Cost-efficient slicing in virtual radio access networks

Network slicing is a promising technique that has vastly increased the manifoldness of network services to be supported through isolated slices in a shared radio access network (RAN). Due to resource isolation, effective resource allocation for coexisting multiple network slices is essential to maximize network resource efficiency. However, the increased network flexibility and programmability offered by virtualized radio access networks (vRANs) come at the expense of a higher consumption of computing resources at the network edge. Additionally, the relationship between resource efficiency and computing cost minimization is still fuzzy. In this paper, we first perform extensive experiments using the vRAN testbed we developed and assess the vRAN resource consumption under different settings and a varying number of users. Then, leveraging our experimental findings, we formulate the problem of cost-efficient network slice dimensioning, named costefficient slicing (CES), which maximizes the difference between total utility and CPU cost of network slices. Numerical results confirm that our solution leads to a cost-efficient resource slicing, while also accomplishing performance isolation and guaranteeing the target data rate and delay specified in the service level agreements.