Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Micro and Macro Network Slicing: An Experimental Assessment of the Impact of Increasing Numbers of Slices

  • Published:
Wireless Personal Communications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The fifth generation (5G) telecommunications network aims not only to enhance traffic performance and allow efficient management, but also to enable it to dynamically and flexibly adapt to the traffic demands of different vertical scenarios. In order to support that enablement, the underlying network procedures (i.e., network functions) are being virtualized and deployed in cloud-based environments, allowing for a more optimized usage of the infra-structure resources. In addition, such resources can be sliced, allowing isolated provisioning to specific network functions allocated to disparate vertical deployments. As network slices are envisaged by network operators to fulfill a small number of slices, able to cater towards essential 5G scenario demands (i.e., enhanced mobile broadband, massive machine-type communications and ultra reliable low-latency communications), the total amount of slices existing in a system is currently dictated by the underlying operational overhead placed over the cloud infra-structure. This paper explores the challenges associated to a vision where the network slicing concept is applied with a much greater level of granularity, ultimately allowing it to become a core mechanism of the network’s operation, with large numbers of co-existing slices. In that respect, this paper proposes an architecture framework for instantiation of network slices among network providers, which in turn are able to instantiate sub-slices tailored to use cases and vertical tenants. The evaluation of this concept is done following a two-pronged approach: firstly, different slice dimensions (i.e., from micro to macro) are proposed and discussed, pointing out the benefits and challenges of each proposed slice; secondly, we deployed a mobile network provider (MNO), using OpenAirInterface and FlexRAN frameworks, and experimentally evaluated the its slicing mechanisms. The objective is to provide insight on the challenges and impact associated with the deployment of an increasing amount of slices, using the same available infra-structural resources.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Logota, E., Corujo, D., Jeon, S., Rodriguez, J., & Aguiar, R. L. (2015). The 5G Internet. In J. Rodriguez (Ed.), Fundamentals of 5G mobile networks, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118867464.ch2.

  2. Foukas, X., Patounas, G., Elmokashfi, A., & Marina, M. K. (2017). Network slicing in 5G: Survey and challenges. IEEE Communications Magazine, 55(5), 94–100. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2017.1600951.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Network functions virtualisation (2012). https://portal.etsi.org/nfv/nfv_white_paper.pdf. Accessed Mar 2019.

  4. Open Network Foundation (ONF). SDN architecture (2014). https://www.opennetworking.org/images/stories/downloads/sdn-resources/technical-reports/TR_SDN_ARCH_1.0_06062014.pdf. Accessed Mar 2019.

  5. McKeown, N., Anderson, T., Balakrishnan, H., Parulkar, G., Peterson, L., Rexford, J., Shenker, S., & Turner, J. (2008). OpenFlow: Enabling innovation in campus networks. SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 38(2), 69–74. https://doi.org/10.1145/1355734.1355746.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Telefonica’s new open source edge project cuts 5g network slices into strings. Accessed October 6, 2018, from https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/telefonicas-open-source-edge-project-cuts-5g-network-slices-into-strings/2018/04/?utm_source=SDxCentral.com+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=61702cf34b-SDxCentral+Newsletter+2018-04-27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c2b6e504a2-61702cf34b-82025313.

  7. How many network slices are needed? Accessed October 6, 2018, from https://cloudblog.ericsson.com/digital-services/how-many-network-slices-are-needed.

  8. Richart, M., Baliosian, J., Serrat, J., & Gorricho, J. L. (2016). Resource slicing in virtual wireless networks: A survey. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 13(3), 462–476. https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSM.2016.2597295.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Wang, Q., Alcaraz-Calero, J., Weiss, M. B., Gavras, A., Neves, P. M., Cale, R., Bernini, G., Carrozzo, G., Ciulli, N., Celozzi, G., et al. (2018). In 2018 IEEE international symposium on broadband multimedia systems and broadcasting (BMSB) (pp. 1–5). IEEE.

  10. de la Oliva, A., Li, X., Costa-Perez, X., Bernardos, C. J., Bertin, P., Iovanna, P., et al. (2018). 5G-TRANSFORMER: Slicing and orchestrating transport networks for industry verticals. IEEE Communications Magazine, 56(8), 78–84. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2018.1700990.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Zaki, Y., Zhao, L., Goerg, C., & Timm-Giel, A. (2010). In 2010 Third joint IFIP wireless and mobile networking conference (WMNC) (pp. 1–6). IEEE.

  12. Van De Belt, J., Ahmadi, H., & Doyle, L. E. (2014). In 2014 IEEE 80th vehicular technology conference (VTC fall) (pp. 1–6). IEEE.

  13. Kamel, M. I., Le, L. B., & Girard, A. (2014). In 2014 IEEE 80th vehicular technology conference (VTC Fall) (pp. 1–5). IEEE.

  14. Pérez-Romero, J., Sallent, O., Ferrús, R., & Agustí, R. (2018). In NOMS 2018–2018 IEEE/IFIP network operations and management symposium (pp. 1–6). IEEE.

  15. Sallent, O., Perez-Romero, J., Ferrus, R., & Agusti, R. (2017). On radio access network slicing from a radio resource management perspective. IEEE Wireless Communications, 24(5), 166–174. https://doi.org/10.1109/MWC.2017.1600220WC.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Nakauchi, K., Shoji, Y., & Nishinaga, N. (2012). In 2012 Fourth international conference on ubiquitous and future networks (ICUFN) (pp. 166–169). IEEE.

  17. Derakhshani, M., Wang, X., Le-Ngoc, T., & Leon-Garcia, A. (2015). arXiv preprint arXiv:1508.03554.

  18. Guo, K., Sanadhya, S., & Woo, T. (2014). ViFi: Virtualizing WLAN using commodity hardware. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM workshop on Mobility in the evolving internet architecture (MobiArch '14) (pp. 25–30). New York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2645892.2645893.

  19. Koutlia, K., Umbert, A., Garcia, S., & Casadevall, F. (2017). In 2017 IEEE conference on network softwarization (NetSoft) (pp. 1–2). IEEE.

  20. Smith, G., Chaturvedi, A., Mishra, A., & Banerjee, S. (2007). In Proceedings of the second ACM international workshop on wireless network testbeds, experimental evaluation and characterization (pp. 75–82). ACM.

  21. Xia, L., Kumar, S., Yang, X., Gopalakrishnan, P., Liu, Y., Schoenberg, S., & Guo, X. (2011). Virtual WiFi: Bring virtualization from wired to wireless. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS international conference on Virtual execution environments (VEE '11) (pp. 181–192). New York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/1952682.1952706.

  22. Mahindra, R., Bhanage, G., Hadjichristofi, G., Seskar, I., Raychaudhuri, D., & Zhang, Y. (2008). In Next generation internet networks, 2008. NGI 2008 (pp. 215–222). IEEE.

  23. Meneses, F., Corujo, D., Neto, A., & Aguiar, R. L. (2018). In Workshop on mobility support in slice-based network control for heterogeneous environments (MOBISLICE) (IEEE NFV-SDN workshops). IEEE.

  24. Gudipati, A., Perry, D., Li, L. E., & Katti, S. (2013). In Proceedings of the second ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Hot topics in software defined networking (pp. 25–30). ACM.

  25. Akyildiz, I. F., Wang, P., & Lin, S. C. (2015). SoftAir: A software defined networking architecture for 5G wireless systems. Computer Networks, 85, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2015.05.007.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Nikaein, N., Knopp, R., Kaltenberger, F., Gauthier, L., Bonnet, C., Nussbaum, D., & Ghaddab, R. (2014). In Proceedings of the 20th annual international conference on mobile computing and networking (pp. 305–308). ACM.

  27. Nikaein, N., Chang, C. Y., & Alexandris, K. (2018). Mosaic5G: Agile and flexible service platforms for 5G research. SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 48(3), 29–34. https://doi.org/10.1145/3276799.3276803.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Huang, A., Nikaein, N., Stenbock, T., Ksentini, A., & Bonnet, C. (2017). In 2017 IEEE international conference on communications (ICC) (pp. 1–6). IEEE.

  29. Foukas, X., Nikaein, N., Kassem, M. M., Marina, M. K., & Kontovasilis, K. (2016). In Proceedings of the 12th international on conference on emerging networking experiments and technologies (pp. 427–441). ACM.

  30. Wang, Q., Alcaraz-Calero, J., Weiss, M. B., Gavras, A., Neves, P. M., Cale, R., Bernini, G., Carrozzo, G., Ciulli, N., Celozzi, G., Ciriaco, A., Levin, A., Lorenz, D., Barabash, K., Nikaein, N., Spadaro, S., Morris, D., Chochliouros, J., Agapiou, Y., Patachia, C., Iordache, M., Oproiu, E., Lomba, C., Aleixo, A. C., Ro-Drigues, A., Hallissey, G., Bozakov, Z., Koutsopoulos, K., & Walsh, P. (2018). In 2018 IEEE international symposium on broadband multimedia systems and broadcasting (BMSB) (pp. 1–5). https://doi.org/10.1109/BMSB.2018.8436800.

  31. Meneses, F., Silva, R., Santos, D., Corujo, D., & Aguiar, R. L. (2018). In 29th Annual international symposium on personal, indoor and mobile radio communications (PIMRC). IEEE.

  32. Sarkar, S., Becker, C., Kunz, J., Sarbhai, A., Annasamymani, G., Kasera, S. K., & Van der Merwe, J. (2017). Enabling WiFi in open access networks. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM workshop on hot topics in wireless (HotWireless '17) (pp. 13–17). New York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3127882.3127889.

  33. FlexRAN. Accessed September 30, 2018, from http://mosaic-5g.io/flexran/.

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work is funded by FCT/MEC through national funds and when applicable co-funded by FEDER PT2020 partnership agreement under the Project PTDC/EEI-TEL/30685/2017, and by the Integrated Programme of SR&TD SOCA (Ref. CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER-000010), co-funded by Centro 2020 program, Portugal 2020, European Union, through the European Regional Development Fund. The experimental validation of this work included usage of the FlexRAN software from “Mosaic-5G”, a EURECOM registered trademark (INPI No. 17 4 357 904).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Telecomunicações and Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    Flávio Meneses, Rui Silva, Daniel Corujo & Rui L. Aguiar

Authors
  1. Flávio Meneses
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Rui Silva
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Daniel Corujo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Rui L. Aguiar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Corujo.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Meneses, F., Silva, R., Corujo, D. et al. Micro and Macro Network Slicing: An Experimental Assessment of the Impact of Increasing Numbers of Slices. Wireless Pers Commun 106, 119–134 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-019-06267-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-019-06267-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation