Radio Access Network Slicing Research Articles

Information Prediction and Dynamic Programming-Based RAN Slicing for Mobile Edge Computing

In 5G networks, mobile edge computing (MEC) and radio access network (RAN) slicing can support the evolving services and satisfy the diverse service requirements efficiently, thereby, being promising technologies. In this letter, the work is focused on the RAN slicing between MEC services and traditional services. An information prediction and dynamic programming based RAN slicing algorithm is proposed. It guarantees the inter-slice isolation and realizes the intra-slice customization. Furthermore, it can optimize the network utility with high fairness in polynomial time complexity.

RAN Runtime Slicing System for Flexible and Dynamic Service Execution Environment

Network slicing is one key enabler to provide the required flexibility and to realize the service-oriented 5G vision. Unlike the core network slicing, radio access network (RAN) slicing is still at its infancy and several works just start to investigate the challenges and potentials to enable the multi-service RAN, toward a serviced-oriented RAN architecture. One of the major concerns in the RAN slicing is to provide different levels of isolation and sharing as per slice requirement. Moreover, both control and user plane processing may be customized allowing a slice owner to flexibly control its service. Enabling dynamic RAN composition with flexible functional split for disaggregated RAN deployments is another challenge. In this paper, we propose a RAN runtime slicing system through which the operation and behavior of the underlying RAN could be customized and controlled to meet slice requirements. We present a proof-of-concept prototype of the proposed RAN runtime slicing system for LTE, assess its feasibility and potentials, and demonstrate the isolation, sharing, and customization capabilities with three representative use cases.

Radio access network slicing based on C/U plane separation

Network slicing achieves many interests from industry and academics due to its flexibility and scalability. In this paper, we present a novel slicing scheme for radio access networks (RANs) based on control/user (C/ U) plane separation. Firstly, we divide eNBs into two sub-eNBs called CeNB and UeNB, for transmitting control data and user data respectively, thereby facilitating C/U plane separation. Secondly, upon CeNBs and UeNBs being virtualized, we develop two RAN slices for control and user plane respectively. Experimental results show the feasibility of the proposed scheme.

Heterogeneous Public Safety Network Architecture Based on RAN Slicing

Efficient communications are of paramount importance to improve public safety (PS) operations allowing better coordination, higher situation awareness, lower response times, and higher efficiency during emergency. Consequently, the evolution of PS communication networks toward commercial broadband networks is widely well accepted. However, this evolution has to cope with several challenges, such as the provision of sufficient communication capacity, coverage, and resilience as well as deployment costs and efficient exploitation of radio resources. This has triggered the need of new architectural solutions. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous network communication architecture where both infrastructures and spectrum are shared between PS and commercial operators thus reducing deployment costs and times, and addressing the main challenges of PS communications. The shared radio access network (RAN) is managed by means of network slicing and resources virtualization. The proposed architecture is based on a three-tier scheduler that allows to manage different network layers and different RAN slices. Numerical results derived by means computer simulations are provided in order to highlight the efficiency and flexibility of the proposed architecture in comparison with benchmark alternatives.