Proactive RAN Resource Reservation for URLLC Vehicular Slice

Abstract

Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) is a key service in fifth generation (5G) networks, that requires stringent Quality of Service (QoS) in terms of latency and reliability. As URLLC services may require specific numerology and/or specific channel access and re-transmission strategies, network slicing has been proposed as a solution for multiplexing them with other services such as enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB). Once the URLLC slice is configured and resources are dimensioned and allocated to it, URLLC performance targets should be attained thanks to the 5G New Radio (NR) low latency and high reliability features. However, in vehicular services such as safety message exchange, URLLC slice resource dimensioning cannot be static due to the varying number of vehicles in the cell. We show in this paper how the delay for slice reconfiguration alters the URLLC performance and propose a proactive resource reservation scheme that anticipates slice needs and allows ensuring URLLC targets. In order to reduce the impact of this proactive reservation on eMBB performance, we make use of vehicle trajectory prediction and show that limiting anticipated reservation to fewer cells allows reaching the target URLLC QoS with a limited degradation of the network capacity.