Radio access network slicing system

Network slicing is one of the key enablers to provide the required flexibility for the envisioned service-oriented 5G. We introduce a descriptor, a triple consisting of resources, processing and state, as a means to describe base stations (BS) and the embedded slices alike through a unifying description. Second, we propose a RAN slicing system, composed of the RAN runtime execution environment and accompanying controller based on this descriptor. This includes design and performance details of the employed system. Finally, we elaborate on aspects of RAN slicing such as the radio resources, the processing chain of a slice, and its state.