Network slicing management & prioritization in 5G mobile systems

—5G mobile network is expected to serve flexible
requirements hence dynamically allocate network resources according
to the demands. Network slicing, where network resources
are packaged and assigned in an isolated manner to set
of users according to their specific requirements, is considered
as a key paradigm to fulfil diversity of requirements. There
will clearly be conflicting demands in allocation of such slices,
and the effective provisioning of network slicing poses several
challenges. Indeed, network slicing has a twofold impact in terms
of user/traffic prioritization as it dictates for the simultaneous
management of the priority among different slices (i.e., interslice)
and the priority among the users belonging to the same
slice (i.e., intra-slice). In this paper, we propose a novel heuristic based
admission control mechanism able to dynamically allocate
network resources to different slices in order to maximize
the satisfaction of the users while guaranteeing to meet the
requirements of the slices they belong to. Through simulations, we
demonstrate how our proposal provides (i) higher user experience
in individual slices, (ii) increased utilization of network resources
and (iii) higher scalability when the number of users in each slice
increases.