Background
Recent studies indicate that the demand for faster, lower latency wireless cellular connection is growing exponentially every year. RAN slicing is a form of 5G virtualization that allows network infrastructure owners to dynamically “slice” and “serve” their network resources (i.e., spectrum, power, antennas, among others) to different mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), according to their current needs. Once the slicing policy (i.e., the percentage of resources assigned to each MVNO) has been computed, a major challenge is how to allocate spectrum resources to MVNOs in such a way that (i) the slicing policy defined by the network owner is enforced; and (ii) the interference among different MVNOs is minimized.
Technology Overview
Northeastern researchers provide a novel formulation of the RAN slicing enforcement problem (RSEP) where interference among different MVNOs is reduced through the orthogonal allocation of physical-layer resources, thus effectively improving network performance in terms of throughput and signal-to-noise ratio. The RSEP is formulated as an integer linear problem (ILP) where the number of physical-layer resources with zero inter-MVNO interference is maximized and all MVNOs receive the minimum amount of requested resources. Researchers propose three algorithms that solves the RSEP with different optimality performance and computational complexity and displayed how they can be applied to virtualized LTE networks through simulations.
Benefits
- Enabling of high-rate technologies (e.g., CoMP, MIMO and beamforming)
- Coordination of transmissions among neighboring base stations
- Fine-grain control over physical-layer resources
- Low-complexity algorithms that provide adaptive and dynamic allocation of physical-layer resource
Applications
- Efficient and effective management and allocation of network slices in 5G networks
- Allocation of physical‑layer resources to enable CoMP, MIMO and beam forming transmissions
- Development of a network slicing platform for rapid and flexible network slice generation
Opportunity
- License
- Partnering
- Research collaboration
