Towards service-oriented soft spectrum slicing for 5G TDD networks

© 2019 This paper introduces the concept of network slicing in the emerging Time Division Duplex (TDD) 5G networks, considering asymmetric traffic conditions. The proposed approach relies on a flexible?soft spectrum?slicing considering the entire spectrum band by allocating service oriented network slices that can independently adjust the Uplink/Downlink (UL/DL) ratio based on forecasted traffic and user mobility information. Two novel resource re-configuration mechanisms are introduced: i) a joint slice resource allocation and TDD frame selection and ii) a slice allocation with independent distributed UL/DL ratio adjustment. An analytical model formulating the slice resource allocation scheme as a weighted optimization problem is presented whereas an exhaustive simulation campaign is carried out to validate our proposals against state-of-the art approaches.