Side Channel Attack-Aware Resource Allocation for URLLC and eMBB Slices in 5G RAN

Yajie Li,Jie Zhang,Jun Li,Yongli Zhao,Jiawei Zhang,Xiaosong Yu

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2962179

Abstract

Network slicing is a key enabling technology to realize the provisioning of customized services in 5G paradigm. Due to logical isolation instead of physical isolation, network slicing is facing a series of security issues. Side Channel Attack (SCA) is a typical attack for slices that share resources in the same hardware. Considering the risk of SCA among slices, this paper investigates how to effectively allocate heterogeneous resources for the slices under their different security requirements. Then, a SCA-aware Resource Allocation (SCA-RA) algorithm is proposed for Ultra-reliable and Low-latency Communications (URLLC) and Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) slices in 5G RAN. The objective is to maximize the number of slices accommodated in 5G RAN. With dynamic slice requests, simulation is conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm in two different network scenarios. Simulation results indicate that compared with benchmark, SCA-RA algorithm can effectively reduce blocking probability of slice requests. In addition, the usage of IT and transport resources is also optimized.

Highlights

As the foundation of Networked Society, the objective of the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) is to provide ultra-high data rate, ultra-low latency and nearly ubiquitous connectivity to users and machines
Note that each Antenna Units (AAUs) can be shared by three slices at most. 25Gb/s transponder is adopted for each wavelength
A Side Channel Attack (SCA)-RA heuristic algorithm is proposed to address this problem, with the objective of maximizing the number of slices accommodated in 5G radio access network (RAN)

Summary

Introduction

As the foundation of Networked Society, the objective of the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) is to provide ultra-high data rate, ultra-low latency and nearly ubiquitous connectivity to users and machines. According to the definition in [1], the application scenarios of 5G are classified into three types, including Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Ultra-reliable and Low-latency Communications (URLLC), and Massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC). Network operators are expected to meet the diversified service requirements with the same substrate network for different application scenarios. Different network slices can share the same substrate infrastructure in the manner of logical isolation. Each network slice consists of heterogenous resources, including radio, transport and IT resources (e.g., computing and storage). According to the definition in [4], an end to end network slice is from antennas side to 5G core and spans radio access network (RAN), The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Ting Yang

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Results

Conclusion