Dynamic 5G Network Slicing

Abstract

5G network slicing is the use of network virtualization to divide single network connections into multiple distinct virtual connections that provide different amounts of resources to different types of traffic. A 5G NS (Network Slicing) instance is composed of a set of virtual network function (VNF) instances to form the end-to-end (E2E) virtual network for the slice to operate independently. The deployment of a NS is a typical virtual network embedding (VNE) problem. The proposed algorithm consists of three parts. First, we devise a Holt-Winters (HW) prediction algorithm to determine traffic demand for network slices. This method is intended to avoid frequent changes in network topology. Second, we propose a virtual network function (VNF) adaptive scaling strategy to reasonably determine the number of VNFs and resources required for network slices to avoid resource wastage. Finally, we develop a proactive online algorithm to deploy network slices.