End-to-End Network Slicing in Radio Access Network, Transport Network and Core Network Domains

Xu Li,Jun Chen,Zhichao Rong,Rui Ni,Rui Du,Yibo Lyu

doi:10.1109/access.2020.2972105

Xu Li, Jun Chen + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2020.2972105

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Abstract

Network slicing (NS) has been well discussed in the transport network (TN) and core network (CN) domains. This paper extends it to the radio access network (RAN) domain, and the NS in RAN, TN and CN domains is defined as end-to-end (E2E) NS system. The advantages of using NS in the RAN domain with two-level resource allocation scheme are studied and shown by numerical simulations. Then the E2E NS system architecture and components are proposed and demonstrated with hardware and software. The demonstration shows the capability with very fine spectral granularity, and the slice creation, delete and adjustment schemes in sub-minute time, which could be used in the operator’s network.

Highlights

With the development of wireless communication system, one network fitting for all is technically infeasible for diverse scenarios, including enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable and low-latency communication and massive machine type communication, network slicing (NS) is adopted as a major character in 5G [1]
In 2016, NS is formally presented by generation mobile networks (NGMN), which consists of service instance layer, slice instance layer and resource layer [2]
We find that main latency is caused by transmission control protocol (TCP)/user datagram protocol (UDP) layer in the wireline link of transport network (TN), and serious jitter is accompanied by TCP congestion

Summary

INTRODUCTION

With the development of wireless communication system, one network fitting for all is technically infeasible for diverse scenarios, including enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (uRLLC) and massive machine type communication (mMTC), network slicing (NS) is adopted as a major character in 5G [1]. With specific requirement, the orchestrator generates and sends commands to network function virtualization (NFV) [7] and software-defined networking (SDN) [6] controllers. All the DRBs for different users are viewed and scheduled by a shared medium access control (MAC), which greatly threatens the security [9]. After isolation, according to the specific requirements of each slice instance, the packet data convergence protocol (PDCP), radio link control (RLC) and MAC protocols could be further optimized and standardized to improve the system performance. The hardware infrastructure is scheduled by orchestrators assisted by NFV and SDN controllers, where the system architecture along with the runtime command and real-time response are described.

RELATED WORKS AND CONTRIBUTIONS

RAN SLICING MODEL

SPECTRUM RESOURCE ALLOCATION BY MASTER MAC

SPECTRUM RESOURCE ALLOCATION BY SLAVE MACS

19: Stage2

CONCLUSION