Experimental Evaluation of RAN Slicing Architecture With Flexibly Located Functional Components of Base Station According to Diverse 5G Services

Abstract

The future 5th generation (5G) mobile communication system will be required to support diverse services. Because of the difficulty in addressing the requirements of all these services using the same physical network, ''network slicing,'' which provides a customized logical network corresponding to service requirements, has recently attracted a great deal of attention. In the radio access network (RAN), the appropriate locations of base station functionalities to meet service requirements and achieve efficient network operation differ according to service type. Therefore, we have proposed a novel RAN slicing architecture, which has logical networks (slices) that choose an appropriate functional split option and its placement, to adjust to providing any service. This architecture achieves high flexibility and large scalability by employing a software-defined network and network function virtualization. A prototype is then developed based on the proposed architecture employing a unified controller of open-source software. It can construct slices for three service types: enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable and low-latency communication, and massive machine-type communication, with flexibly located functionalities. In this paper, an experimental evaluation, considering the points of bandwidth consumption in midhaul, the impact of midhaul delay, communication latency, and isolation among slices, shows that the slices have specific performance benefits for each service type and also to achieve efficient network operation. This suggests that the proposed architecture is able to construct slices in a single infrastructure with different features according to the services required and to accommodate various services efficiently. INDEX TERMS 5G mobile communication, software-defined network, network function virtualization RAN slicing, functional splits. I. INTRODUCTION A. GENERAL BACKGROUND Recently, research and development have been actively pursued in the future 5th generation (5G) mobile network. 5G is expected to support diverse services such as highdefinition video distribution, autonomous driving, remotecontrolled robots and the Internet of Things (IoT) [1], and the services are classified roughly into three types; enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable and lowlatency communication (URLLC), and massive machine-type communication (mMTC) [2]. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Xiaodong Xu.

End-to-End Network Slicing in Radio Access Network, Transport Network and Core Network Domains

“…Reference [21] discusses different concepts, challenges and management for NS in the RAN domain, but without detailed system architecture. Meanwhile, remote radio unit (RRU) and baseband unit (BBU) mapping [22], [23] and functions split and placement [24] are also studied for NS in the RAN domain. Similar to the system structure proposed by many companies for NS in the TN and CN domains [4]- [7], this paper proposes the system structure for E2E NS including RAN domain.…”

Using 5G Network Slicing and Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access to Transmit Medical Data in a Mobile Hospital System

“…According to different business requirements, different network resources are provided, and different application scenarios are connected to the network in the most appropriate way, to improve the utilization rate of network resources. The three business scenarios defined by 5G are enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) characterized by a large amount of bandwidth to support high data rate such as ultra-high definition video stream; ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (uRLLC) characterized by high reliability and ultra-low latency services; massive machine-type communications (mMTC) characterized by services with high connection density requirements provided by a massive number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices [16]- [20]. Network slicing then allows operators to partition the networks in a structured, elastic scalable, and automated manner so that each slice is dedicated to one of the three categories of 5G services, and it is then customized and dimensioned to best serve the needs of specific applications.…”

“…Similar to the uplink case, the KKT condition (18) here too still involves the Lagrange multipliers, whereas conditions (19), (20), and (21) do not. Therefore, (19), (20) and ( 21) are necessary and sufficient conditions for the solution of our problem.…”

“…Similar to the uplink case, the KKT condition (18) here too still involves the Lagrange multipliers, whereas conditions (19), (20), and (21) do not. Therefore, (19), (20) and ( 21) are necessary and sufficient conditions for the solution of our problem. Following the guidelines in [23], we set the derivatives equal to zero, combine (19) and (21) to get closed-form solutions to the problem with the necessary conditions.…”

“…Authors in [19] defined network slicing in RAN, TN, and CN domains as an end-to-end network slicing system, and proposed the system architecture and components to demonstrate its capability with hardware and software. A novel RAN slicing architecture with slices providing services by choosing an appropriate functional split option and its placement is provided in [20]. SDN and NFV are used in the work to achieve large scalability and high flexibility.…”