policies. Also, for the SBSs no such heuristic can be used; the optimal placement is significantly better than storing the most popular content. Finally, we show that solving the individual problems to find the optimal placement policies for different types of BSs iteratively, namely repeatedly updating the placement policies, does not improve the performance. Heterogeneous wireless networks (HetNets) provide a powerful approach to meeting the dramatic mobile traffic growth, but also impose a significant challenge on backhaul. Caching and multicasting at macro and pico base stations (BSs) are two promising methods to support massive content delivery and reduce backhaul load in HetNets. In this paper, we jointly consider caching and multicasting in a large-scale cache-enabled HetNet with backhaul constraints. We propose a hybrid caching design consisting of identical caching in the macro-tier and random caching in the pico-tier, and a corresponding multicasting design. By carefully handling different types of interferers and adopting appropriate approximations, we derive tractable expressions for the successful transmission probability in the general signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and user density region as well as the high SNR and user density region, utilizing tools from stochastic geometry. Then, we consider the successful transmission probability maximization by optimizing design parameters, which is a very challenging mixed discrete-continuous optimization problem. By exploring structural properties, we obtain a near optimal solution with superior performance and manageable complexity. This solution achieves better performance in the general region than any asymptotically optimal solution, under a mild condition. The analysis and optimization results provide valuable design insights for practical cache-enabled HetNets. Wireless network virtualization is a promising avenue of research for next-generation 5G cellular networks. Virtualization focuses on the concept of active resource sharing and the building of a network designed for specific demands, decreasing operational expenditures, and improving demand satisfaction of cellular networks. This work investigates the problem of selecting base stations (BSs) to construct a virtual network that meets the the specific demands of a service provider, and adaptive slicing of the resources between the service provider’s demand points. A two-stage stochastic optimization framework is introduced to model the problem of joint BS selection and adaptive slicing. Two methods are presented for determining an approximation for the two-stage stochastic optimization model. The first method uses a sampling approach applied to the deterministic equivalent program of the stochastic model. The second method uses a genetic algorithm for BS selection and adaptive slicing via a single-stage linear optimization problem. For testing, a number of scenarios were generated using a log-normal model designed to emulate demand from real world cellular networks. Simulations indicate that the first approach can provide a reasonably good solution, but is constrained as the time expense grows exponentially with the number of parameters. The second approach provides a vast improvement in run time with the introduction of some error. Consider media streaming in MIMO interference networks whereby multiple base stations (BS) simultaneously deliver media to their associated users using fixed data rates. The performance is fundamentally limited by the cross-link interference. We propose a cache-induced opportunistic cooperative MIMO (CoMP) for interference mitigation. By caching a portion of the media files, the BSs opportunistically employ CoMP to transform the cross-link interference into spatial multiplexing gain. We study a mixed-timescale optimization of MIMO precoding and cache control to minimize the transmit power under the rate constraint. The cache control is to create more CoMP opportunities and is adaptive to the long-term popularity of the media files. The precoding is to guarantee the rate requirement and is adaptive to the channel state information and cache state at the BSs. The joint stochastic optimization problem is decomposed into a short-term precoding and a long-term cache control problem. We propose a precoding algorithm which converges to a stationary point of the short-term problem. Based on this, we exploit the hidden convexity of the long-term problem and propose a low complexity and robust solution using stochastic subgradient. The solution has significant gains over various baselines and does not require explicit knowledge of the media popularity.