Radio Resource Provisioning for Network Slicing with Coverage Constraints

Network slicing appears as a key enabler for the future 5G networks. Mobile Network Operators create various slices for Service Providers (SP) to accommodate customized services. As network slices are operated on a common network infrastructure owned by some Infrastructure Provider (InP), sharing the resources across a set of network slices is important for future deployment. Usually, the various Service Function Chains (SFCs) belonging to a slice are deployed on a best-effort basis. Nothing ensures that the InP will be able to allocate enough resources to cope with the increasing demands of some SP. This paper takes the InP perspective and proposes a slice resource provisioning approach to cope with multiple slice demands in terms of computing, storage, coverage, and rate constraints. By provisioning we ensure that enough resource is reserved for allocation to further SFC deployment. A two-step approach is proposed to address this problem. Radio resources on radio nodes are provisioned first to ensure the satisfaction of the coverage constraints that is part of the SLA with the SP. Radio coverage constraints ensure a minimum data rate for users in the geographical areas where services have to be deployed. In our model, radio resource blocks are allocated and the channel between the radio nodes and users is taken into account. Moreover, both downlink and uplink traffic are considered for the service rate model. Other resource constraints are then considered. A Mixed Integer Linear Programming formulation is considered to address the problem. A realistic use case of slices deployment over a mobile access network is then considered. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for radio network slice provisioning with SLA on specific region coverage.