Virtual Resource Allocation for Tactile and Flexible Services in UAVs-Integrated 5G Networks

Abstract

Recently, novel tactile and flexible network services and applications emerge, along with their explosive growth of mobile data traffic. However, current internet cannot fulfill the demands of these network services. The upcoming 5G network, including the tactile internet, is designed by adopting softwarization and virtualization technologies, aiming at removing the rigidity of dedicated network hardware and implementing various network services in a flexible manner. One key technical issue in 5G network is the virtual resource allocation, known as virtual network embedding (VNE). However, existing studies focus on allocating virtual resource in the fixed underlying network, ignoring the effect of the mobile end nodes. As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will play an important role in 5G era, we incorporate UAVs into the 5G network in order to expand the coverage and agility of novel network services. In this paper, we conduct a research on the virtual resource allocation in UAVs-integrated 5G networks. The formal problem model for UAVs-integrated 5G networks is involved. A novel profit model, quantifying the UAV mobility for telecommunication service provider (TSP), is proposed. Then, we propose one virtual resource allocation algorithm, labeled as UAV-5G-VNE. Our UAV-5G-VNE consists of initial allocation part (UAV-5G-VNE-Ini) and re-allocation part (UAV-5G-VNE-Re). Our UAV-5G-VNE enables to predict all possible connecting access nodes of virtual UAV and makes implemented network services continued. In order to validate our UAV-5G-VNE efficiency, we conduct the experiments. Experiment results demonstrate that UAV-5G-VNE outperforms two benchmark algorithms, in terms of TSP profit and virtual service acceptance.